I Knew This Would Cause Trouble
Chapter 16 in my ongoing story about workplace surveillance
If you’re new here, this one could be confusing … you’re jumping into the middle of an ongoing story. Start with the plot summary (links below) or go back a few chapters.
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Stamper walked into her office the next day to find Cascade sitting in her chair. “So, what’d you learn?” asked Cascade as soon as Stamper opened the door. He had been waiting for her.
“Why are you in my office?” demanded Stamper, her tone more a reflex than a choice. Cascade was her boss, but what the hell?
“I was just eager to talk to you,” beamed Cascade. With his big grin and bright eyes, it was hard to hold anything against him—even when he was sitting in your office at 7:30 in the morning waiting for you. “I know you like to get an early start.”
“I need to get a cup of coffee ...” she said, setting her bag down and turning on her heels.
“I’ll come with you,” said Cascade and he caught up to her as she walked down to the kitchen. Apparently she wasn’t going to get a chance to get her thoughts in order.
“Okay Mitch,” she said after taking her time to punch her coffee order into the machine: Double Mocha, extra strong, extra hot. “That question was created to get some validation on data my team had been gathering.”
“What data? Why would you look for negative validation? It’s a dumb question.”
“One of the smartest analysts on my team believed that he was seeing some pushback on taps amongst a small product management team. He wanted to see if putting a negative response in the Daily Pulse would draw it out, get him some validation.”
“Did it?”
“No, actually ...”
“Of course not. ‘Cause there’s no problem. So why create one?”
“What I was going to say is, that negative response got no reaction at all.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Cascade acted like he had won the argument.
“But my analyst knows the data well enough to know that zero is itself a problem—there are always outliers.”
“Stupid questions get zero,” groused Cascade.
“If you heard him explain his reasoning, you’d see it’s not stupid.”
“Who is this fucking guy?” asked Cascade. “What, is he just looking to create problems? I should talk to him.”
As if putting Mitch Cascade on the case would solve everything, thought Stamper.
“Mitch, this is the last guy looking to create problems—he’s like the most careful, loyal guy on the team. And he’s brighter than hell. He’s been tracking this data for a while and he felt like he had to look for independent confirmation of what he was seeing.”
“I need to see this data. I need to talk to this guy.”
“Listen, it’s going to be weird for him if you swoop in and start pressing him with all your questions. Can I just give you the data he’s collected and then, if you want to talk with him, we’ll set it up?”
“It sounds like you’re trying to protect him,” Cascade bore in. “Why are you trying to protect him?”
I am trying to protect him, thought Stamper. She pictured Keith under the glare of Cascade’s intense inquisition ... Keith’s cautious answers and refusal to speculate beyond his known data would be a red flag to Cascade, who would think he was hiding something and bear down even harder. Would Cascade fire him on the spot? That was the last thing she needed.
“I’m trying to protect you,” said Stamper. “I don’t want you scaring the hell out of my team before you understand the data. Let me get you all the reports and then we can all sit down and look at it together.”
“Fine, fine, have them in my email ... by noon,” he barked.
“As soon as I can,” replied Stamper.
“Go get ‘em Stamper,” he smiled at her. “It’s still Day One!” And he walked off.
Stamper caught Keith on Slack right away and asked him to send over all the data he could ASAP. He immediately called her.
“Hey, Stamper,” he said carefully, “you know you can access all my reports online right? They’re always open to you. Do you need me to show you which ones?”
“I know how to access them, thanks, but it’s not for me. It’s for ... upstream, so I just want that limited report set you showed me the other day.” She didn’t want him to know it was Cascade, yet.
“Oh shit, I knew this would cause trouble,” said Keith. “I’m sorry.”
“Keith, you did the right thing ... I only wish you’d brought me in earlier. But I’ve got your back on this.”
“Do you need me to come explain it? You don’t have to take the heat for me.”
“Right now, I just want that limited report set, PDFs, a nice neat package. It will probably blow over, so just let me deal with it.” Keith had been expecting the request, and he had the reports to her within the hour.
As she forwarded the reports to Cascade—ensuring that Keith wasn’t identified—she wondered just what she was getting herself into.
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