Chapter 8
Willow clicked print on the office supply order. It felt good to finally be able to take little tasks off Barb’s plate rather than add to her workload. She stood and weaved around her colleagues’ desks to collect the document from the printer.
The large gray machine next to the support pillar whirred to life.
Just as Willow reached it, the printer let out an alarming beep. An error message popped up on the control display. Paper jam. Remove paper.
“Come on.” She needed to print one measly page. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?
Quickly, trying not to attract anyone’s attention, she pulled out the tray.
The paper was neatly stacked. No ripped pages, folded corners, or sheets crumpled into an accordion.
She opened the top panel, then the one on the side.
Neither showed a shred of paper, yet the printer insisted there was a paper jam.
“Liar,” she muttered.
As a last Hail Mary attempt, she switched the machine off and back on, but it continued to flash the same error message.
“Please, no,” Willow whispered. “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t do this to me.”
But maybe it wasn’t the printer. Maybe it was her causing the issue—again. Why, oh why had she taken an office job? She should have applied for a job in which she didn’t need to work with any electronic devices.
The question wasn’t new, of course. Every time she left one job, she managed to convince herself it would be different somewhere else, if only she just gave it one more try and managed to settle in and calm down her emotions.
Besides, were there any jobs left nowadays that didn’t involve computers or some other tech? None came to mind, other than yoga instructor, which made her think of goat yoga and her conversation with Scottie in the park last week.
Scottie… Willow had managed to avoid her for the past five days, but now she would probably have to submit a ticket to IT.
Maybe, if she was lucky, they would send Mateo again.
But that thought didn’t make her happy either.
“Trouble with the printer?”
The calm voice from behind made Willow jump. As she whirled around, she bumped her elbow on the printer.
Celeste stood in front of her, posture straight and her white blouse crisp.
Willow always wondered whether she’d been in the military.
The operations manager didn’t frown, but she didn’t smile either.
She just looked at Willow with that probing, analytical gaze that always made her feel as if she was being assessed and found lacking.
Even after two weeks of working at Kudos, Willow didn’t quite know what to make of her. Did Celeste like her, merely tolerate her, or hope to get rid of her as soon as possible?
“Um, yes,” Willow answered belatedly. “It insists there’s a paper jam, but I checked. There’s nothing in there.”
Celeste stepped closer, her heels making precise, muffled taps on the carpet. “Have you tried turning it off and back on?”
Willow started to sweat. She resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her slacks. “Yes. Didn’t help.”
Celeste eyed her as if she’d taken a hammer to the printer. “I’ve noticed you’ve run into several technological issues in the two weeks you’ve been working here. Is there a problem I need to be aware of?”
Willow struggled not to gulp. “No, no, of course not. There’s no problem. I just… I think they were probably older models, due for a refresh.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Her boss clearly prided herself on running a tight, efficient department, not one that wrestled with outdated systems.
Celeste folded her arms across her pristine blouse.
“Or, you know, just Mercury in retrograde or something,” Willow added quickly, trying to recover. She offered a weak smile.
Celeste didn’t return it. “There’s no scientifically proven effect of planetary movements on technology.”
“Right. Of course. I mean, of course not.” Celeste was definitely the type who would never believe her, even if Willow told her the truth. She’d dismiss it as a woo-woo excuse.
Celeste studied her for a few more seconds, with the same expression she’d used on the inventory report last week, right before declaring that someone had double-counted four pallets of talking plush giraffes. “Call IT and get this”—she waved a hand at the trouble-making printer—“figured out.”
“Of course,” Willow said. “I’ll take care of it right away.”
Celeste gave a curt nod, then strode back toward her desk, her steps fluid and efficient.
Willow sank against the printer. Crap. Now she had to summon IT again, and her boss would probably keep an even closer eye on her going forward. Whatever Celeste said, it felt as if the planets were out to get her.
~ ~ ~
“It’s your girlfriend again,” Mateo announced when a new support ticket popped up on his screen.
“Willow?” Scottie opened the ticket on her own screen, even as she protested: “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Yet,” Gordon added.
Scottie glared at her older colleague. “You too, Brutus?”
Gordon shrugged. “She’s certainly our most loyal customer right now, and I don’t think it’s because she hopes to finally make my acquaintance.”
For a second, she wondered whether Gordon and Mateo were right. Could Willow really be submitting tickets because she would then have a reason to see Scottie?
She dismissed the thought once more. If Willow were interested in her, she would have taken her up on the offer to bring her a donut last week.
“What’s the problem this time?” Gordon asked.
“Printer jam, but there’s no stuck paper anywhere,” Mateo said. “I won’t even try to take this one.”
“Maybe I should,” Gordon said.
That was a first. Scottie gave him a doubtful look. “You want to leave your desk without the building being on fire?”
“I haven’t met the infamous Willow yet, and Mateo said she’s cute.” Gordon slid his wire-frame glasses higher up on his nose and smoothed a palm over his perfectly groomed graying hair as if preparing for the meeting.
“May I remind you that you’re a happily married man?” Scottie tried to keep her voice light and playful, but she could hear a bit of an edge sneaking in.
Gordon lifted his hands in a defensive gesture.
“What? I said I want to meet her, not go out with her. I’d only be checking her out for you—to make sure she’s not an asshole who’s going to break your heart.
” At nearly fifty, he was fifteen years older than Scottie and often acted like a concerned big brother.
It was kind of touching. She knew they both meant well, but she didn’t want them to mess with Willow. “Thanks, but I’m a big girl. And like I told you about a million times before, I’m not looking for a girlfriend. No one’s checking out anyone, okay?”
“Well, then I’m not going,” Gordon said.
