NaNo: Wherein The Diva Seals Her Own Fate
Well, here were are in the middle of the month and I’ve only got 19,775 words which is slightly less than 40% of what needs to be written by midnight November 30th.
I’m O.K. with it, I think. I’ve got to write about 2K a day the rest of the month to get caught up and I can probably do 3K-4K each of the last two Sundays so I should be fine even if I slip behind again.
I added a “disclaimer” at the beginning of my NaNo novel which I thought would be fun to share:
Disclaimer: This story is mostly fiction. Any similarities to real persons, real places, or even real events are not entirely by accident; however, embellishments, exaggerations and literary license have definitely been fully taken advantage of by the author.
I had the idea while watching Law & Order. They always seem to put that disclaimer at the beginning of a show obviously stolen from the headlines and only at the end of episodes that aren’t so obvious. Well, not exactly that disclaimer, but mine’s more honest. 
I also decided to share another excerpt. The following is after a chapter of “blog entries” where Nora is writing about how The Minion Supervisor got her written up the month before for her medical-related absences and then promised her it had all been fixed when she filled out the FMLA paperwork, only to turn around and use it on her annual review to keep her from getting a raise and get her put on probation just as they are being outsourced to another company. She has gone over her department heads to the Director of Human Resources in an attempt to argue her case that she shouldn’t be punished for something that had been partly The Minion Supervisor’s fault in the first place — he was supposed to have her fill out the FMLA paperwork months before. Anyway…
Chapter Seven: Sometimes a phone call is all that’s needed to soothe the savage beast. Well, in this case, a phone call from the Director of Human Resources to Nora was what finally eased her paranoia- spinning mind, but not after a weekend of pure torture. No distraction seemed strong enough to keep her mind from obsessing on the betrayal of The Minion Supervisor or the ruination of her career. She’d tried aromatherapy, taking a long bath, taking a long walk through the neighborhood, watching a movie with friends, playing a board game at a friend’s house and a thousand other little things, but all she could think was how The Minion Supervisor was ruining her life and how he was plotting against her. She was fairly certain that he was home dialed into his work e-mail, munching on some wife- approved snack, and thinking about what he could do to her next to either drive her more crazy, make her job more difficult, or get rid of her once and for all.The phone call from the Director of Human Resources came Monday morning as Nora was settling in with her hot mocha latte and her bagel and light cream cheese from The Company deli. Since her phone rarely rang, she was a little surprised even as she reflexively reached for her receiver.Nora spilled out the lengthy spiel they were required by penalty of write-up to recite. “The Company, Information Systems, This is Nora Andrews; how may I help you?” Now if it had been a wrong number, she would have been obligated to find the caller the correct one, but fortunately it was a right number, a welcome relief to a highly anxious Nora.
Wherein The Diva Unwittingly Seals Her Own Fate“Hi, Nora; this is Sandy Houston in Human Resources,” the familiar voice introduced herself.
“Oh, yes, Ms. Houston. How are you this morning?” Nora’s heartbeat sped up. An inner- static filled her ears as she struggled to breathe and to concentrate on the voice on the other end of the phone. Was it possible that this woman was actually going to help her?
“I’m good; thank you. I just wanted to let you know that I have discussed your situation with both Bob and Laura and we’re going to alter your review to not have the disciplinary action on it since there’s some question as to how it’s been handled and since you’re going to the new company in a few weeks,” Ms. Houston informed her. “I don’t see any reason why the conversion has to be made more complicated by this situation.”
Nora breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you, Ms. Houston. I really appreciate your help.”
This explained why The Minion Supervisor had not crossed her path that morning. She had not seen hide nor hare of him which suited her fine. She did her job much more efficiently if he wasn’t checking up on her ever twenty or thirty minutes anyway. Worse, usually, when he came over it was to change the priority of whatever she was working on based on whomever he had talked to last. For example, if he had just spoken to Radiology’s system administrator, then Radiology was her top priority, but if someone from Patient Accounts had called him for an update, the new patient accounting interface was her priority. Nora got more work done when The Minion Supervisor wasn’t changing what she needed to work on three or four times a day.
Feeling much better about life in general and somewhat triumphant over The Minion Supervisor’s plot to destroy her, Nora began pulling up the antiquated software she’d need for the day. Meanwhile, in her mind she was plotting her own coup and fantasizing about what it was going to be like when the new outsourcing company moved in and started cleaning house. The deal that had been made was that The Outsourcing Company would take over the whole department, including management, but not the equipment – that was just stupid. The contract would be for 3 years and then the department would be returned to the fold of The Company. The catch was that The Outsourcing Company would have to hire all of the current staff and retain them for at least six months, including management.
