Start of Lauren's first day

Lauren stood in front of the skyscraper of Mega Corp looking up at the intimidating building. She had been here two weeks before and wondered if this start date would ever come. Jodie had started almost right away, but they called her references and with her location closed it was almost impossible to get a reply, she ended up having to prove employment with tax records. Lauren guessed she would have access to some important information that her friend wouldn't as an administrative assistant. Here she was dressed in a simple black dress that came to a few inches shy of her knee, a red blazer, tan hose and a pair of Jodie’s black five inch heels. She spent longer than she ever had for any date on her makeup, afraid it would look too underdone or too overdone for the corporate office. She had seen so many pretty women there, she didn’t want to be hired because she looked pretty, but at the same time. She wanted to impress people, the tall heels would not be her first idea of something to wear, let alone to work. Yet rushing around this morning she snapped the heel of her more sensible black heels she bought and immediately wished she hadn’t bought something so cheap that they broke before she even really wore them.

Pinching the bridge of her nose Lauren tried to clear her mind of all the drama that suddenly popped up. Jodie grabbing her bag and just leaving the previous night, her and Eric having a fight and her brother acting like it was the end of the world his girlfriend wasn’t calling or texting him back after a fight. She loved the big oaf and it was nice to see he wasn’t really perfect, she just wished he had dated more or really at all when he was younger so he wouldn’t be acting like he was new to relationships when he had someone as amazing as Jodie with him. Their fighting about money had seemed to settle down now that she was working and he seemed to be making big steps towards showing his emotions more, yet last night he was out on the balcony drinking scotch like it was juice. He went from talking about he didn’t know what he did, to making a list, asking her if she thought it was one of them or something else, to swinging the other way how he just wanted to show her a good time and he knew she liked that place and that type of music and he hadn’t done anything wrong. It wasn’t a steady progression and thoughts jumped from one to the other more as he got more drunk. Best she could do was tell him to be patient and give her a little room to breathe, how Jodie goes from a building teeming with people to an apartment where she doesn’t have her own space and maybe he hadn’t done anything big, just something small that compounded. He had stared hard past Lauren to her room for a moment before pinching the bridge of his nose, a habit he had gotten from his dad and she from him when they were upset for trying to think things through. She wasn’t sure how much of what she said had gotten through to him, but promised herself she would talk with Janet today since Jodie wasn’t taking her calls either. It was a lot to put aside, but she didn’t have time for all of that, today she was going to start a career. One she never thought she wanted and still wasn’t, but knew this could be a stepping stone to a real future.

Lauren felt the big hug from her big breasted friend as Tiffany cried out at the sight her, seemingly not caring about professionalism. “Oh My GOD, you made it!” Tiffany was talking with her hands as she looked her over, they went from covering her mouth to motioning at her to clasping shut in little loose fists as if triumph. “You look like amazing Lauren, I just knew you would.” Lauren looked down at herself, second guessing the red blazer for being too loud and eye catching and the heels for being way to high. Every other person in the IT department was a man and would be wearing pants, things they could bend down in and crawl under desks, she definitely was not dressed for the role, but to many people had been insistent. “You think? I mean, these are a little high and I can already feel how my calves and feet will be really feeling later.” Tiffany pursed her lips and tucked back her newly bleached blonde hair behind an ear as she looked down at the shoes and gave a small shake of her head. “A little high for what? I promise you the boys will be eating out of the palm of your hand and if you stick with me and Jodie you will be moving around in those with the grace of a ballerina in no time. You should have done this long ago, what girl doesn’t love a good pair of heels?” Shifting most of her weight from one foot to the other she couldn’t believe Tiffany, if she didn’t know her better she would think she was the type of girl that heard about the woman’s movement and said “None of that for me please.” But she knew the girl just liked to look her best, and while she appreciated being noticed, she did it for herself. “Not all girls need to dress up like dolls Tiff.” She only waved her hand in the air as if saying “oh please” and smiled. “The good Lord gave us all gifts, not all of us are as smart as you, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore what else you have. Now I really do have to get back to my desk I think I have missed like three calls, oops.” Tiffany gave her one more quick hug before going back behind the reception desk. Leaving Lauren feeling a little better as she moved to the elevator.”