Mateo huffed. “We both knew from the start who’d take this ticket.”
They looked at her.
Maybe she could solve this issue remotely, just to prove that she wasn’t eager to hurry upstairs and see Willow. Which she absolutely wasn’t. Sure, she enjoyed chatting with her, but she did that with every employee who needed her help, simply because it calmed them down.
Scottie pulled up the printer’s web console and checked the print queue. As expected, it showed a stuck job from Willow. She restarted the print spooler on the server.
The queue emptied, and the stuck job vanished.
Unfortunately, the printer status still showed the same error.
She put on her headset and called Willow’s extension.
The call was answered on the second ring. “This is Willow Greene.” She sounded a little breathless, as if she had hurried across the office to her desk.
The breathy tone sent a shiver through Scottie. “Hey, Willow, it’s Scottie. I got your ticket and cleared the print queue on my end, but the error’s still showing. Can you turn off the printer for me? Wait about thirty seconds, then turn it back on.”
“I already did that,” Willow replied. “Didn’t help.”
Not for the first time, Scottie told herself not to underestimate Willow. She never waited around for IT to solve the problem for her; she always tried a few things herself and only contacted them when she ran out of options. “Sorry, I should have known you tried that already.”
Only silence answered, as if Willow was surprised Scottie thought so highly of her problem-solving skills.
“All right,” Scottie said when Willow didn’t answer. “I’ll come up and check it out in person. Do me a favor and unplug the printer so it’s cooled down by the time I get there.”
“Will do,” Willow said.
“Great. I’m heading upstairs now.”
“Thanks, Scottie.”
The way Willow said her name sent another ripple of goose bumps down Scottie’s arms. She brushed her hands over them, trying to rub away the sensation. Work, she firmly told herself. This was work—nothing else.
She took off her headset, grabbed her tool kit, and headed to the door.
“Try fixing the machine this time, not just staring at the woman,” Mateo called after her.
“For that remark, I won’t stop by the cafeteria on my way back. No chocolate chip cookie for you.” Scottie left the office she shared with her two colleagues and made her way toward the elevator.
She hadn’t even taken three steps when her boss emerged from his office.
“Ah, Scottie. I was just on my way to see you,” Miles Donnelly said. “Do you have a minute?”
Scottie hesitated. She didn’t want to make Willow wait too long. “Yeah, sure, if it can’t wait. I was on my way upstairs. Operations is having trouble with their printer.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Miles said.
Scottie’s chest tightened. That didn’t sound good. Was Willow in trouble? Or was she?
Miles and their CIO wanted to see single-visit tickets, not multiple visits to resolve the same issue. But they had talked about Willow’s motherboard and what could have been done to prevent that problem in the last team meeting, so that couldn’t be it…could it?
Her supervisor nudged his office door open. “Come on in and take a seat.”
Scottie followed him into the small office, its wall painted the same pale gray as the rest of the IT department.
This room was missing the quirky touches of Scottie’s office, like the cartoon taped above Mateo’s desk, showing an IT person looking at a burning computer, saying Have you tried turning it off and on again?
But it did have a bigger window, which gave her a glimpse of the gray Portland sky and the glass facade of a building across the street.
She sank into the visitor’s chair and waited with her heart beating slightly too fast.
Miles took a seat behind his desk. He clicked his pen on and off. “I just reviewed the tickets from the first half of October, and I’ve noticed four tickets from Willow Greene in the past two weeks.” He paused as if letting the number sink in.
“Four really isn’t that many,” Scottie said before she could even think about it. Mr. Sorensen had filed more than that in a single day. But self-preservation kicked in, so she didn’t add that.
Miles gave her a look. “It is when you zoom out and think about it company-wide. If each of our employees filed as many tickets, we’d need to triple our IT staff to keep response times reasonable.”
“Right,” Scottie said.
“So the question isn’t whether four tickets is excessive or not.” Miles clicked his pen again. “It’s why those tickets exist. You’ve been dealing with Ms. Greene most of the time. You must have some idea of what’s going on.”
“I…” Scottie licked her dry lips. “I’m not sure yet.”
Miles rubbed his reddish beard. “Do you think she’s just a fumbling new hire who takes a little longer to get the hang of things? Do we need to provide additional training?”
“No, that’s not it. She actually seems pretty knowledgeable when it comes to computers.”
“Hmm.” Miles scribbled something on his notepad. “Then why is she racking up tickets? We’re not dealing with another Felicity situation, are we?”
“What? No!”
No one in Kudos’s IT department would ever forget the employee who had been caught destroying her computer’s graphics card with a pair of pliers, hoping to get a new, better machine.
Willow wasn’t like that. She might be reserved, always holding back, but she wasn’t a liar or someone who damaged expensive devices on purpose.
When Miles raised his brows, Scottie realized how loudly she had defended Willow.
“No,” she repeated more quietly. “I’m certain it’s nothing like that.
She’s not sabotaging her devices. I ran every diagnostic known to mankind on her loaner laptop when I got it back, and it’s running without any issues.
It was a random one-off glitch. I really think she’s just having a bit of bad luck with her tech. ”
Okay, a lot of bad luck.
“All right. If you’re convinced that’s all this is, we’ll leave it at that—for now. But please keep a close eye on it. If there’s a problem, I want to catch it early, before it affects the company’s bottom line.”
“Of course. I’ll keep you posted.” Scottie rose, gave him a nod, and headed to the door. Once she made it to the hallway, she exhaled.
It had been a normal check-in, nothing that should have made her tense up. Just a bit of bad luck, she mentally repeated what she had told Miles.
But if that was really all it was, why did she have the weird feeling that she’d lied to her boss?