Juniper Rhee, Privacy

Karissa follows you to the north east part of the 3rd floor. Juniper Rhee has an office on the east wall, it is a nice and quiet part of the floor with good sized offices but her window looks out over the back alley called Loretto Lane. She has a great view of the more colourful graffiti that covers most of the dilapidated garages that slump onto the alley.

Her door is open, a good piece of luck. You stick your head in as Karissa hangs back a few feet, outside of Juniper’s view. The privacy officer is a trim woman of Korean descent, maybe 10 or 15 years older than you, still attractive as much for her carefully maintained style and calm demeanor as anything else. When you had started at BHC back in February she had given you the privacy presentation and then had you sign the agreement that basically said you wouldn’t snoop. Since then she’s had more interactions with you than most staff members mainly because in her role she does complex database queries and report running and occasionally needs a hand.

Knocking on the door frame, you smile regretfully and ask, “Hi, have a minute?”

With a chuckle at your guilty look, Juniper says, “Sure thing Zach. What do you need now? Here to tell me my request for a more powerful computer for reports was denied?”

“Nope, nothing like that. I did something kind of dumb and wanted to let you know.” You walk into her office and for the first time Juniper notices Karissa trailing very reluctantly behind you. You hope Karissa stops looking like she’s climbing the steps to the guillotine soon, or this isn’t going to go very well.

Before Juniper or Karissa have a chance to say anything, you take a seat in an empty chair and shake your head in what you hope is a rueful but wise fashion and say, “I was helping Karissa at her desk a few minutes ago with a flaky keyboard and showed her some tricks with the Electronic Medical Record, just some keyboard shortcuts. But I, very foolishly, looked up my own name as a demonstration but out of pure muscle memory opened the file instead of just showing her the search screen.”

You can tell Karissa looks at you suddenly, but you maintain a look of chagrin and keep eye contact with Juniper. After a long, measuring look Juniper slowly nods and says, “Ahh, and you realized - too late - that since you did that it would appear on the audit log as if Miss Martin had accessed the confidential information of a coworker. And that since we have our own staff flagged in the databases for just that kind of local search, my next automated report would show a privacy breach.”

With a mournful sigh, you say, “Exactly. I feel dumb, but I’m so used to just hitting the space bar to open the record when I’m working in the EMR I opened it and was whipping through the tabs before I realized what I was doing.”

Now Juniper looks at Karissa, still standing just inside the doorway. You quickly look as well and see the young woman standing very still with a pale face and an expression of almost pure guilt.

Looking back at Juniper, you continue, “So yeah once I noticed what I was doing I closed it all out. I finished fixing Karissa’s computer and then thought I better come tell you.”

Juniper leans back in her chair and smiles, “Well good thing you did. Karissa would have gotten in a lot of trouble if it looked like she was abusing her access to look up coworkers in the system. But I’ll make a note in the audit for today that it was an inadvertent breach and you alerted me once it happened. Now Zach, you know I should write you up regardless? Looking up your own file is technically just as against the rules as looking up others.”

A sharp intake of breath from Karissa, which you ignore. Making a mental note to never rely on the young blonde as an alibi if you start robbing banks, you sigh remorsefully and nod, saying, “I know, like I said I feel dumb.”

With a quirk of her lips Juniper says, “Well consider this your one verbal warning then. You did come and confess, after all, so I’ll consider the matter closed.” Looking at Karissa, she continues, “A good reminder about the importance of privacy for you at least, Zach may have gotten in a lot of trouble if he hadn’t thought to let me know right away.”

“Yeah, good thing he… did that.” Karissa mumbles. Good god has she never lied in her life before?

“I have a question about my computer request for Zach, if you wanted to leave?” Juniper asked Karissa. The blonde almost kicks up dust she is out of there so fast.

A few polite seconds later Juniper arches an eyebrow at you and says, “Muscle memory?”

You shrug. You’re not completely sure how Juniper will take this so you don’t want to say much before you can gauge her mood at being lied to, badly, like this.

“Well, I guess that’s a sign we should perhaps run the staff though the Privacy training module again. I know for a fact she went through the same privacy lecture and caution you did when you were hired, and she didn’t start much before you. But why cover for her?”