Nora didn’t understand how the deal was going to save The Company money or profit The Outsourcing Company. It was like some mysterious deal with the Devil. The employees would all be hired and given raises, including better benefits so The Outsourcing Company would actually be spending more money than The Company for the same amount of work, the same amount of resources, and the same amount of insanity…at least for six months. Plus, if it was determined that the department was understaffed, then The Outsourcing Company would have to provide enough staff to do all of the work and of course, the Department was seriously understaffed. Nora figured that in the end The Outsourcing Company would have to be taking a loss.
The Outsourcing Company had indicated that changes would probably be made within the department as far as hierarchy and that was what Nora was counting on other than the raises that were promised. Nora was absolutely certain that once The Outsourcing Company arrived on the scene and investigated where the weak links were in the Department and where the bottlenecks were, The Minion Supervisor and most of the Interface Team would be out of the door. Clearly, the biggest bottleneck in the Department was The Minion Supervisor. Clearly any sane management staff would come in and realize that he was in over his head and wreaking chaos at every turn. Clearly, she just had to wait it out and then she would be free and on her way to greater things.
In the orientation The Outsourcing Company had also hinted at a nationwide network of consultants and the possibility that after six months or so, some of them might be able to transfer to other positions in the company. Nora’s secret desire was to become a jet- setting fortune- making consultant. Well, maybe it wasn’t a desire, so much as something she had considered ever since her chats with that consultant The Minion Supervisor had hired last year. The woman had come in and talked big about what she was going to do but it felt to Nora like she and Katherine seemed to do most of the work. The Consultant seemed mostly to provide the framework and got paid big bucks for it. That sounded like a dream job to Nora. The Consultant also tried to convince Nora to give up the stable life and go for the big money and had promised to help Nora get into the consulting world with the company that she worked for. At the time Nora decided she wanted to stay on at The Company long enough to complete the project as it would have been really impressive on her resume. However, by the time The Outsourcing Company had their contract, the project had been shelved as unsuccessful and it seemed that Nora had wasted a year hard at work with nothing accomplished to point to and be proud of.
And quite frankly, she had always secretly, reluctantly suspected that the project was doomed. Other companies she’d talked to told horrible stories about their own implementation of the software and the curse of life after implementation. However, she had hoped that given enough time and hard work, everything might have worked out all right. Of course, her original estimate, based on the realities at other companies, that the interfaces alone would take at least a year if not almost two had gone ignored by The Minion Supervisor. They’d been promised to the Administration in six months. The promise had of course been made by The Minion Supervisor. The problem however was more than the interfaces. The two programs to be interfaced were not meant to be interfaced, no matter what the vendor who’d sold them the second software package had claimed. Really it was as if two alien technologies were trying to communicate.
So, despite her usually pessimism and paranoia, Nora had high hopes for the changing of the guard. If she just held out a little longer, the world would right itself and everything would be wonderfully perfect.
Except Nora was never one for waiting patiently. If there was a problem, she wanted it fixed right away and she would obsess about it until it was resolved or some compromise had been reached that she could live with. This obsessive problem- fixation quirk was one of the things that made her a good programmer and an excellent troubleshooter. When presented with a truly challenging problem, she’d forego sleep or food. She loved fixing issues on the fly and had gloried in the Y2K fallout and aftermath or being the one they called at one in the morning to resolve some programming issue threatening to destroy the world as they knew it. Those were her shining moments.
However, in the rest of her life this obsessive problem- fixation quirk was not always her friend. For example, her debt had been so great once that she called the 1-800 lines for her credit cards every few minutes to check and double check and triple check the balances for a good long week. There, of course, had probably been a better use of her time.
Another time, she’d stayed up all night to finish cross-stitching a Christmas present for her mother. She’d ended up with tendonitis and a trip to the Emergency Room a few days later.
And now her new obsession with ridding herself of The Minion Supervisor was probably something she could have done without. Even after explaining her latest plan to her friends and family, if they had wisely told her not to go forward, she probably would have done it anyway. Instead, she made possibly one of the bigger professional faux pas one could make.
While she waited her turn with The Outsourcing Company’s temporary Human Resources representative, Nora chatted with Gina about the make-up Gina no- so- secretly sold on the side. She leaned on the so- called front desk for Information Systems or Information Technologies or whatever they were calling it this week. This particular “front desk office” was actually on the other side of the hospital from the rest of the department and it doubled as the Help Desk, which during the lay- offs had been downsized to one person. When the department’s Vice President had retired, his office assistant had been made part of the Help Desk to double its size and then like a slap in the face of the woman who had been running the Help Desk pretty much since its creation ages ago, the former office assistant was made supervisor, which meant Gina did all of the work anyway.