“Miss Morrison, welcome to day one! You ready to start?” She saw Steven waiting for her with a binder in his hand and a smile on his face. “Lauren is fine, and thank you.I am, but a little nervous and I wasn’t sure how to dress.” Steven hadn’t checked her out like a few of the men she noticed until she mentioned her dress like he hadn’t paid any attention to that sort of thing. “Not something I would wear, but…” He shrugged as he held the binder out to her. “I’m not you, I can’t pull that off if I wanted to and I’m not your boss.” She laughed a little at his joke before tilting her head slightly. “I thought you managed the IT department here?” She said, taking the red binder from him, while he looked behind himself at the crowded office full of equipment. “No, I am a team lead here and technically am the manager of this office here. I run these three other guys around and work with them, but we also have one more group of desktop technicians that they keep in the basement of all places, they have their own lead and we both report to the head of IT and he reports to the CTO and we also have a network team and a few others that we can get into later. For now HR sent over that binder for you to fill out and give back to them later and I wanted to get you familiar with some of the base level things here. At the start you are going to be doing input, with taking the calls and assigning them to each of the technicians and try to be fair with how you give them out, not playing favorites just becauseI have a better smile than Mike over there.” Lauren looked at the man he was pointing at, a dark haired man that looked like he hadn’t washed his dark hair in a week and wasn’t sure he knew what running was. It sounded to her like she was going to play a similar role to Jodie, just with a better title. “So I just take calls and pass on the messages basically?”

“Oh heavens no! Right now all of our desk phones ring when something is wrong and they ring a lot.” One of the empty desks had its phone start to go off as if the office was trying to prove his point. “They ring round robin, but if we are working on an issue it just goes to the next desk, but if another call comes in it just keeps going around to each desk before it goes to voicemail. We deal with that, people emailing us, sending us instant messages all while every supervisor and manager is shown how to put in tickets for themselves and their personal, but they tend to not do that. Some people here you can say no to, some you can tell them to wait, some you just jump and say yes sir, I will get that done sir. You are the answer to our problems, instead of all of that it will be your job to play ticket logistics for us. I tend to go to our general queue and assign out jobs, but that is off my plate and will move to you when you feel comfortable. While doing this you will get one on one time with each tech in my office and with the basement dwellers. Pale folks, don’t see the light of day often, try not to spook them.” It still wasn’t sounding great, but at least Steven was the type of guy to make her smile. “I will start having you do your own tickets, maybe start with you doing them with me or one of the other guys shadowing you to make sure everything is okay and be there if you need help, but you are new to this field so I need to make sure you are up to speed. If you did a ticket for someone when they asked you to, but you happen to interrupt a meeting that they didn’t tell you about, they will get upset. That has nothing to do with technical skill, but if they raise a fuss, my boss will bring up the fact you don’t have any experience and remind me why he didn’t want to hire you.” Navigating people was something she knew she could do, but she didn’t get what he meant by not wanting to be hired. “You interviewed me and he didn’t even meet me, if he didn’t want me why am I here?”

Steven motioned for her to follow has he led her to the vacant desk that had a pile of laptops next to it on the floor. “First off this is your desk and because it is the closest to the door if someone comes by asking for a loaner laptop, that is what those are. For now you can hand them one and then direct them to one of the other techs after you make a ticket for it. I will show you about our ticking software in a second, but to answer your question. Some people are going to say it is because of they needed a minority hire with us having no other females. Others will say… well all men are pigs and you will hear a lot of that kind of thing here. I can apologize on behalf of myself, but I can’t speak for the rest of my gender. Now I say you were hired because of your attitude, the thirst for knowledge and growth I saw in you that day we talked and you being the only candidate I put forward because of it. I can teach you how to put together a computer, I can’t teach someone to care and to want to learn. If you can promise me you will do that I will continue to be in your corner.” Steven wasn’t a bad looking young man, a little out of shape and missing some social graces, but yet she wondered if someone with his heart was single. Not because she wanted him to ask her out, but she had met plenty of guys who said they were a good guy and were anything but, and he at least seemed like the real deal. “Steven, I have to ask are you seeing anyone?” She was going to add more about not knowing a lot of people in town yet, but she was sure she could set him up with someone that would appreciate him, but didn’t get the chance as he let out a little laugh. “Are you hitting one me Lauren, five minutes into the day and it looks like you know how to make me smile. No, I’m not and I get that more than you think here as odd as it is, but I can’t see anyone I work directly with,I am extremely flattered though.”

