Short story “Waking up”
In this short story, my protagonist, Brain, recounts the events leading up to last night’s party shortly after waking up.
Enjoy the story.
The alarm goes off, that was way too loud!
Hitting the snooze button, I realised that duty awaits me again and waking up is a challenge.
The intense sunshine streams in through the window, stinging my eyes and giving me the impression that a thousand people are dancing in my head to the rhythm of a hundred tiny demons playing the drums. Auwtch!
The party last night was great, but that tequila challenge might have been too much. even though it seemed a hilarious idea at the time.
The reason for last night’s debauchery weren’t as fun as one would think, we celebrated a good conclusion to a few difficult months.
The reputation of our company had been on the line. Within the firm, it had been raining complaints because some members of the support team had been acting improperly. But finding the real mastermind within our support team proved challenging.
On top of that, most support team members had been complaining for months, but their remarks fell into deaf man’s ears. Three of them were on sick leave due to harassment. Four even had resigned and the group was falling further apart.
We had hired a team of coaches and psychologists to improve team moral, unfortunately in vain.
Although, they did gather a lot of information and created an extensive report that contained a mind-blowing number of compelling elements. All of them, however, remained circumstantial. They had covered their tracks too well.
Philippe had surrounded himself with quite a few goons who acted aggressively resulting from his gaslighting. They bullied most of their colleagues while covering each other’s backs. On top of that, they had provided inappropriate customer support, using other people’s logins.
The HR and Sales team had investigated all complaints, claims, invoices and voice recordings of the whole support team. It was astonishing how one individual seemed to be able to cause so much destruction within a team of fifty. The team leaders had known something was wrong but were unable to pinpoint it.
All the evidence was presented to our global management team. The board had no choice but to take action, especially after losing some of our precious clients.
Unfortunately, firing that gangster and his mates on the spot proved extremely difficult. The management team didn’t want to cause suspicion within the support team.
During that management meeting, the decision was made to catch them red-handed.
Initially, the whole support team was shuffled around so that all perpetrators worked on the nightshift. Three new people were hired and trained to fill the empty seats. Little did the team know that these were spies placed by the management.
After a week or so, two of them started also to get bullied, but they laid low and recorded all the suspicions’ violations. The third one was accepted within the circle of trust and over time they shared more about their methodology used to cover their tracks with him. Our little spy revealed every detail to me as he learned more.
We finally knew who they really were; Philippe, was our real criminal. Amir, Mohammed and Vanessa were his accomplices.
Phase one of the plan seemed to be a success, but still, everything remained circumstantial and wouldn’t stick in court. They needed to be caught in the act.
The second step was to introduce a new team leader, a skilled coach, who was suggested by the old coaching team: Nicolas Lebrun. His intuitive ability to sense feelings and read body language would help us in our endeavour.
He had been trained in our procedures by the day team to fill in the job of team leader of the graveyard shift, who would be on a holiday for a while. His mission: to observe and invoke controlled incidents with the mobster and his trusties.
The whole HR team was also informed about the fundamentals of the plan, because we were aware of what potential danger lied hidden within that situation. We created a schedule that enabled us to be approachable 24/7. The other Support Team leaders also drew up an emergency plan, when things would come to a showdown.
We all walked on the tip of our toes.
The third step was to cause a serious IT issue to create a stress moment for the support team. Our IT team had meticulously planned a controlled crash of some systems.
That Saturday night, on Nicolas’ third nightshift, at 2am, Jerome of the HR Team called for assistance. The planning server of our US offices was unavailable. Shortly after that most core servers started to act up and the call centre was swamped with requests for support.
The picking order on the phone exchange was programmed as such that the accomplices, together with the ‘temporary’ team members took the major heat, creating an open door that Philippe could step up as a saviour.
The mousetrap clapped as he walked up to Nicolas. He gave his version of the facts while his team leader started to counter every argument he mentioned. A heated discussion arose, and Philippe lost his temper, just as predicted by his behavioural analysis. His accomplices heard the argument and stepped in to support him. The situation became steaming hot.
I was in in the building and witnessed the events. Amir even almost took a swing at Nicolas, but security stepped in on time. We had them! Police were called in and they were attested. The gathered proof even allowed us to pursue each of them and claim compensations for the damages done to our company, their colleagues and some of our clients.
After these events, we just needed something to reunite the company and that party was bang on. Everyone had been there, even the people who had resigned a few months ago! And how memorable that was!
This hangover is a small price to pay for the success of our challenging endeavour. Fortunately, the warm cup of tea already helps and the outlook that Linda will pick me up after work for the weekend, brightens my day.
