He Snapped at the “IT Girl” and Fired Her in Front of Everyone—Then the Building Manager Walked In and Whispered the Words That Froze the Entire 37th Floor
The sound of a snapping finger is distinctive.
It’s sharp and percussive, the kind of noise that doesn’t ask for attention so much as demand it, cutting clean through the hum of server fans and the low murmur of six-figure deals being negotiated over lukewarm sparkling water.
When it happens within three inches of your ear, it’s not just a sound.
It’s a declaration of war.
“Hey. IT girl.”
The words came coated in a lazy confidence, like the speaker expected the world to bend simply because he’d spoken.
I didn’t look up immediately, because I was doing what I came there to do, and I’d learned a long time ago that the fastest way to train entitlement is to reward it with instant reaction.
I was staring at a complex schematic for a Phase 3 fiber optic route—one of the last pieces needed to make sure the 37th floor didn’t run hot during the coming summer heatwave.
My finger traced the line where the redundant cooling loop intersected with the primary server annex, following the path like a surgeon following a vein.
This wasn’t “internet stuff.”
This was the building’s nervous system, a delicate ecosystem of power and glass and air that I had designed, negotiated, and leased three years ago with a level of precision most people only reserve for life insurance.
The fingers snapped again, faster this time, like a metronome operated by someone who’d never been told no.
“I know you can hear me,” the voice drawled, amused with itself.
Of course I could hear him.
The open-plan office had the acoustics of a modern aquarium—glass walls, exposed ceilings, polished concrete—designed to look expensive and feel like nobody could hide.
I turned my swivel chair slowly, not because I was intimidated, but because I wanted the moment to land properly.
If someone was going to interrupt me in the middle of reading infrastructure specs, they could at least have the discomfort of being fully seen.
It was Jared.
Of course it was Jared.
Jared was twenty-six and wore a fleece vest that cost more than my first car.
His hair was styled in that effortless way that requires significant effort, and his job title—Director of Visionary Ops—meant, as far as I could tell, that his father was the vice president of the holding company and Jared needed a reason to sit in meetings.
Behind him, through the glass-walled conference room, I could see his team—five other men in identical vests staring at a frozen Zoom screen like the technology had personally insulted them.
Their faces were tense, their posture theatrical, the whole scene screaming urgency even though the only true emergency was that someone used to being catered to was experiencing friction.
“The Wi-Fi,” Jared said, gesturing wildly at the conference room like he was presenting evidence.
“It’s lagging. We’re pitching the Series B guys in three minutes. Fix it.”
I took a slow breath and let it out through my nose, the way you do when you’re trying to keep the adult part of your brain in charge.
I am a forty-five-year-old woman in a tailored blazer. I do not wear a lanyard. I do not have a walkie-talkie clipped to my belt.
I was sitting at the conference table because the light was better for reading blueprints, not because I was waiting for a help desk ticket.
The fact that Jared couldn’t read that was either ignorance or arrogance, and I didn’t care enough to diagnose which.
“I’m not IT, Jared,” I said evenly, letting my voice stay calm.
“I’m reviewing infrastructure specs for the renewal. If you’re having latency issues, submit a ticket to the portal.”
Jared laughed.
Not a light chuckle—a harsh barking sound that made two heads lift from nearby desks.
“Excuse me,” he said, like the word itself offended him.
“I don’t submit tickets. I tell people to do their jobs.”
He pointed at my laptop as if that proved his case.
“You’re sitting here with a computer, aren’t you? Fix the router. Reboot the whatever. Just make the internet work.”
I turned back to the schematic and forced myself to keep my movements unhurried.
“I’m busy,” I said. “And I don’t have admin access to your local VLAN.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Or maybe it was the perfect thing.
Because Jared wasn’t actually asking for help.
He was asking for submission, and technical language always makes men like him feel like someone is speaking above their clearance level.
His hand slammed down on the table so hard my coffee cup rattled.
The sound cracked across the open-plan floor, and the entire office paused like a single organism sensing danger.
The marketing team lowered their phones mid-scroll.
A developer’s fingers froze over a keyboard. Even the guy at the espresso machine stopped pumping syrup.
Jared’s face flushed blotchy red, anger rising fast because he’d been challenged in front of witnesses.
