Chapter Six
At day’s end, with Alan’s body shoveled onto a gurney and hauled away, a lone voice echoed from the staff parking lot, “Son of a Bitch! Why does it always involve my car?” It was Shappa’s, or Shap’s, as he preferred to be called, tire shot flat by Alan’s misfired pistol. When he saw the rim of his wheel resting on the ground it triggered his desire to quit the corporate world, and he reflected on the insanity of building a computer system no one wanted completed.
Five feet eight and with a light brown complexion, Shap was bald as a cue ball and slight of shoulder. He was the only bald American Indian he was aware of and certain this situation was valuable, even though he’d yet to figure out how to profit from it. Looking at the flat tire, he made a mental note to revisit the idea of trying to quit this place. Maybe he could make money by participating in clinical trials to cure baldness.
He pulled his AAA card from his wallet, dialed for a service truck on his cell phone, and waited. With a tremendous show of will he forced his hands into his pockets to keep from picking at his face, a nervous habit that he’d let get out of control. An hour later the truck pulled into the lot, and within fifteen minutes the spare was on the car. The mechanic patted Shap on the arm, more collegial than Shap knew tow truck drivers to be, and said, “I hate them, too. Rat bastard sons of bitches.” Confused, Shap gave him a twenty dollar bill for his trouble, jumped in his car, and began the uncertain drive home. He was running late for dinner and needed to hurry.
Shap crested the small hill a quarter mile before the right turn onto the street that led to his house. Looking into his rear view mirror, he saw flashing lights. He began to perspire and shake, his facial tic kicked into overdrive, and he began to involuntarily scrunch his right eye. He pushed his turn indicator up and pulled over to the right side of the road. It was only a few hundred feet to his house, and this was the second time this year he’d been pulled over in this location. It briefly crossed his mind to flee the vehicle and run into the subdivision.
These traffic stops, the only times he’d ever been pulled over, suspiciously coincided with communications and rumors concerning changes in governance of the IT project. His prior traffic stop occurred on the day he started work at G.O.D. All knew Cuddy had nothing to gain if the system project came to fruition, and he remained committed to sabotaging all efforts at completion.
Stopped on the shoulder Shap put his hands clearly on the steering wheel and spoke to himself, “Oh, man. No, no, no! How could I be so stupid?” Earlier in the day the rumor mill was churning that the IT project was going to be reassigned to Mary. He began to pray the he wouldn’t be Tasered like the last time he’d been pulled over. Shap wasn’t certain what triggered this traffic stop, but the last time the suburban cop hadn’t taken to the God Bless Osama Bin Laden sticker brazenly displayed on the back of his car. The sticker, combined with his misunderstood ethnicity, ended with the cop screaming, “Keep your hands where I can see them, you Taliban scumbag,” and firing a Taser into Shaps left arm. Shap wasn’t aware of the bumper sticker on his car at the time. His mind was distracted from his first day’s work at G.O.D., where he was hired by Alan as the new CIO.
As Shap reminisced on the side of the road, and waited for the cop, a small crowd gathered to watch. In the crowd were some of Shap’s kid’s friends and their moms. He recognized several in the growing crowd from his prior traffic stop. The little fat kid was the one that kept yelling, “Jolt him again. Jolt him again.” Officer Nonutz laughing in complicity as he squeezed the Taser’s trigger and sent electricity through the wires and into the barbed darts stuck in Shap. “Do it again! Do it again!” the kids all shouted as they followed the fat kid’s lead. That was the last thing Shap could remember before he woke in the back of the squad car.
The close of the squad car’s door jarred Shap to the present. The cop walked to the rear, driver’s side, of the car with his weapon drawn. Shap recognized the policeman from the prior stop, and earlier in the day when he ran over Alan. It was Officer Nonutz. Apparently Nonutz recognized Shap, as well. “Keep your hands where I can see them and exit the vehicle. You law hating Taliban scumbag.”
Shap slowly stepped from the vehicle and stuck his hands over his head in the exaggerated fashion of those not accustomed to police interaction.
With Shap fully compliant with Officer Nonutz’s orders and the crowd too big to allow the unauthorized use of the Taser, the ordeal ended with Shap receiving bogus tickets for speeding, failure to signal, and running a red light. Shap knew the, “I Hate Cops. Cops Suck.” bumper sticker was the driving factor behind the situation and realized he could no longer afford to drive his car without always checking for offensive and unauthorized signage. He cursed himself for being so focused on the flat tire he forgot to inspect the rear of his car.
