Blast From The Past 1 (2 page)

“Welcome to rEcore,” the security guard said as I entered the newly renovated building in downtown Pittsburgh. “Can I help you?”

I was immediately impressed by the open layout and décor of the space. It was sleek, modern, and edgy—and, so was rEcore’s choice in security guards. The one who greeted me was a tall, leggy brunette with a killer rack bulging beneath her super tight uniform. She looked more like she belonged in a porno than on the front end of a
Fortune 500
, industry-leading IT company. I couldn’t have imagined her enforcing or defending anything. Either someone in HR was trying to make a statement when they hired her, they had a really sick sense of humor, or they didn’t think rEcore actually needed protected.

“Hi,” I said, straightening my posture and instinctively heaving my chest out a little. “It’s my first day here.”

“What’s your name?” the leggy brunette asked, glancing down at the tablet she was holding, which I hadn’t even noticed until that point. I’d been too distracted by every other aspect of her appearance.

“I’m Trish Williams,” I answered—and, I was glad that I remembered I was Trish, not Patty. This gal had to be named something like Britney, Tiffany, or Amber, and she’d probably take it a little easier on someone named Trish than she would on someone with a plain Jane name like Patty.

“Ah, okay, here you are,” she said. She was acting like a receptionist or hostess, not a security guard. “This building has three floors. Right now, you’re on the ground floor… The next floor up is the first floor, and the floor above that is the second.”

I must have given my greeter a dirty look or something, because she stopped talking and gave me one. “You may think it’s pointless for me to tell you this,” she snapped back. “But most new people take a little while to get used to it… So, when you miss a meeting in a couple days, ‘cause you were down
here
chillin’, waiting for everyone else to join you on the first floor, don’t come crying to me.”

The guard’s attitude really caught me unawares, and I didn’t know how to respond. But, luckily, I didn’t have to. Before I could open my mouth to speak, a voice called out from behind me: “Stephanie! Are you giving the new girl a hard time?”

A slender, super stylish man popped up beside me. He had crooked, spikey hair mussed all over his head and wore thick-framed black eyeglasses. He was dressed like someone out of a Weezer video (think “Sweater Song”), and carried himself like a character in a gay parody sketch (think
SNL
). Now, I’m not an expert at these types of things, so I couldn’t say, for sure, that he was actually gay—but, if I had to put my money on it, I’d bet that, over the past year or so, he’d gotten more dick than I had.

“Whatever, Edgar,” Stephanie said, rolling her eyes. “Since you’re so nice, why don’t you just show her where to go then? Right now, I really don’t want anything else to do with either one of you.”

“Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” Edgar said, jiggling his head as he talked back to rEcore’s seemingly ill-fitted protector.

“Come here, honey,” Edgar said, turning to me. “I’ll take you under my wing.”

Despite the guff she’d just given me, I smiled at Stephanie as I walked past her. Once we were out of her earshot, Edgar looked back, then turned to me, and whispered, “Never mind Stephanie, by the way. She’s super hot, but super bitchy—and she’s super hardcore.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I said with both a smile and a giggle.

“Seriously,” Edgar went on, still at a whisper. “That little kitten is a decorated war vet. She served in Afghanistan for three years and only came home when a bullet busted her kneecap. She went through a lot of physical therapy and training to recover—but, the Army wouldn’t take her back, and no police force will have her. She’s damaged goods to them, and I guess that explains why she’s a bitch to everyone else. It’s gotta suck to be in her position, don’t ya think?”

Suddenly, I felt absolutely horrible—not just out of empathy for Stephanie’s position, but also out of guilt over the fact that I’d been so quick to jump to conclusions about her. Because she had a pretty face, big chest, and stellar body, I had assumed that she was incapable of doing her job and was too weak and girly to be an effective guard; that she was nothing more than a showpiece or trophy; and that she was probably some airhead and/or bimbo. But who the hell was
I
to pass judgment on a total stranger like that? And look how wrong I’d been! It made me wonder what hasty conclusions other people had come to about
me
.