“You know what?” he shouted, and his voice was loud enough to echo off the glass.
“I am sick of the attitude from the support staff in this building.”
He pointed toward the floor like he was indicting the entire staff.
“My father pays a fortune for this lease. I can’t even get a stable connection.”
His eyes locked on me, and his mouth twisted.
“You’re useless,” he said, savoring the insult. “You’re actually useless.”
Then he jabbed a finger toward the door like he was exiling me from a kingdom.
“Get out. You’re fired.”
The word fired hung in the air, absurd and confident.
“I don’t want to see you on this floor again. I’ll have HR send your final check. Go.”
I froze—not out of fear, but out of sheer scientific fascination.
He truly believed he had that authority.
It was like watching someone step onto a stage and declare themselves king, unaware the building wasn’t theirs and the audience wasn’t cheering.
The office stayed silent, the kind of silence where people don’t even pretend to type.
I looked at Jared.
Then at the faces watching us with wide eyes, the collective discomfort of people who knew something had gone wrong but weren’t sure whose job it was to intervene.
Then I looked down at the folder under my hand, the one containing the lease renewal addendum that was the only reason his “visionary ops center” had power redundancy.
The only reason the cooling systems had a grandfather clause. The only reason their servers didn’t cook themselves when summer hit.
“You’re firing me?” I asked, calmly, just to have it on the record.
“I’m firing you,” Jared spat, as if repeating it made it more real.
“Get your stuff and get out. Now.”
I stood up.
I didn’t argue.
I didn’t explain that I wasn’t an employee of NextGen Synergies, but rather the independent infrastructure overseer for the entire Skyline Tower.
I didn’t mention that the “IT girl” he’d just screamed at held the master keys to the building’s neural network and the rights to the commercial zones that kept his father’s investment breathing.
I simply closed my laptop, capped my pen, and picked up my leather folio.
I left the unsigned renewal contract sitting in the center of the mahogany table like an abandoned lifeline.
“Understood,” I said quietly.
Then, because I’m not cruel but I am precise, I added, “Good luck with the Series B pitch, Jared.”
And I walked out.
I could feel sixty pairs of eyes on my back.
I didn’t rush, because rushing would have implied panic, and panic was the one thing Jared wanted to believe he’d caused.
At the elevator, I pressed the button and waited for the soft chime.
Skyscrapers like this pride themselves on their elevators—high speed, whisper quiet, serviced weekly.
I know they’re serviced weekly because I sign the vendor invoices.
As the doors slid closed, I caught one last glimpse of Jared high-fiving one of his vest buddies, smug and satisfied, like he’d just asserted dominance.
He hadn’t asserted dominance.
He’d severed an artery.
He just didn’t know it yet.
The ride down to the lobby was smooth, silent, the kind of ride that makes you forget you’re falling thirty-seven floors in under a minute.
When the doors opened, cool air-conditioning hit my face, carrying the scent of polished stone and expensive perfume from the building’s reception area.
I nodded to Larry, the security chief, who sat grim-faced behind the camera bank.
Larry had been in security long enough to recognize real power, and he didn’t waste energy pretending otherwise.
“Afternoon, Miss Tess,” he grunted without looking away from his monitors.
“Everything good on thirty-seven?”
“Not anymore, Larry,” I said, offering a tight smile.
“Not anymore.”
Ten minutes later—exactly enough time for me to walk across the street, order a double espresso, and sit by the window—the chaos started upstairs.
I wasn’t there to see it, but I didn’t need to be.
I knew the script.
I had written the stage directions.
Up on the thirty-seventh floor, Marcus the building manager stepped out of the service elevator.
Marcus is a good man.
He’s sixty, wears suits slightly too big for him, and sweats profusely when things go off script.
He was carrying a notary stamp and a bottle of champagne, the props for what was supposed to be a celebratory signing.
I’d spent six months negotiating that lease extension with the vice president—Jared’s father.
Ten years of guaranteed stability, infrastructure renewal, and the kind of clauses that keep everyone protected when the weather turns and the servers start demanding more than the building can give.
Marcus walked into the glass-walled conference room and looked around with a wide, practiced smile.
“Afternoon, gentlemen,” he boomed, trying to be jovial.