Shap grew up in Michigan, the son of a prominent physician. He was raised in a family that loved Ted Nugent, muscle cars, deer hunting, and lake cabins. After graduating public high school, at which he made above average marks and played the holy trinity of baseball, basketball, and football, he attended Wayne State University where he majored in Information Science. At the time, he didn’t foresee India becoming the destination for cut rate professional services. Had he seen the future Shap would have gone into car design and avoided a life of miscast stereotypes, outsourced jobs, and nervous tics. Because he was bald, off-white, and uniquely named, everyone assumed he was from India.
After graduation, and with nearly a decade’s work experience in information technology at a company that provided the software used in emissions testers, Shap found himself unemployed when the department he worked for moved offshore. With no employment opportunities with the big automakers and auto suppliers and peripheral businesses feeling the downstream effect, Shap moved to Chicago seeking work. In tow were his wife and two elementary school daughters.
Within days of starting work, as G.O.D’s new CIO, Shap developed a facial tic. A strange, nervous habit in which his nose wrinkled like a rabbit and his right eye scrunched. A week later a third dimension appeared and Shap began sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth. The peculiar involuntary behavior started when he realized the amount of work needed to complete the IT project in the twelve months he was given. Exacerbating his nervous condition was an ongoing battle with the business over the functionality the new IT system was required to have before the project could be considered complete. His job was miserable. He was bullied into doing more with less, routinely promised he had the final requirements only to be told later they had changed, and asked on a daily basis for his best guess only to find his guess budgeted and he and his team locked into delivery.
When Shap was hired, Operations used a combination of 3x5 cards and spreadsheets to manage the business, along with a dumpy old computer system that tracked a patient’s prescriptions. It was surprisingly effective, and Shap wasn’t certain much would be gained designing, building, and implementing, a new computer system. The investment to set the patients up seemed unlikely to provide much return. Most of the patients had died before they received a second shipment. Shap suspected the right approach was to buy an off the shelf software program, load it onto a server, and be done with it. Doug emphatically disagreed, and was adamant the storing of patient name, address, and phone number would provide a competitive advantage. Doug’s exact phrase was, “strategic differentiator.” Who was Shap to disagree? He needed the paycheck.
Shap started the project over. He threw the useless pile of reports and documents Srini, the former CIO, had compiled into the dumpster. To get the requirements right and system built, Shap learned the business; he read the health plan contracts that dictated the pricing and terms of service; he read the pharmaceutical manufacturer contracts that outlined the cost of goods and reporting obligations; and, he sat with those that would use the new system to learn their jobs. Nine months later he had a clear perspective
on what work should be automated, and where the red herrings lay that would sink the project.
Shap worked tirelessly, often twelve to fourteen hour days, and rarely saw his family. Compounding the work to complete the project, he was paired with Mike as his co-lead, an abject and feckless bumble who had no experience in system development, and was, quite possibly, the laziest person Shap had ever met. Shap soon realized Mike was useless with the heavy lifting needed to complete the project, and assigned him trivial administrative tasks like booking conference rooms, scheduling calls, and ordering lunch. Late on Friday’s Shap could often be found on conference calls with India. On Saturday, he was typically in the office. Mike always liked to get a head start on Friday rush hour, and typically left the building around three pm. On Monday, Mike liked to linger over breakfast, and didn’t typically arrive at the office much before eleven a.m.
As an army of one, Shap outlined the business processes and workflows, documented the requirements, developed the detailed design, oversaw the offshore building of the new computer system, as well as its final testing. He invested hundreds of hours working closely with the system’s users to make certain what they were building met expectations. He also produced the data model and physical data design, developed the interfaces that moved information from and to other systems, architected the user interface, and laid the foundational hardware upon which the systems ran. As the project approached the ninth month, on time and budget, Shap scheduled a formal review with Doug, Alan, Cuddy, and Mary. His hope was to secure their final sign-off and move the system from the test environment into production, thereby completing the project and allowing him to return to his life.
At the designated meeting time and place, with the 2006 Board Meeting looming, Shap and Mike found themselves in the conference room alone. Shap was very proud of what he’d done. In only nine months, he had salvaged the train wreck Srini and Cuddy had left behind, and stood ready to upgrade G.O.D.’s systems. Aware that the upper management team would never understand the magnitude of his accomplishment, he nonetheless was hopeful of some reward; a change in pay, new job, or access to the deeded parking. Twenty minutes after the thirty minute meeting was to start Doug walked past the conference room with a basketball hidden under his sport coat.
“Doug, we’re right here,” Shap assumed he was trying to find them. Doug wasn’t trying to find them; he was sneaking out of work to play basketball.
Walking into the room and looking more pissed off than usual, Doug elected to stand, and neither sought nor gave any salutations. “Who the hell are you two, and how do you know my name? Does security know you’re in the building?”
Knocked back on their heels, Shap and Mike tripped over each other explaining who they were, what they wanted, and how they knew Doug’s name. Shap’s tic kicked into overdrive, and he began blinking, scrunching, and sticking his tongue out.