It was a little surprising he would be hit on here considering how this place seemed to like to hire girls who could be models, if he was being honest at least, but she wasn’t going to let this turn into some sitcom of one person thinking the other pines for them because of bad communication. “Oh, umm. I didn’t mean it like that, you are an attractive guy, but I just didn’t see a ring and thought I will be bound to make some female friends here, but personally I’m taken.” She smiled at herself at that thinking of Marcus, they had gone on three dates, four if you count just hooking up after a few dances and drinks that first night at Howl at the Moon and things were going great. Nothing official, but she wasn’t planning on seeing anyone else and hoped he wasn’t either. “Ah I get it, well I put my foot in my mouth, how about you take a seat and we can pull up some tickets and go over how we categorize everything and discuss how we solved each issue. Some of it wont make a lot of sense, some of it will be obvious, like a here we require passwords to be fifteen characters long with a special character like an at sign and a number. We get a lot of calls to reset passwords and I will say the most common mistake is they didn’t count the characters to get up to fifteen.” Lauren made a little face to say ‘come on, people can count to fifteen.’ Steven took control of the mouse and keyboard and logged into the system pulling up a user by their name. “Here let me show you, this is your friend I believe, a Jordan Applegate. Sweet girl, I can see why you like her, but she calls in at least once a week for something. Tickets for keyboard not being plugged in, deleting a document that we just restored from a previous version, monitor power cable not plugged in, multifunction printer not turned on, and many, many calls about her being locked out from typing in her password wrong.” As he clicked through them she saw how often her friend had to call and ask for help. It was a little sad, but the kind of thing she could expect for her ditzy friend and potential sister in law. “Some of the calls do come from her boyfriend, Mr. Wesker. He isn’t one of the people that put in tickets like he should, he just calls and says she is having trouble again and then hangs up, so I come running with no details. That is what I meant about you say yes sir, right away sir sometimes.” Lauren held up her hand to stop him and as he kept going she motioned the open palm a few times like pumping breaks. “Wait, her boyfriend?” Steven nodded smiling a little. “Yeah, her boss Adam Wesker and her are an item, lucky guy, but people like him tend to get what they want and often it is the female right outside their office.”

Lauren couldn’t let the intense flare of rage in her show and looked from Steven to the screen to the information on where Jodie and her boss were in the building. He mind a mess of anger, that two timing bitch! She had been cheating on her brother with her boss, no wonder that tart got a raise so fast at a new job and now she was off on a supposed business trip with her lover, while her brother was beside himself in sorrow for a fight she probably caused on purpose. Oh she was going to get to the bottom of this and she was going to do it today and what better excuse to snoop than to say she works for IT and gossip with the women on her floor. “Steven, I’m sorry, I know we just got started. But..” She looked at him sheepishly with a tight smile like she wasn’t doing to well. “I have to run to the little girls room and umm I could be a while. Women’s issues.. Is that okay?” With two small nods Steven stood up fro his chair to make room for Laruen. “Of course, take all the time you need and if you umm.. Need anything specific or ahh. HR is on the tenth floor and you just let me know when you are ready to continue and if I’m not around when you come back just go through that binder. Honestly I only expected you to get that done today anyways. Ahh good luck or.. Yeah.” The man was obviously uncomfortable with the idea and right a way Laruen knew she read the young man right. He was friendly and a little flirty, but it was mostly bluster and more than likely didn’t even have so much as a sister growing up. Now she had bought some time to investigate and possibly get fired all on her first day, but family was more important that a job.