Chapter 11
‘Small Blowup’
Tim stirs up trouble by threatening to go public with the information he’s collected. And his mark, Stacey, is not happy about it.
Tim is estaking and pursuing two girls, Maria and Stacy, at the same time. They work on different floors and their departments don’t cross; so he’s somewhat confident that neither will find out.
Things are going well with Maria but Stacey is causing him problems. He and Stacey have gone out a couple of times, and he brings up the topic of abortion. Of course, he knows that she’s had one. She does say that she believes in a woman’s right to choose but denies having one when Tim asks her directly.
As time passes, Stacey grows suspicious of Tim. She also wants more from him, but he doesn’t comply and continues to be as distant as possible. He’s just in it for the sex. And as so often happens with women, she ends up finding out that Tim is sleeping with Maria. How she finds out, no one knows. At this stage, most of the IT crew is becoming paranoid of who is estaking whom. But they end up attributing it to a woman’s instinct.
Tim denies it as long as he can but finally gives in. The conversation that ends their relationship takes place at her apartment.
“How could you sleep with the two of us?” she demands.
“I don’t know. It just happened,” he responds placidly.
“This shit does not just happen.” Silence. “Get out!”
“Fine,” Tim responds and starts to get up from his chair when she lays into him again.
“You don’t even care, do you?” She’s a lot more committed to the relationship than he is.
“Not really,” Tim responds as he starts to walk towards the door.
“You asshole. I hate you! And how is Maria? How about if I let her know that you’ve been screwing the two of us,” she continues.
Tim is one of those guys with a short fuse. Any small comment or event could light him up. So, of course, this provokes him. He doesn’t want to lose both girls at once. Estaking takes time and effort.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He stops and turns toward her.
“That is exactly what I will do. Men like you are scum.”
“Careful what you say. You may regret it.” He faces her directly.
“The only thing I regret is being with you! We’ll see how she takes it first thing tomorrow morning. How could you do this to us? I’m sure she’s not going to be thrilled either.”
“Well she probably won’t be as shocked as those people when they find out you had an abortion.” It’s a low blow from Tim.
“What!” Silence. “I never had an abortion,” she insists.
Tim’s facial expression says it all.
“You son-of-a-bitch! Have you been going through my stuff while I am not around? Who told you this?” She’s furious.
Tim turns his back and starts to leave before it gets physical.
“How did you find out?” she yells.
He walks out and can hear her crying as she slams the door behind him.
It’s not a good situation. You never want to give a mark any hint that may lead them to believe that you are snooping around.
The following morning Stacey tells Maria that Tim was sleeping with both of them, which is the same day that Tim tells Chris about Stacey’s abortion. It’s not pretty.
Chris takes Tim for a drive. “Dude you really need to cool it. This whole thing can blow up in all our faces if she goes to Human Resources.”
“She has no idea. She thinks that I was snooping around her apartment. Or maybe she thinks that she left something on her computer screen which I happened to see. Trust me, she has no idea.”
“How many people leave that type of information around for everyone to see? Come on!”
“No way she’ll figure it out. Dude you have to trust me on this,” Tim replies.
“What about the folks in HR? They may be able to figure it out if she informs them. They know we have these tools. Maybe she’s already informed them. Is there a keyboard-logger on her computer?”
“Yeah. But HR does not know we have loggers running on people’s computers.”
“Shit. So now what?”
“Well we can remove it to play it safe. We just need to wait ‘til things cool down a bit.”
“Well we should really come up with a plan soon. Like this week.”
“Okay, I’ll think of something. All we need to do is tell her that we need to patch her computer or update some software. Tom can make the request. He’s the so-called honest guy around here.”
“Okay, maybe do it for like four or five people in her department. This way she’ll be less suspicious. If we only patch her computer, she’ll probably suspect something.”
“Good idea.”
“This week, Tim.”
“Yeah I know.”
He ends up lying to Maria about Stacey saying that they only hung out but never had sex. He also says that she needed computer help sometimes so he helped her. He adds that Stacey has some loose screws, which is somewhat true.
At first, Maria doesn’t know who to believe. She and Tim have been going out for some time, and she has an investment with him. They seem to get along, too, which may have led to her decision in the end to stay with him, which is good for everyone including Chris. With his temperament, who knows what Tim would have done next if he lost both girls?
As far as the keyboard-logger, it’s removed successfully with Tom’s help. They update five computers in her department. As a result, Stacy doesn’t get suspicious. But like most people, she doesn’t change her password that often. So Tim will still be prying around her computer activity. Hopefully he doesn’t uncover some dirt on her that would provoke him and relight his fuse.
Any destabilization associated with someone who is being estaked is a concern. When people get emotional, they tend to lose some sense of logic. Chris continues to check in with Tim during this time. Chris also has keyboard-loggers running, and he’ll need to remove them all if someone is caught estaking. He’s not sure who will remove the CEO’s but if they do need to take this step, someone will have to fess up.
After sleeping on it, they decide to remove all the keyboard-loggers in case Stacey complains to HR. Tim admits to setting up the CEO’s so that’s included on the list. Besides, they already have people’s passwords, so they’ll be good for a while.
Chris goes outside to see Tim who’s having his daily smoke. “All good?” he asks.
“Yeah, my contract is going to end next month.”
“Oh that sucks. You have another job lined up?”
“Yeah, I’ll work for a telecom company.”
“Geez, that should be good. Are you going to listen to people’s conversations now?” Chris says jokingly.
“If there’s a hot chick, I will. But we have so much information on users anyway. Don’t want information overload,” Tim replies.
“Yeah, you’re right about that. But think about eavesdropping on someone’s conversation. That would be pretty crazy.” Chris is having more thoughts related to his addiction.
“Yeah it would.”