Then his eyes landed on the folder I’d left on the table.
The unsigned contract.
He blinked once, then twice, as if he couldn’t reconcile what he was seeing.
“Where is she?” Marcus asked, his voice still upbeat but strained at the edges.
“Where’s our lady of the hour? We’ve got ink to dry.”
Jared turned, already annoyed at being interrupted again.
“Who?”
“Tess,” Marcus said, looking around the room like I might be behind a chair.
“She said she was setting up in here.”
Marcus lifted the notary stamp slightly like it was evidence.
“We need to finalize the infrastructure rider before five p.m. or the grandfather clause on your cooling unit expires.”
Jared scoffed and grabbed a Red Bull from the mini fridge like the whole situation was beneath him.
“Oh, her,” he said casually. “The brunette with the attitude.”
He took a sip, eyes half-lidded with confidence.
“Yeah. I fired her.”
The room stopped.
It wasn’t a quiet stop.
It was the kind of stop where the air gets sucked out so fast your ears feel pressure.
Headphones came off. Chairs went still. A developer’s hand froze over his mouse like it was suddenly dangerous to move.
The HR director, Sarah, walked in at that exact moment, probably returning from the restroom, and she heard the last sentence as clearly as if it had been shouted into a microphone.
Her face went the color of paper.
Marcus blinked, sweat already forming at his hairline.
He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, the jovial mask slipping.
“I’m sorry, Jared,” he said carefully. “You did what?”
“I fired her,” Jared repeated slower, like he was explaining to a child.
“She was incompetent. Couldn’t fix the Wi-Fi.”
He shrugged and spread his hands as if he expected applause.
“Gave me lip, so I told her to pack up and get out. You’re welcome, by the way. We need better vendors.”
Marcus stared at him like Jared had spoken a language he couldn’t understand.
His gaze flicked to the empty chair where I had been sitting, then to the unsigned contract, then back to Jared.
“Jared,” Marcus said, and his voice trembled now, panic rising into it, “Tess isn’t a vendor. She’s not IT.”
Jared’s smile twitched.
“Whatever,” he said, trying to laugh it off.
Marcus’s voice dropped into a whisper, like he was afraid saying it out loud would make it real.
“Tess is the landlord.”
The word landlord landed like a trapdoor opening under the room.
Jared’s face changed, confusion replacing arrogance for the first time.
“What?” he snapped, too loud, too sharp.
Marcus swallowed hard, and his eyes darted toward Sarah as if begging her to confirm reality.
“What technically,” Marcus corrected, voice rising as panic set in, “is the independent infrastructure overseer and lease holder for the commercial zones.”
He gestured toward the windows, toward the building itself, as if the tower were listening.
“She owns the rights to….”
Continue in C0mment 👇👇
the fiber trunk you use. She owns the lease on the backup generators. She holds the master agreement for this entire floor. I just managed the janitors. Jared, she decides if this building has a pulse. Jared laughed nervously. You’re joking. She was looking at a laptop. She was rewriting your lease. Marcus yelled.
Fired the person who was about to save you $2 million in retroactive utility fees. Jared’s smile faltered. He looked at the folder on the table. He reached out and flipped it open. There on the first page in bold aerial font, infrastructure reliance agreement prepared by Tess R. Morrison, managing partner, Skyline Infrastructure Holdings.
Oh, Jared said a small weak sound. She walked out, Marcus asked, grabbing the table for support. She say anything? She said, understood, Jared mumbled. Marcus closed his eyes. Oh, God. She accepted the termination of the negotiation. Jared, you didn’t fire an employee. You just terminated your own service contract down on the street level.
I watched my phone. A text came through from Marcus. Please tell me he didn’t. I took a sip of my espresso. I didn’t reply. The door had closed. Now I was going to lock it. Office is not on the 37th floor. It is on the fourth floor, tucked behind the mechanical rooms and the freight elevator banks.
It doesn’t have a view of the city skyline. It has a view of the backup diesel generators and the massive cooling towers that hum with a lowming vibration I find incredibly soothing. This is the brain of the building. The glass suites upstairs are just the decoration. I unlocked the heavy steel door and stepped inside. It was cool, quiet, smelled faintly of ozone and expensive paper.
