A Scandal in Software: Chapter 9

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"He might fail from want of skill or strength, but deep in his somber soul he vowed that it should never be from want of heart." The Croxley A. Conan Doyle

"Cautiously optimistic, that's what the doctor said. Doesn't that beat all? Phillip said that doctors these days must double-major in law, they're so afraid of a malpractice suit. Can't get a straight answer out of them. Like telling you what your odds of making it through an operation are...as if life and death can be reduced to a mathematical formula as good as a crap shoot. I mean, if 90% of the people who've had the operation survived, what in the world difference does that make to you when you don't know if you're holding the short straw? If no one has died lately, doesn't that mean the odds are greater things are going to go badly for you? Maybe that's what they should be telling you."

"Mrs. Maynard," I interrupted. I looked at the clock on my bedside table: 6:04AM. I guessed Dr. Wirth's sister was calling from the hospital, a 24/7 operation where life and death refused to defer to traditional boundaries of time like decent society. The phone had woken me from a dead sleep, but my alarm would have gone off at 6:15 anyway.

I had been waiting for an opportunity to get a word in, and finally she'd had to take a breath. "Did you say Dr. Wirth is talking?"

"Oh yes! And Brian, there was something he wanted me to tell you. Wait a minute, now. I wrote it down because he wanted me to get it just right and I knew I'd never remember it."

The sound of fumbling and paper rattling ensued, and I imagined the middle-aged lady I'd never met rummaging through an over-sized, overstuffed pocketbook. In a few seconds the woman's voice rang out in the slightly too-loud fashion of one not completely comfortable with a cell phone. "Brian? Are you still there? Here it is...and look...it's a little embarrassing. It's possible it was the drugs talking, so please don't hold it against him. He said, 'If code is a commodity, does that make developers programming prostitutes?'" She said the last word in a stage whisper.

I couldn't help laughing out loud, partly at Dr. Wirth's comment, and partly at his sister's delivery. "Does it make sense to you then?" she asked.

"I'd say it does," I replied. "It means Dr. Wirth is going to be alright." Not only did he have his quirky sense of humor back, but it meant he'd been listening the other night and understood what I'd said....probably better than I did.

"Brian, there's one more thing...he said to be sure and tell you he expects you to get back to work!" Joan Maynard paused, a little flustered. "That's what he said, you know, so I had to tell it like he said it....not that you haven't been, I'm certain..."

Dr. Wirth knew me too well. I'd been agonizing about that very thing...whether to go back to work, knowing the team would be back from Myrtle Beach. Until the phone call came in, I hadn't had the heart. With greater peace of mind, I shaved and got myself together as best I could, and managed to pull into the parking lot eight minutes before starting time.

Andy was the first to see me. "Man, wait until you see how the project has shaped up!" He looked happier than I'd seen him the entire time I had been working at Grey-Webber. "Are you going to be able to make it at 10:00?"

"10:00?" I echoed dumbly, feeling like I'd been on another planet.

"For the demo...the..dog and pony show...Dan's going to be there, and maybe even the division chief if Dan can snag him."

"Count me in if there's room." I was looking forward to seeing everyone's work all pulled together.

"I've got a good feeling about this, Brian," Andy continued, "I think they're going to be blown away. I'm finally starting to feel like we've got a little job security around here."

At 10:35 Dan leaned forward in his chair to get a better look at the screen image projected on the wall and gave a one-word assessment: "Sweet."

The interface was clean and intuitive, the response-time incredible, and the workflow guided the user through the entire process from the moment the item was received until it was handed off to the next module--the one another group would presumably write.

Rob, Darlene, Anne, Andy, and Trevor visibly relaxed, as though they'd been holding their collective breaths. I watched like a spectator at a horse race urging on his favorite pick with imagined telekinetic powers.

All eyes gravitated to Hans, the division chief and Dan's boss, to get his impression, expecting it to be equally complimentary. His signature scent--aftershave, hair gel, who-knew-exactly-what--hung in the air as tangibly as the beam from the projection device. It would linger in the room for two to three hours after he left it, marking his domain like a dog's territory. In characteristic display of power, he refused to be coerced into speech by our neediness, and looked back easily, as though we were all sitting around the pool at the country club, shooting the breeze, taking in the rays. We all exhibited what I thought was remarkable restraint, choking back the burning question, "Well?"

Rob, who'd actually led the demonstration, cleared his throat and asked in his most distinguished, television-personality voice, "Are there any questions or observations?"

Hans smiled at the group (although it looked to me like he had imaginary toothpicks holding his face in the uncomfortable, stretched position), and said with unnatural lilt, "Thanks, guys." Without skipping a beat he turned to Dan and said, "Got a minute, Dan?" which is to say, Got a minute, in private, outside the earshot of the rank and file? They both got up and left the room, with Dan shooting us an apologetic smile on the way out.

"Need help with the boxlight or laptop, Rob?" Anne broke the silence and it was our cue to disperse like there had been an open call for volunteers to chair the departmental United Way solicitation committee. Lunchtime was still about an hour away, so we all went back to our offices...I mean allocated work spaces... to work or mull over the demo, parsing and reinterpreting every nuance and gesture. Had Hans been insensitive and brusque because he was preoccupied with weightier matters, or because he was a tasseled-loafer jerk who'd long ago forgotten how to write a line of code?