Nodding that he understood, but still visibly pissed at being kept from the basketball courts, Doug asked one question, “Does the system manage the patient’s pets?”
Doug’s question confused Shap. He wasn’t familiar with this requirement, and he took meticulous notes. “You mean like dogs, cats, goldfish? What do you mean, ‘manage the patient’s pets?’ That doesn’t make any sense.”
“All that. No system is going into production until it handles patient’s pets. And, quit sticking your tongue out at me. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Pets! Are you kidding me?” Shap’s insubordination was as much a shock to Doug as to himself. “I’ve spent thousands of hours in design, and prototype. I’m through final acceptance testing, and you want to start over? The system has all the functionality you need to run this business. No one ever mentioned requirements regarding pets. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Why don’t we launch what we’ve got and plan a second release?”
“No. I want patient’s pets in the system. End of discussion.”
Doug’s refusal should not have surprised Shap. It was commonly believed most of Doug’s key decisions were based on the Magic 8-Ball. The staff had glommed onto this rumor as no other explanation seemed plausible for his constantly changing directions, the randomness of his dictates, or the never ending cycle of re-work that he created. It was the executive assistant, Wilma, who swore she had seen Doug shaking the Magic 8 Ball during an Investor Relations teleconference and started the rumor.
As his order reverberated off the conference room walls, Doug ended the meeting. He refused to sign-off and move the system into production. Doug was well aware that signing off reduced the signee to a single degree of separation, and placed that person within the circle of direct accountability. With accountability comes failure and eventually termination. Doug wasn’t sure why it was important to manage the patient’s pets, or what that meant, but he had no interest in opening that discussion without a pack of consultants at his side. The consultants were clear, “you need to manage the patient’s pets.” He’d been told repeatedly. More importantly, there was no way Doug would ever sign-off on the IT project. That was never his goal. Doug dribbled his basketball as he ran down the hall to his private elevator.
Alan never showed up for the meeting. He was hiding in his office next door, listening through a glass pressed to the wall, when he learned of the disaster at hand and began planning to fire Shap and Mike. Screaming profanities into his tie, which he’d balled and pressed against his mouth to keep from being discovered, he began planning the, ‘none more indignant than I speech,’ he would deliver to The Board. In addition to his speech, Alan was certain he could make both Mike and Shap cry when he fired them. The Board would respond well to two grown men bawling, and, God willing, he would remain the Exalted Leader of Finance. The Board loved public shaming, and Alan was among the best at reducing subordinates to tears.
Cuddy also never showed. No way was he signing off on anything that put Alan, or anyone, ahead of him for CEO. At the time of the meeting, he and his factotum, Wayne, were hiding in the boiler room eavesdropping on the meeting with Cuddy’s head in the air vent as he stood on a ladder. To make certain the ladder didn’t tip over, crush him, and crash to the floor, Wayne held on for dear life and braced the ladder with both hands. With Alan’s failure, it was certain Shap and Mike would be sacrificed. Shap’s firing would be unfortunate. Cuddy still had dozens of offensive bumper stickers he hoped to use.
Mary was engrossed in a fashion magazine, and simply skipped the meeting. The article, One Armed Woman Applauds Right Handed Purse, demanded her total focus. It was a banner issue, on the next page; Teen Pregnancy Significantly Drops Off After Age 20.
A band-aid was the first indication all was not well with Shap’s mental health.
In the debrief the following day, Shap began absent mindedly picking at the smallest of moles that sat, nearly invisible, in the middle of his forehead. As the tempers in the meeting rose, and words were angrily exchanged, he began nervously fingering the imperceptible bump until the first show of blood appeared, like the water that materializes in the bottom of a hole dug in the sand by the sea. After the meeting, Shap found a small round band aid, the size of a fingertip, and neatly covered the sore. At noon on the same day, and in a second meeting on the same topic, he removed the band aid and resumed worrying his thumb with the growing scab. At the end of the second meeting, a standard band aid, three quarters of an inch wide and three inches long, covered the ever expanding sore. At four pm the same day a third meeting. Like before, Shap nervously picked at the edges until he’d pulled the band aid off and began picking at the sore. By day’s end, Shap wore a Chernobyl sized band aid, a full four inches wide by eight inches long, and testament to his mental melt down. The band aid fully covered his forehead. It was six months before the sore healed, and he was left with a large slightly off white scar in the middle of his forehead. The scar resembled a target.
As he pulled into his driveway
, a stack of driving infractions on the passenger seat, Shap stood on the precipice of mental collapse. The combined effects of the defunct system, traffic stops, and hazing at upper management’s hands, put him in a state so frazzled that the smallest tension triggered his facial tic. He is sick of being the business’s bitch, and longs for retribution.