I sat down at my desk, a sprawling slab of oak covered in monitors, and woke up my workstation. I didn’t feel angry. I really didn’t. Anger is inefficient. Anger is messy. What I felt was a profound sense of obligation to the terms of the contract. Jared had been very clear. He didn’t want me there. He didn’t want my services.
As a professional, I was bound to respect his wishes. I pulled the next gen synergies binder from the shelf. It was 3 in thick. I opened it to section 14 B. Revocable privileges and shared utilities. Most tenants assume that when they rent a floor, they get everything. water, power, internet, air, but Skyline Tower is an old building retrofitted for modern tech.
The base lease covers four walls and a ceiling. Everything else, the high-speed fiber, the dedicated HVAC loop for the server room, biometric security access, those are add-on amenities, essentially subleas to the building management to offer to tenants. Jared had just fired the provider of those amenities. I open the building management software.
My access level is root administrator. Step one, the elevator priority protocol. NextG synergies paid a premium for VIP lift access. It meant that when a key card assigned to their floor swiped in the lobby. One of the six elevators would immediately prioritize their call. It shaved about 4 minutes off the morning commute.
I found the clause contract status negotiation terminated by tenant. I clicked the check box revert to standard access. Now, they were just like the call center on the 8th floor. They’d wait in line. Step two, the freight elevator. They had a shipment of new servers arriving on Tuesday. I knew this because I had approved the dock schedule.
However, access to the heavy duty freight elevator requires a digital token issued by the infrastructure overseer. I revoked the token. When that truck arrived, they would have to carry those racks up the fire stairs. All 37 flights. Step three, the climate control. This was the big one. The building’s central AC keeps the offices at a comfortable 72°, but a server room generates massive heat.
Needs a dedicated chilled water loop to keep the equipment from frying. That loop is my property. I pulled up the HVAC schematic. The flow to sweet 3700 was currently set to high priority/subsidized. I typed in a new command set to base building standard. The valve actuators on the roof would take about an hour to close.
By tomorrow morning, their server room would be a sauna. I wasn’t breaking the law. I wasn’t sabotaging them. Was simply removing the services they had explicitly stated they no longer wanted from the IT girl. My phone rang. It was the landline. Only three people had this number. The building owner, the fire marshal, and the head of legal for the property management firm.
It was the legal council, Brenda. Tess. Brenda’s voice was tight. I just got a frantic call from Marcus. He says the VP’s kid fired you. He did, I said, putting the call on speaker while I navigated to the security badge database publicly with witnesses. He terminated our working relationship. Jesus, Brenda sighed. Okay.
What are you doing? I’m adhering to the termination. I said, I’m rolling back the uncontracted amenities. I can’t provide services without a signed liability waiver. Brenda, you know the insurance rules. If his servers melt and I don’t have a contract, I get sued. I know, I know, Brenda said, not asking you to stop, I’m asking.
How bad is it going to get? I looked at the monitor. I was hovering over the biometric bathroom locks tab. Well, I said, I hope they like using the public restrooms in the lobby. Understood, Brenda said. I’ll draft the liability deflection. Have a good evening, Tess. You too, Brenda. I pressed execute. The beauty of infrastructure is its invisibility.
When it works, you don’t know it exists. You walk through a door, it opens. Breathe air, it’s cool. You flush a toilet, it works. You assume these are natural laws of the universe, not services rendered by a contract. On the 37th floor, the laws of physics were changing. It started small. Around 3:30 p.m., the smart glass in the executive conference room, the stuff that frosts over for privacy at the touch of a button, stopped responding.
It reverted to its default state, transparent. Jared was in the middle of a private yelling match with his logistics coordinator and suddenly the entire office could see him pacing and gesticulating like a mime in a glass box. I watched it on the security feed. It was like silent theater. Then came the biometric locks. The interior doors of their suite separating the developer bullpen from the executive wing were secured by fingerprint scanners.
Those scanners routed through my local server. I disabled the account. The doors didn’t lock permanently. That would be a fire hazard. Instead, they failed safe. They popped open and refused to latch. Suddenly, the exclusive executive wing was open to everyone. The junior interns wandered in looking confused. The noise from the sales floor, the ringing phones, the chatter flooded into Jared’s sanctuary.
