I fed a five into the machine on the top floor and turned the selection. Burritos, sausage biscuits, a tuna sandwich... The burrito was the least threatening. I got a Susan B. Anthony and two Sacagaweas in change—the only women we have in coins now, and one has a kid.
When I got back, Fela’s bass player was still carrying that riff and Fela was leading a chant about zippers and buttons. Moira was going through what looked like an online quiz of some kind.
“What member of the cast of ‘Friends’ are you?” I asked.
“The only one who can design and implement a cloud platform solution,” she said. “So, probably, Phoebe.” She finished the quiz and got 80%. “Well, that’s a pass,” she stated.
My burrito was as disappointing as I expected, but it was food. “Do you take a lunch on these half-days?”
Moira shook her head. “No, it’s only seven hours. No real need. I got a thing.” She pulled out a bag of chips.
I pointed to the mostly eaten giant bag of popcorn at the back of the room. “There’s still some Chicago mix from the guys in rail development.”
Again, she shook her head. “No, it gets stuck in my bridge-work.”
I laughed. “You’re not that old.”
She laughed back. “It’s not the years; it’s the miles.”
This was really the first chance I’d had to study Moira in any real way. I ate in silence, watching her while she took another practice test. Short nails, almost chewed down. Those strange, rose-tinted glasses hid eyes tinged with their own red. The white hair had just the faintest bit of dark at the roots.
“Do you bleach your hair?” I asked, then tried to pull it back. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“It’s OK,” she said. “Yes.” She finished her quiz, this one with only 65%. “Dammit.”
I’d finished my disappointing burrito. “I’m sorry. I distracted you.”
She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “No, It’s OK. I’m not as good with subnet masks as I thought.” Putting her glasses back on. “Yes, I bleach it. Kinda hoping someone will notice and ask about it.”
“Oh,” I said. “I... Do I get a prize?”
“No,” she said. “You’re not the person I’m trying to get to notice.”
OK, this was interesting. A secret crush? Some fetishist somewhere? “Who’s supposed to notice?”
“The people who bleached it in the first place,” she said.
Fela’s bass player started a new riff.
“Gabi lived down the street from Fela’s studio,” Moira said. “Long after when they threw his mom out a window.”
“Oh,” I said. We were on a new topic. “When was that?”
Moira nodded. “The window thing was in the 70s. Gabi was born in ‘83.” Then, after a pause, “She’s a water pig.”
“Her year,” Moira explained. “She’s a water pig. Angie’s an earth dragon. Kristi’s a metal monkey and Emmy’s a water ox.” Another pause. “Kristi told us; did our horoscopes. I’m a fire tiger. We’re a zero-wood desk.”
“Oh,” I said. I had no way to use or interpret this information.
“But it’s kind of funny, really,” Moira said. “I mean, the pig is usually water. But dragon is fire, ox is earth, and tiger is wood.”
I nodded but was thrown off-guard. This had nothing to do with what we’d been talking about.
“It’s almost hilarious,” she said. “You won’t be here for the parade of birthdays.”
Moira pointed at the row of desks on the front row, counting off each one. “Angie, Gabi, Kristi, Emmy.” she said, pointing left to right. “Aries, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus. Fire, water, air, earth. It’s like that.”
“Aquarius,” she said. “So, there’s a month between me and the rest.” She flashed her wide, toothy smile. Long and unnaturally white teeth. I wondered if they were bleached as well.
Something was pinging around in my head, but I couldn’t place it. Something about her bleached hair and what she’d said about teeth and those terrible scars on her wrists. Somehow, all three were related and I was annoyed with myself for not noticing earlier. I popped off an email to an old work buddy of mine, suggesting we meet some morning after they’d done a little research for me.
“Will you get another contractor if Allan doesn't finish the run?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “Emmy said she’d do it. It would only be a couple weeks, tops. Still, a shame to lose her skills to the shift, but things are pretty slow at year end. Lots of folks on vacation at that time. No projects or changes scheduled. Could be nice to hang out again, I guess.”
I nodded. “She speaks highly of you.”
Moira had just finished another online test, this time with a 78%. She leaned back. “Yeah, it used to be just her and me and Kristi. And those dumb boys.”
“What kind of schedule will you all be working in the new year?”
Moira pulled up a spreadsheet. “I’ll share this one with you. It’s going to be staggered, so a 6-3, 7-4, 8-5, and 9-6. I think the planned order is Kristi, Angie, Gabi, and then Emmy.”
“And then you’re moving to sysadmin.”
“Yeah,” Moira said. “Cindy, our SCCM specialist got married and moved to another city. It’s been kinda holding up our upgrade project but should be fine for the new year when budgets reset.”
“You do a lot of administrative tasks during this shift, then,” I said. “I didn’t know the desk was doing that.”
She nodded. “Well, we’re the support desk but also the NOC.” Pointing to the large displays at the front of the room. “So, we monitor network health, alert the right folks when we see issues. They didn’t cover that, huh?”
I scrolled through my notes. “Emmy mentioned it and showed me a couple of those tickets. I mean more the account creation thing. How much account maintenance do you do?”
“Add, move, change, delete,” Moira said. “We build them, add rights, take them away, and terminate users as called for. We also maintain the distribution lists and collaborative inboxes. You’ll see more of that Thursday night. You’re coming in Thursday, right?”
“OK, good deal,” she said. “The new people starting next Monday will be created that night when HR sends in the requests. They do them in batches.”
“Do they hold off on hiring so they can group them?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, I think that’s just how the budgeting times out. Most of them will be new hires or temps.”
“How many temps are used?”
Moira shrugged. “Depends. We always get interns in the summer, and sometimes there are special events that will involve moving a lot of people around, like game season. Also, sometimes we have full-time people go temp, like during a pregnancy or illness.”
“Do they lose benefits when they do that?” I asked. “I mean during an illness or pregnancy.”
Moira shook her head. “No, but for whatever reason, they can’t work more than twenty hours a week. We have to change their status. It’s a matter of how tax dollars are spent. If we don’t report it correctly, it would show up in an audit. PTO only goes so far and some folks don’t like taking leave.”
I remembered the folder of disabled accounts. “I’m guessing you disable accounts when people do go on leave. That’s why you don’t delete them.”
“Yep!” Moira said. “And temp workers can still get email because the account is never disabled. We’ll also have re-hires. Someone leaves the organization for whatever reason, wants to come back. We’ll have people move and come back less than a year later. They’ve already gone through the background check and we know they have the training or certification or license, so why not just re-enable them?”
I frowned. “People move like that?”
“Missionaries,” she said. “Remember: older, less educated work-force. They’ll get a calling and go try to save the world, only to come back when hippos eat the garden or whatever happens.”
When hippos eat the garden. Pretty sure there was a story there.
“But, they come back,” she went on. “People have strokes, go into comas, fall down the stairs. You never know what’s going to take someone out of pocket. It’s nice to have a plan for when they come back.”
