Spoiler Meta Spoiler Meta
Office Politics
Mondays and Thursdays. Clock in, assess the ongoing reports, tackle whatever operational problem had been sitting untouched, and occasionally get pulled into the EOC. Go home. Spend the next day recovering. Do it again.
Simple enough. Until Chris showed up in his doorway.
“We need your help with something.”
“What kind of something?”
“The interdepartmental kind,” Maya said, behind Chris.
“No.” He knew better than to meddle in HQ business.
“Oh, come on,” Eric said, already stepping in. “It’s affecting the whole floor.”
“Thirty seconds,” Matt said.
“I needed to print something,” Chris said. “But the printer was jammed. I put in a ticket. IT came up, said they can’t fix it without a work order. Office Management won’t issue the work order because they don’t know whose budget to charge it to. IT says Dispatch overloaded the queue. Dispatch says they’re using the system the way IT set it up.”
“Nobody’s fixing the printer. Nobody’s backing down. There’s an email chain with thirty-something messages and supervisors cc’ed,” Maya added.
“So put in another ticket,” he said.
“We did,” Chris said. “IT closed it. ‘Duplicate of existing case.’”
“It’s been a week,” Eric said. “Printer’s still jammed. And apparently we can’t use the one on four because it’s a different cost center.”
One jammed printer, three departments, and zero accountability.
What would Lucy do?
If only he could just give them all detention.
It took him ten minutes to get them all in one room.
“Who’s responsible for the physical hardware?”
“IT handles hardware maintenance. But this isn’t purely a hardware issue, it’s a queue management—”
“When the printer jams, whose job is it to fix it?”
“IT, but—”
“Is it jammed?”
“Yes.”
“Then IT fixes it.” He turned to Dispatch. “The queue priority setup. Who configured that?”
“IT did. When we moved to the new system, they set the priority tiers.”
“Your team configured the system that’s causing jams. Has anyone reviewed the configuration since the initial rollout?”
“There hasn’t been a formal request—”
“So IT built the system, the system causes jams, and IT says it’s not their problem. How does that work?”
He could’ve had this sorted in thirty seconds on a scene.
What he got was eight more minutes of IT burning through every excuse in the book, before offering to review the queue configuration—if Dispatch submitted a proper ticket. Office Management agreed to issue the work order once root cause was addressed.
That should have been the end of it.
Then IT wanted to relitigate the system migration that caused the configuration. Dispatch wanted someone to reply-all to thirty-five messages acknowledging their unit had been wrongly blamed. Office Management wanted to know who was covering the call if it turned out to be a software issue—
“So, to recap,” Matt said, with the last patience he had. “Dispatch submits the ticket. IT reviews the queue. Office Management processes the work order. Anything else?”
What was he even doing here. Finance and Logistics had managed to turn a comms upgrade into a turf war, and somehow that was his problem now. Both reported to the same person. Matt was not that person. He wasn’t even in the same division.
Budget constraints. Right.
“What did the new office chairs cost?”
“Excuse me?” Finance said.
“The chairs. The ones that went in last quarter. Ergonomic, adjustable. How much?”
“That’s a different budget line—”
“How much?”
“…Fifteen thousand.”
“And the comms upgrade Logistics requested?”
“…Twelve.”
“So we can’t afford better radios for field crews, but we can afford premium lumbar support?”
Logistics whistled. Matt leaned back in his wheelchair.
“Nothing wrong with a good chair, though. Life changing experience.”
Finance didn’t put up much of a fight after that.
Ben picked up on the second ring. Not fast enough.
“I channeled Ms. Warren today. At work. On purpose.”
The asshole laughed. “Tell me everything.”
“No.”
“Did you do the pauses?”
“I did the pauses.”
“The look? The one where she’s not mad, just disappointed?”
“I don’t have the look. I had to improvise.”
“Please tell me they squirmed.”
“My right hand could’ve unjammed the damn printer faster.”
Ben was still laughing.
“This is all your fault. You kept saying I needed something to do.”
“Matt. You watched that duct tape documentary three times. Something had to be done.”
“And now I’m mediating printer wars and budget fights.”
“Admit it. You love fixing other people’s messes.”
It wasn’t like he went looking for it.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Night, Ms. Warren.”
- ← Previous
Silent Pride - Next →
Captain Ralston