But the real panic set in at 4:15 p.m. I have a dashboard that monitors tenant tickets. usually is go to the building management, but because the infrastructure is mine, I get a CC on anything tagged critical. Ticket h#942, server room temp alert. Current temp 78° F, rising. Ticket #943, bathroom access denied.
Exec washroom keyards not working. Ticket hash 99944. Internet flickering. Packet loss 40%. Jared had called me it. He didn’t understand what it actually ran on. The fiber trunk they used was a split line. Without my prioritization code, their massive data packets were now fighting for bandwidth. With the dental call center on the 8th floor, the dentists were downloading massive X-ray files.
NextGen’s video calls started looking like 8bit Minecraft art. I sat in my office sipping sparkling water, watching the temperature gauge for sweet 3700 climb. 79° F, 80° F. My email pinged. It was from Jared. Subject: glitch. Body. Hey, the AC is acting up and the doors are weird. Can you take a look? Need it fixed ASAP. No apology.
No, I’m sorry I fired you. Just a demand. He still thought I was the help desk. He still thought he had the power. I didn’t reply. I simply archived the email into a folder labeled evidence of unauthorized service requests. 5 minutes later, phone rang. It was Marcus again. Tess, he’s screaming in the lobby, Marcus whispered.
He says the building is attacking him. He’s trying to get the maintenance guy, old Bill, to hack the thermostat. Bill can’t hack the thermostat, I said calmly. It’s encrypted with a 256-bit key. It’s hardwired into the lease logic controller. I know that, Marcus said, but Jared doesn’t. He’s threatening to sue the building for breach of habitable workspace.
Let him lease guarantees a temperature of 74° for standard office space. It does not guarantee cooling for a highdensity server farm. That was an addendum. The one he didn’t sign. He’s asking for you. Marcus said he’s asking where the hell the IT girl went. Tell him I’ve been terminated. I said tell him that as a non-employee I am not authorized to enter the premises.
He’s going to call his dad. Marcus warned. I’m counting on it, I said. 82° F in the server room. The automated safety protocols kicked in. The servers began to throttle their CPU speed to prevent overheating. The series B pitch deck they were trying to upload. It was now moving at the speed of a 1998 dialup connection.
I checked the freight elevator camera. A delivery guy was standing there with 10 boxes of pizza for the team working late. He swiped his card. Red light. He swiped again. Red light. Shrugged. turned around and left the pizzas with the front desk security. Jared’s team was going to be hungry, hot, and stuck in a room with open doors and slow internet.
The chain reaction had begun. While Jared was sweating through his fleece vest upstairs, I was straightening my blazer. I had a lunch meeting scheduled for the next day, but I decided to move it up to dinner. I walked across the street to the Capital Grill. It’s the kind of place where the steak is aged for dry weeks and the waiters know your name.
I was meeting Robert Vance, the CEO of Omnitech. Omnitech was NextGen’s direct competitor. They were a solid, unpretentious company that had been trying to get a foothold in Skyline Tower for 2 years. They were currently crammed into a sublet on the 12th floor, desperate for more bandwidth and better cooling for their own expansion.
Jared’s father had outbid them for the 37th floor 3 years ago. Robert stood up when I arrived. He was a man in his 50s, silverhair, impeccably polite. Tess, he said, shaking my hand. I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Is everything all right with the infrastructure renewals? Everything is changing, Robert, I said, sliding into the booth.
I placed a thin folder on the table. I ordered a pen noir. Robert waited, his eyes on the folder. Have a unique situation, I began. A block of high priority infrastructure capacity has just become available. immediate availability, redundant fiber loop, dedicated chilled water cooling, and VIP elevator priority.
Robert raised an eyebrow. I thought NextGen had that locked down for another 5 years. The renewal was a formality, wasn’t it? The renewal was rejected, I said, choosing my words carefully. Tenant representative terminated the negotiation and the service provider effectively immediately. Robert stared at me. He was a smart man.
He didn’t ask for the gossip. He looked at the opportunity. How much capacity? Enough to run your new AI division, I said. And since the physical infrastructure is already routed to the riser, I can divert the bandwidth to your floor in. Oh, about 10 minutes. And the cost? Standard market rate, I said, plus a signing bonus for the expedited service and a 5-year commitment. Robert smiled.
