Breakthrough IV

Zip stood at the front in the WTSC meeting room. It was six o’clock Monday morning and most of the tech team members were seated, coffee in hand. She scanned the group, looking for Jack Hill but did not see him. Though she would be supervising the disaster recovery support for their customers, Jack had never let her have complete control.

“Good morning everyone. Thank you for coming in on such short notice. Most of you have already been informed that we have a colossal problem that needs to be resolved for our business clientele. For those of you that haven’t been briefed in a nutshell, about noon on Sunday, a cloaked time-bomb cyberspace worm detonated. It was some sort of hybrid worm that affected Unix and Wintel operating system servers. All of our business support service customers, including WTSC, computer systems are offline and I don’t need to tell you what that means from a server count perspective. The Sunday night system restoration team compiled a white paper on what we know so far about the worm, along with recovery requirements. In short, the systems must be rebuilt, bottom-up. Our systems will be back online in time for store opening.

“The net of it is, our customers are caught up in some hacker’s idea of being the best of the best in cyberspace gloom and doom and we have to get them out of this nightmare.

“Your work schedule rotations have been distributed and we will stay on this cycle until the problems have been resolved. We will focus our resources on businesses first, work-at-home clients will be supported as tech resources are available.

“Any questions?” The group sat mum.

“We know the drill!” someone responded from the back of the room. Jack entered the rear door.

“All right people, you have your contacts and work schedules. Let’s get moving with customer support. Any insurmountable problems, give me a call.”

Zip strolled toward Jack as the room emptied. “Morning, Jack.” He poured himself a cup of coffee from the carafe on the serving table near the door. He looked tired and hung over.

“Looks like you’ve got everyone on track,” he said. He blinked and looked beyond her.

“That’s what I’m here for, right?”

Jack sneered and pursed his lips as he shook his head. “Don’t be naïve about this. This worm disaster could really hurt us, or it could increase our revenue by one or two hundred percent, maybe more. You’d better make damn sure our turnaround support is timely and efficient.” He turned and headed out the door.

She bit down hard on her lower lip and stretched her eyes wide and blinked to keep the tears back. The son of bitch just would not ease up; always spewing venom on anything for which she took the initiative. Why did he promote her in the first place? In her five years at WTSC, he treated her like she had no experience or leadership ability. She was following his instructions. Why the harshness? No section manager was to make a move or decision without his permission. As store Manager, Jack had made it clear that he was in control. She hated his controlling management style but she was good at what she did.

To be continued ...
© 2007 by Miss Mary