There’s no point in keeping up the charade now, Juniper seems more curious than anything. “I walked by and said hi to her and she looked guilty, then just confessed. I think she just let her curiosity get the better of her for a minute and then she realized she made a mistake.”

“Well, it’s good to hear she regretted doing it, and admitted it on her own. Thanks for this Zach, if the report came out and she was on it we would have had to bring it to HR and do the whole process. She might have lost her job even if she had never done it before.”

You stand up and nod, “She just messed up but she knew it. If nothing else, I’d say she learned her lesson at least.”

With a short laugh Juniper agrees with you, “Indeed. Now I wonder why she was looking you up in the system?” Her slow smile and arched eyebrows tells you that Juniper thinks she knows. You feel your face blush and you mumble thanks again and take your leave.

Going back towards Karissa’s desk, you see her sitting and clearly fretting. She looks up in alarm as you walk by but you just give her a thumbs up and a smile. She smiles back in relief and mouths “Thank you!” as you exit her area of the office through the double doors that lead to the elevators.

With a relieved sigh of your own, you walk rapidly to the bathroom door and immediately face plant into it as it remains stubbornly closed. Fucking lock!

“Ow,” you say as you push on the door again, as if to confirm that yes indeed it is locked. God dammit, you really need to pee!

You can wait for a little while though so you head back to your office. You spend 10 minutes answering emails until you realize you’re subconsciously shifting in your chair like a toddler who needs to go wee but needs an adult to remind them. As you get up to go to the bathroom you look at the darkened monitor on the server rack. Well, you can take a second to check something… you turn the monitor on and sure enough you see:

==CHANGES DETECTED! SHOW UPDATED SUMMARY? [Y/N]===

Without a moment’s thought you accept.

===UPDATED SUMMARY===
Martin, Karissa (AGE 19, SEX F)
AFFECTION SCORE: 46 (was: 42)
LOVE SCORE: 37 (was: 35)
LUST SCORE: 16

Huh, that’s interesting. You assumed your scores would go up, what with you saving her job and everything, but it’s kind of nice that it didn’t jump way up. The Lust score stayed the same, which makes sense when you think about it, since almost getting in trouble and potentially getting fired wouldn’t be a ripe environment for sexy thoughts. And while the other scores go up, you appreciate that Karissa isn’t going to suddenly think she’s madly in love with you over something like that. Maybe you’re reading it wrong, but it makes her score seem more legit somehow that it doesn’t skyrocket out of a sense of obligation. Satisfied with what you see, you exit the summary and get back to the main menu.

But now you have to urinate, badly. It’s just after 3 PM so you’ll be at work for another hour, no way you'll be able to wait until you get home so you'll just have to hope the bathroom is open. You hurry down the hall and push on it more carefully… still locked. Or locked again.

Annoyed, you push again hard enough that someone inside would hear. You knock and call out “Anyone in there?” You are just about to give up and try to find the men’s room on the 5th floor when you hear the deadbolt unlock.

You don’t recognize the woman who opens the door, but she is clearly not impressed by you knocking or calling out. “It was in use!” she says, her disapproval clear as she steps past you. You roll your eyes and consider telling her you don’t care as long as the door is unlocked but you don’t bother. You just hurry in and relieve yourself, imagining submitting a request to Purchasing for a portable camp urinal to put in your office. Maybe that would make whoever signed off on this dumb lock reconsider.

Chuckling to yourself, you wash your hands and leave the restroom. You are in a pretty good mood, it’s been a truly insane day and it feels like a week has gone by since you plugged in the SGI server. You accept now that TAM is at least partly real, even if you don’t fully buy all the claims you saw in the tutorial. But now that you’ve had a few hours to get used to the idea, you think you might see some ways to test it out fully and properly. Then, who knows?

Walking into your office, the first thing you see is Jayne standing at the server rack. You stop dead in your tracks, and she turns to you and gestures to the old monitor with her thumb.

“What the hell is an ‘Affection Multiplier’?” she asks with a confused frown.