It was the smile of Predator who just found a wounded gazelle. Tess, if you can get me that bandwidth by tomorrow morning, I’ll sign the 5-year deal tonight. My CTO has been screaming for more fiber. I have the contract right here, I said, tapping the folder. And I can have the bandwidth rerouted by the time we finish our stakes.
We spent the next hour reviewing the clauses. Albert didn’t snap his fingers. He didn’t call me IT girl. He asked intelligent questions about latency guarantees and power load balancing. He treated me like what I was, the landlord of the invisible world. As I signed the counter signature, my phone buzzed. It was a notification from the building system.
Alert. Tenant 3700 NextG attempting unauthorized access to breaker panel 4. Jared was getting desperate. Was trying to physically reset the breakers. Thinking it was a fuse issue. Is everything okay? Robert asked, seeing me check my phone. Just a minor glitch in the old system, I said, putting the phone away.
So, Robert, about the freight elevator, I have a slot opening up on Tuesday morning. Do you have any equipment you need to move in? Actually, Robert said, we have a new server rack sitting in a warehouse in Jersey. We’ve been waiting for a slot. Bring it in, I said. I walked out of the restaurant with a signed contract worth $1.
2 million over 5 years. I had just sold Jared’s bandwidth to his biggest rival. And the best part, the fiber cables ran physically through the ceiling of the 37th floor to reach the 12th. Jared would be literally sitting under the internet speed he used to have, listening to it hum as it worked for someone else.
The next morning, Friday, legal machinery finally ground into gear. I was in my office at 8:00 a.m. I like the mornings. The building is waking up. The systems are ramping up. I watched the graphs on my monitors. Tenant 1200 omnitec bandwidth usage spiking efficiency 98%. Tenant 3700 NextG bandwidth usage critical packet loss 65% temp
84° F at 8:15 a.m. The phone rang. Wasn’t the internal line. It was an outside number. Area code 212 New York corporate legal. This is Tess. I answered Miss Morrison. This is Alan Sterling, general counsel for NextGen Synergy’s parent corp. His voice was smooth, expensive, and currently strained. I’m looking at a very disturbing report from our satellite office in Texas.
They claim the building is experiencing a catastrophic failure of services. Mr. Sterling, I said pleasantly, and familiar with the situation. However, I would correct your terminology. The building is functioning perfectly. The services to Suite 3700 have simply been aligned with their current contractual status. Contractual status. Sterling paused.
I could hear him shuffling papers. I have a lease agreement here that runs through 2028. You have a base lease for the square footage. I corrected. Please refer to addendum C subsection 4 guarding technological amenities. It states clearly that high-speed fiber enhanced cooling and security integration are month-to-month services provided by the infrastructure overseer subject to annual renewal and and the on-site representative Mr.
Jared Vance terminated the provider of those services yesterday. Verbally and publicly. He dismissed the renewal negotiation. Silence. Long, heavy silence. He fired you? Sterling asked. Smooth veneer was cracking. He did. He mistook me for technician, insulted my competence, and ordered me off the premises.
As per the harassment clause in my vendor agreement, I complied immediately. Miss Morrison, Sterling’s voice dropped an octave. You and I both know Jared is excitable. He’s the VP’s son. But we cannot have these systems offline. We are bleeding data. We are missing deadlines. What do we need to do to fix this? Well, I said, meaning back in my chair.
Usually, I would simply reopen the negotiation. But unfortunately, the capacity that NextG released has already been acquired. Acquired by whom I can’t disclose other client details, but the bandwidth has been reallocated. The cooling load has been shifted. You sold our internet. Sterling sounded like he was choking. I sold the available internet.
I said, I can’t sit on inventory, Alan. You know business. Okay. Sterling said. Okay, look. I’m going to call the VP. I’m going to call Jared. We need a meeting today. Name your time. I’m fully booked today. I lied. I was planning to reorganize my filing cabinet. I can squeeze you in on Monday morning. 9:00 a.m. Monday. That’s 3 days.
The servers will melt by Monday. I suggest you tell them to power down non-essential systems, I said. Maybe turn off the lights. Open a window. Oh, wait. The windows don’t open. Pity, Tess. Monday, Alan. And tell Jared to bring a pen. A working one. I hung up. Monday was going to be interesting. But first, they had to survive the weekend.