“But you are right. We have enough information already. Everything good?”
“Yeah, well you know about Stacey. We’re not on talking terms. Maria and I are still having fun.”
“That’s cool.”
“How about you and Debbie?”
“Good so far. I sometimes feel guilty, though, when I talk to her. All the information I know, and she has no clue.”
“Yep, the beauty of being in IT.”
And things are going well for Chris. He and Debbie are a couple now. They hit that boyfriend/girlfriend status. He’s still estaking her but at some point he’ll stop. At least that’s the idea.
So here they are, all of them getting laid and having fun, in addition to making a ton of money. Why didn’t he do this earlier? It’s the environment that Biokinz has always fostered. People are being dis
honest and unethical from the top down. But is this the norm in corporate America? Based off the emails Chris read while snooping around, other corporations are doing the same thing.
It’s his turn and he took it. Sure, some people got hurt on this adventure but that’s life. Either you screw someone or you get screwed. And it’s Chris’s turn to do the screwing.
Most people don’t get caught at it. It’s like for every kilo of cocaine confiscated trying to make itself across the border, there’s another 2000 kilos that gets through. Chris is involved in white collar crime, the type of offense that happens every day. At Biokinz alone, there’s always some department dealing with an outside entity and framing what needs to be distorted. Who’s on the short end of the stick? Let’s just say it sure isn’t Chris this time.
When Paul came onboard to straighten out the IT department, everyone knew he was close friends with the CFO. They knew on paper that he had no IT or Biotech experience. Then, as he made staff changes, there were employees who were handling firewalls, routers and switches that had never even seen these pieces of equipment before. But this was done on purpose. Ultimately, controlling a person, even though they don’t have the correct skill set, is more valuable for many corporations than hiring someone with experience and ethics.
People at Biokinz aren’t sure if it’s poor practice or by design that Paul continues to run IT recklessly. The hunch is that it’s all part of the plan—from company policies not being followed to handling financial system upgrades by employees who have never seen the system before. Was this done purposely to muddle the water in case numbers were fudged and it’s discovered? The answer doesn’t really matter for Chris, as long as he makes his money. If stock data was modified, there are a handful of people who could have made the modification and some of those people are consultants.
In fact, they even have one consultant who placed the entire stock data set on their personal thumb drive and took it home. So somewhere out there is a thumb drive with all of the stock information for Biokinz employees. But it’s not limited to just stock information. It also includes personal data for company employees such as social security numbers. Paul is completely reckless with sensitive information. But it’s all part of a master scheme.
Over a two week period, they experience four interruptions of service, which are considered to be quite significant lapses. There’s only one incident, though, in which data is lost, and it’s related to the second NDA. It’s comical. A person can’t really take this type of job seriously; otherwise they’ll lose it. People need to understand, first and foremost, that they’re here to make money, regardless of what it takes. However sloppy people might be, or their level of inexperience, it’s part of the plan and how the company’s run. Anything unethical can be framed as “mistakes,” and if auditors discover them, the company has no problem in letting someone take the fall. It’s all by design. And at the end of the day, all that matters to Chris is that he’s now living the American dream.
It takes him a while to change his work ethic but it’s certainly worth it now, to him. He keeps telling himself that if it isn’t him being unethical, it would just be someone else. It always is. In the past, it was always someone else. Like many people who are involved in deceitful behavior on a professional level, Chris’s behavior continues to spill over into his personal life.
Chapter 12
“Living the High Life”
It’s been three years since Chris resigned from Biokinz. He made about six million during his career at the company.
Debbie and Chris got married. They are on their second child and have two homes. She also made quite a bit of money by investing in Chris’s stock tips. He never disclosed his source to her in how he obtained them and doesn’t think she knows where it came from.
Chris is currently working at another small biotech. The firm is called MedFarm. He’s a manager and is trying to figure out his new boss. And yes, the company does have the same tracking tools as Biokinz. It comes as no surprise, then, that he’s checking to see who is browsing what sites and what they’re searching for. Remember he’s in IT and it’s part of the job, at least it seems that way now. Despite being married, it doesn’t take long for Chris to get a mark. Estaking is addictive.
Why does Chris continue to exhibit this type of behavior? He doesn’t know. Until he moved up the corporate ladder, he was ethical most of his life. Are corporations like government? Is it that the higher up and more exposed you are, the tougher it becomes to be ethical? Who wants to be responsible for a collapse of government? The same applies for corporations. No one wants to be accountable for a corporation going belly up. So you need to make it succeed at whatever the cost.
“Hi Lisa,” Chris says to one of the attractive sales girls in the break room.
“Hi Chris.”
“So did you do anything fun this past weekend?” he asks.
“Not really. Just worked a little,” she replies, seemingly not interested in the conversation.
“Oh. Well hopefully you didn’t work too much over the weekend. Hope you got out a little, at least for a game of tennis or golf, something outdoors anyway.” Prying a little more.
“Well I did play golf.”
“Oh wow, I play as well. I actually played last week. I really enjoy it. I also enjoy watching some of the tournaments on TV.”
“That’s great. I really enjoy playing, too.” A smile comes across her face.
“There are some nice courses around here. It’s also great to play when you vacation. It can be very relaxing and frustrating at the same time. Maybe we should play sometime,” he says.
“That would be great.”
“Okay, maybe next weekend. I’ll email you.”
“Sounds great!” she replies.
Chris never really cared for the sport. In fact, he has only played twice in his life. But it’s now time to purchase some clubs so he can start practicing his new hobby.
The End
About the Author
Jonathan Williams has worked in Information Technology for over twenty years. He has spent most of his career working in the Financial and Pharmaceutical Biotech sectors. He specializes in Database Management Systems.
My Turn - Achieving the American Dream Page 12