All told, my experience with Stephanie wasn’t the best way for me to start my first day at my new job—but, with things starting out the way they did, I approached the rest of my day with the mindset that things could only get better… but, boy oh boy, was I wrong.

As I said earlier, rEcore is a
Fortune 500
, industry-leading IT company. It’s literally worth billions of dollars, and its net worth keeps on growing and growing, but its structure and size remain pretty stable. There are seven rEcore satellite offices scattered across the United States, and they’re all tethered to rEcore’s main headquarters in Pittsburgh. The entire enterprise employs fewer than 250 people, including me and the two dozen other people putting their noses to the grindstone in alongside me in this newly renovated office.

As far as
my
particular position with the company, it was a highly coveted one in the mid-level bracket, and, if I played my cards right, it would prove to be my one-way ticket to the top of my field.

I knew all of these things before I accepted the job at rEcore and moved to Pittsburgh, and I was reminded of them again after Edgar dropped me off at my supervisor’s office.

My supervisor, Gretchen Gordon, was a very cool, very down to earth woman who looked to be only a few years older than me, though she was probably a lot wiser. She met with me right away and started reiterating everything I already knew about rEcore and my job the moment I walked into her office, reciting the information as if it was some standard script she played out for every new employee. For all I knew, it probably was a standard script, not that it mattered.

After her rote performance, Gretchen went on to describe the interoffice dynamics of our office, her expectations as my superior, and the swag and perk benefits of being a rEcore employee. She also went on to speak to me on a more personal level, asked how I was settling in in Pittsburgh, and recommended a few techie-friendly meetups and hangouts. By the time she was done giving me the lowdown, I was pretty psyched about everything, and definitely felt like my first day had taken a turn for the better.

“Let me show you to your work area,” Gretchen said as she stood up at the end of our meeting. We walked out of her office and down a short hallway. “As you can see,” she said when we walked into the belly of rEcore, “we have a very open arrangement here.”

Gretchen gestured to the open space all around us. There were multiple desks, meeting hubs, and amenities set out in the middle of the area, and the perimeter was lined with offices and conference rooms—but, none of the them had doors, and they were separated the rest of the room by ceiling-to-floor glass panels, or, perhaps, some would say, windows, not walls.

“This is where the programmers, miners, and analysists work,” Gretchen explained. “Executives—like me—have private offices on the other end of this floor, and the big wigs have super sweet suites upstairs. We have support staff on every floor, but the bulk of them work in the administrative office that’s located downstairs.

“There are also some pretty awesome employee break and rec rooms down there, including a billiards room,” Gretchen said with a chuckle. “We totally appreciate that sometimes you computer geniuses need to shut your brains off and relax for a bit.”

I was thoroughly intrigued by everything Gretchen was telling me, and was very optimistic. Although, to be honest, I was a little intimidated by my surroundings. I’d never worked in an office like this one before—as far as prestige or setup—and I was a little nervous about fitting in and finding my groove. Even in my dress-to-impress charcoal gray skirt suit, I felt a little out of my league, and very much under the microscope. I was scared to think of people watching me though those long, floor-length glass panels.

“And here we are,” Gretchen said, waving her arm toward one of the unoccupied cells in rEcore’s honeycomb-like office lineup. “This one is yours. I’m sure you’ll do great work here.”

Gretchen stood by the door-less entryway to my office and watched as I entered and took a gander.

“Take a few moments to look around and get a feel for the place,” she added before leaving. “I’ll have one of the HR folks come up and talk to you in a bit—just to go over some of the basics and set you up with your log-in credentials, stuff like that. In the meantime, if you have any questions, just ask anyone around you. We encourage teamwork here at rEcore, and teamwork requires helping others when they ask for it—as well as asking for help when you need it.”

With that, Gretchen turned and walked away. She stopped and talked with a few other people as she made her way back to her office—and I studied every move she made through the see-through wall of windows. I also studied everyone, and everything, else I saw and tried not to gaze too long in any one direction, lest someone think I was checking them out, spying on them, or just being weird.