Productivity, I mused, would provide pleasant distraction from unanswerable questions, so I began comparing project documentation to the revised product I'd just seen. I hated to think the whole team had worked so hard to get the project close to completion, only for me to be late on my deliverables.

"Brian....have you heard about the town hall meeting?" Darlene clutched both sides of my cubicle entrance for support, exhibiting impressive upper arm muscular development for a woman. She looked like she could have taken down the whole row of cubes like Samson playing office dominoes. Maybe the flimsy substitute for beams and drywall was the most stable thing around.

Darlene paused for rhetorical effect only, continuing without benefit of a response from me. I was too preoccupied by my own thoughts for something that sounded a lot like corporate gossip to register. Apparently Darlene required no encouragement but was fueled by the inexplicable need to cast her pearl of privileged information--an act that would degrade its exclusivity value the moment it was shared.

"I have it on good authority that it's scheduled for 3:30, and you know what that means."

"I don't even know what good authority means. What, exactly, constitutes good authority, as opposed to the average kind?"

Darlene looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "You know I can't divulge my source. But trust me. It's good." She looked furtively in both directions and lowered her voice to a whisper. "The friend of the sister-in-law of the secretary to the V.P."

Did that make Darlene Deep Throat, or would that honor fall higher in the chain, maybe to the sister-in-law or the secretary herself?

"What, pray tell, is the significance of a 3:30 meeting?" I had to ask.

She gave me the look of pity reserved for children and madmen. "It's right before the end of first shift at 4:00. We'll go home directly afterwards."

I didn't get it. Wouldn't that timing make sense if they didn't want to interrupt everyone's work day, especially for the people who worked in production? I said aloud, "So?"

"That means it's bad news, of course. They don't want to upset us and have us go back to our packaging lines or in our case, computers, eager to wreak havoc."

At lunch all anyone could talk about was the town hall meeting. Still no official memo had gone out (or at least I hadn't received one).

"Town Hall Meeting is so Mayberry. Do they really think they can charm us into thinking this is a happy little get together, where we'll talk about plant beautification or deny claims that ED treatment causes blindness or whatever and have home-made ice cream afterwards?" Trevor editorialized, suspending a large burger dripping with condiments a few inches in front of his mouth, at-the-ready for consumption as soon as his observation was shared.

"That's not the worst of it," Andy jumped into the conversation and Trevor was happy to let him, seizing the opportunity to take an enormous bite. "What's this tiered notification all about? If there's nothing to hide, why can't we find out about it all at once?"

"What do you mean?" I had to ask.

"Yeah, man." Andy shot Darlene a look. "How do you think Darlene got the scoop early? 'Cause the VP's were Tier One. And since they're too important to check their own email anymore, their administrative assistants, a.k.a. our informants, were the first to know. I think we're something like Tier Four, and we're not even the lowest ones. The poor souls on the lines who don't have access to email don't get told until 10 minutes before the meeting starts."

Darlene nodded so vigorously I thought she was going to sling off one of her enormous earrings.

Anne had been eating her salad, looking thoughtful throughout the conversation. "Do you suppose they leak it on purpose?"

"On purpose? What on earth for?" Trevor sacrificed a bite in his syncopated sandwiching to respond.

"Think about it. Do you really think these administrative assistants would keep their jobs long if they went around leaking privileged information all the time? The very nature of their job demands discretion." Anne speared the air with her fork and the gesture reminded me of the first lunch we shared together.

I was fascinated by our microcosm in the midst of cafeteria chaos. Rushing water from corporate fountains did its liquid best to muffle disjointed conversations, laughter, and a recorded Mariachi band emanating from the serving lines--a subtle hint of the menu theme.

"You've got a point," I admitted, raising my voice to be heard, "but still...what could they possibly stand to gain by leaking something like this on purpose?"

"Psychology?" Anne reasoned aloud. "Maybe they count on the fact that we'll speculate wild things like layoffs and start rumors flying. Then when the meeting really happens and they just announce there won't be live ponies at the company picnic this year, we'll go away relieved and grateful, instead of devastated by the lack of livestock."

"Well where will the Town Hall Meeting be held? Is there really a place big enough to hold all employees?" I asked.

"No...there isn't," said Andy. "And that's another sore point. They'll host it live in Auditorium A and other locations via satellite. Where you're told to report is in direct correlation with your position in the pharm chain."

"You know why they do that, don't you....other than the space issue?" Trevor asked in a tone that guaranteed an answer would be forthcoming. "They want to control who is in the room, live-and-in-person, to potentially ask questions."

"You don't actually think they plant the questions they want asked, do you?" I asked, simultaneously fascinated and horrified, like watching a Praying Mantis devour its mate.

"Definitely scripted." Darlene said while appearing to craft a chocolate-vanilla swirl frozen yogurt sculpture with her spoon.

Rob, who'd sat quietly eating his lunch throughout the entire exchange, spoke up. "You all talk as if a Town Hall Meeting is an elaborately orchestrated conspiracy. If the corporate yokels were as clever as you give them credit of being, do you think we'd have such a hard time getting a project finished and validated?"

"Okay, people!" Andy announced, pounding on the table so loudly that I worried we were on the verge of creating a scene. "We have been officially reeled in. The Great Rob has spoken!"

Later Darlene's gasp, "I told you so!" could be heard from a five cubicle radius when we returned from lunch and found a tantalizingly black and unread email in our inboxes: "Town Hall Meeting Today at 3:30."