The door to the conference- room- turned- makeshift- Human- Resources- headquarters for The Outsourcing Company opened and one of the computer operators came out; he folded his paperwork in half as he thanked Lydia for her help. Nora had taken a liking to Lydia right off. She seemed to emanate that kindergartner teacher quality – young, pretty, always smiling, always nice, always patient. Lydia seemed laid back and understanding and right away Nora hoped to make Lydia her ally.
“Oh, Lydia! Nora’s here to see you next if you have time,” Gina shouted back at the open door. Gina, who was always in a good mood even when she was miserable, winked at Nora. Gina was one of the few women Nora knew personally who was truly beauty-queen beautiful no matter what her weight or how bad the humidity was.
Lydia appeared in the doorway. She was maybe an inch taller than Nora with long, thick brown hair – the kind Nora always wanted – and a Petite Sophisticated pantsuit. “Oh, sure, Nora, come on in,” she smiled as if the discovery of Nora on her doorstep was the best news all day.
Before Lydia’s arrival, Nora had tried to talk to The Outsourcing Company’s Director of Human Resources on her previous whirlwind visits but the woman was always in motion and never wore a smile. Nora would get half a sentence out and the woman would be a mile away. Lydia was a welcome change and lessened Nora’s concerns about big city business people in designer suits with no time for the little person caught in the outsourcing crossfire. Not to mention, Nora had bonded with Lydia discussing The Outsourcing Company’s policy concerning absences related to chronic illnesses such as migraines. Lydia was a migraine sufferer too and sometimes it was nice to find someone else who truly sympathized from personal experience and not abstract conjecture.
Nora followed Lydia into the conference room that Lydia had made her temporary home. Files were stacked up on one end of the conference table and Lydia’s laptop was ready and awaiting her next command. Nora closed the door behind her because what she had to say was confidential. “Um, I came by to drop off my acceptance paperwork; it’s all signed and everything but I also wanted to talk about it a little bit before I turned it in,” Nora said fairly quickly before she could lose her nerve. Now that much had been said, there was less of a chance that she wouldn’t say what she needed to say.
“O.K. Sure,” Lydia replied as she reached over to take the paperwork; each departmental employee had been given an offer letter with how much money they were going to be paid in comparison with how much they had been making and what their benefits were and how much things like health insurance would cost. Plus, they’d had paperwork to fill out about their job, their job duties, and their position in the hierarchy – something Nora thought The Company could have provided them, but she was glad it gave her the opening she needed with Lydia.
Nora quickly flipped through the stapled packet. “Well, pretty much everything is right and fine but I wanted to talk about who I work for,” Nora stated, showing Lydia the form stating that she worked for The Minion Supervisor.
Lydia offered a questioning look. “O…K…”
“See, right now I work for Bob, but that’s only been for the last year and a half or so. Before that I worked directly for Laura and I really feel like they put me under Bob because they needed to have people for him to manage.” Nora pushed on with her rehearsed spiel. “Quite frankly, I really feel hampered by Bob. I don’t think he really knows what to do with me and I don’t feel he even knows what I do. I would really like to express a hope that when y’all come in that some restructuring will occur and I’d really like to be transferred to a different manager. I just feel like I’d able to work better under someone else.”
There. She’d said it. She couldn’t take it back and she really hoped it wouldn’t backfire.
“Well, O.K. I understand. I’ll definitely take that under consideration,” Lydia nodded and smiled reassuringly. “I know how hard it is to work under someone who doesn’t know what you’re doing.”
Nora breathed a sigh of relief and realized she’d been shaking from being so nervous. Everything would be O.K. and she hadn’t had to explain any more than that. She and The Minion Supervisor just didn’t get along and everything would be better once they were separated.
“O.K. Thanks,” Nora grinned, feeling that this would be resolved once and for all and she wouldn’t have to wait a millennium for The Outsourcing Company to come to their senses about The Minion Supervisor and his department- sabotaging ways. She waved at Lydia as she exited the conference room.
Oh, yes, everything would be fine soon.
Nora never even realized in her hurry to say what had to be said that she never sat down in Lydia’s office.
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on November 15, 2005 at 5:06 pm
Tamara said:
Lots of great detail. I really like your decision to include the disclaimer. I’m jealous that you have a clear, definitive idea of your story, lots of details at your disposal, and the like. I am flailing with no real idea where I am heading.
I’ll still be able to make it, but it will be a lot more of a slog (and a lot more of a jumbled mess on December 1).
on November 15, 2005 at 8:24 pm
n. mallory said:
Well, in December, you’ll be able to edit to your heart’s content.
Of course, just because I know exactly what’s going to happen, doesn’t mean it’s easy. Each thing I write in this I have to struggle to admit to myself and take ownership of. I’m starting to realize that autobiographical isn’t as easy as it looks.
on November 15, 2005 at 9:00 pm
Tamara said:
You’re right, I didn’t mean to imply that it is easy for you! I think we’re both in NaNo hell right now!