Once I was done staring outside of my office, I turned to examine the things in it. I had a top-of-the-line desktop computer on my smooth black desk—and, I discovered a shiny new laptop, tablet, and cell phone sitting on the credenza behind me. I didn’t bother trying to boot any of them up—even though I desperately wanted to—because I didn’t have my login credentials yet, and I didn’t want the HR person walking in on me while I tried to hack my way into what was probably an un-hackable system.

Since there wasn’t much I could do in my office without being able to access a computer, I decided to explore the open common area of the office space. I walked out of my office and slowly circled the floor to get a better look at everything that was available. The place really was decked out. In addition to the desks and meeting hubs I’d initially noticed, there was a kitchenette/dining area; two “multi-media” rooms, each equipped with huge HDTV with a tower of auxiliary ports and hookups; a dimly lit “meditation spot” with padded acoustically sound room dividers, beanbags, and an oversized fish stocked with myriad gilled creatures; and a few other amenities I wouldn’t yet discover.

During my exploration, I ran into a few different people and had the chance to chat with some of my coworkers. I had a lot of new faces and new information coming at me all at once, and I tried as hard as I could to remember it all, by remembering each person’s name along with something unique to identify them.

Tracy is the one with really pretty blue eyes
, I told myself, for example,
and Gary is the one with the rock star haircut
.
Tara has lots of piercings in her ears, and Jeff snorts when he laughs.

As I made my way back to my office, I couldn’t help but smile. Things were going great—better than I ever expected—and I’d nearly forgotten the uncomfortableness from earlier that morning.

Just as I neared my door-less office entry, another woman was nearing it from the other direction. “Trish?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I’m Becky, from HR,” she went on. “How about we go in your office, talk shop, and get you set up in the system?”

“Sounds great, Becky,” I answered. “I saw all the nifty gadgets in my office, and I couldn’t wait for you to get here so I could use them.”

“Oh, that stuff’s only the tip of the iceberg,” Becky said with a smile, entering my office and taking a seat in one of the cozy chairs on the opposite side of my desk. “rEcore really knows how to treat its employees, and I think you’ll be more than pleased with the luxuries you have at your disposal.”

I returned Becky’s smile with an even bigger one and said the only thing that came to mind: “Wow.”

Becky laughed at my loss for words and then filled the silence. She had me go over some paperwork with her and asked me to sign a few things—and then we really got down to business. She had me fire up my desktop, walked me through my initial login, and helped me set up my credentials. As a techie, I probably could have done all that myself, without her actually being there—all I would’ve needed was the initial passcode.

But, nevertheless, I paid careful attention to everything she was saying, because I knew that understanding how the technology worked was only part of the process. I also needed to understand the human element involved in it. Whenever there is a computer network involved in something, that network is run by people—and different people approach that same technology from different angles. If you really want to understand a network, you have to be familiar with the preferences of the people who run it. You have to know where they’re coming from, and you have to get in on their angle.

Even though we were surrounded by glass, I felt like Becky and I were in our own little world as we took care of network matters. I didn’t even think about what was going on just beyond my window panels, and I was oblivious to the sounds of activity all around me… until I heard it.

I heard a snort, which, in turn, made me laugh. I looked up from my computer and saw Jeff standing by a desk a short way away from my office.
Wait… Was it Jeff—or Gary? Which one was the one who snorted when he laughed?
He was facing my way, talking to another fellow who had his back to me.

I was about to bow my head down again and resume my relationship with the computer screen when the other guy turned around. The first thing I thought was,
Damn, he’s hot
. Then the second thing I thought was,
Damn, I know him
.

Unlike several days prior, when it took me a moment to register who Julie Benson was when I ran into her in Carson Café—and unlike a minute early, when I couldn’t remember if the snorter was Jeff or Gary—I immediately recognized this guy and remembered his name.

Joe
.

That was all I knew. I’d only ever gotten his first name—and, while I didn’t know what his last name was, or why he was standing there in rEcore’s most highly coveted office, I
did
know what he looked like naked, what his body tasted like, and how pleasurably pained his voice sounded when he cried out during an orgasm.