A skyscraper is a living organism. If you stop feeding it, it starts to die. By Friday afternoon, the 37th floor was unlivable. The temperature had stabilized at a sweltering 86°. The air was stale because the circulation fans, which relied on the same control logic as the cooling, defaulted to minimum turnover to save energy.
It smelled of body odor, warm plastic, and desperation. Most of the staff had gone home. They claimed remote work, but without the VPN functioning, hosted on the overheated servers, they were effectively on paid vacation. Only Jared and a skeleton crew remained trying to salvage the servers. They had brought in portable fans from Walmart. It was pathetic.
Little white plastic fans buzzing against a wall of industrial heat. I went home for the weekend. I gardened. I read a book. I slept soundly. Monday morning, 9:01 a.m. The system goes dark phase triggered manually. It was an automated expiration. You see, the electronic key cards used by the staff had a rolling encryption code that updated every 72 hours via the network.
If the network didn’t update the keys, keys stopped working. It was a security feature I had installed to prevent former employees from accessing the building. The update was scheduled for Sunday midnight. The network was down. The update failed. I arrived at the lobby at 8:45 a.m. It was a scene of beautiful chaos.
30 employees from NextGen were standing at the turnstyles. They were swiping their badges. Beep beep. Red light. Beep beep. Red light. What is going on? One of the developers yelled at Larry. The security guard. My badge isn’t working. System says expired. Larry grunted, tapping his screen.
Can’t let you up without a valid badge. Jared was there. He looked terrible. He was wearing the same clothes as Friday. He hadn’t shaved. He saw me walk in. I was wearing a cream colored suit. I was holding a latte. I breezed past the turnstyles, tapped my Mastercard, beep, green light, and walked through. “You!” Jared shouted, lunging over the velvet rope.
Larry stepped in front of him, massive arms crossed. “Back up, sir.” Larry warned, “She’s doing this.” Jared screamed, pointing a trembling finger at me. “She locked us out.” I stopped and turned. The lobby was crowded. People from other companies were watching. “I didn’t lock you out, Jared,” I said, my voice carrying clearly.
Your security protocol requires a network handshake to validate credentials. You don’t have a network, therefore have credentials. Fix it, he screamed. Just fix it. I have a meeting at 9:00 a.m. I said, checking my watch with the tenant representatives. Are you the representative? Because from where I’m standing, you look like a trespasser. I turned to the elevator.
Fourth floor, I said to the voice command. The door slid shut, cutting off the sight of Jared, trying to explain to his own employees why they couldn’t go to work. Upstairs, the 37th floor was dark, hot, and silent. The servers had finally engaged their thermal shutdown. The lights were off because the motion sensors hadn’t received a keep alive ping.
It was a ghost town, and I was the one holding the exorcism manual. The conference room on the fourth floor is nothing like the glass box upstairs. It’s windowless, soundproofed, and lit by harsh fluorescent strips. It’s an interrogation room disguised as a meeting space. At 9:00 a.m. sharp, the door opened. Arcus walked in first, looking relieved that I was taking the lead.
Then came Alan Sterling, the lawyer, looking exhausted. Then came the VP, Thomas Vance, Jared’s father. He was a short man, bald with eyes like flint. He wore a suit that cost more than my annual salary. Finally, Jared trailed in. He looked like a beaten dog, but a dog that would still bite if you turned your back.
They sat down on one side of the table. I sat on the other alone. Miss Morrison Thomas Vance started. His voice was gravel. Let’s cut the crap. We are losing $50,000 an hour. My son made a mistake. He thought you were support staff. He was stressed. We apologize. He nudged Jared. Jared looked at the table. I’m sorry, he mumbled.
I shouldn’t have fired you. Can we just turn the internet back on now? I looked at Jared. Then I looked at Thomas. Mr. Vance, I said, your son didn’t just mistake me. Publicly humiliated the person responsible for the structural integrity of your business. But that’s personal. I can get over personal. The problem is strictly professional.
I opened my folder. I pulled out a single sheet of paper. This is the renewal contract for the infrastructure, I said. Thomas reached for it. Fine, well sign it. Same terms? No, I said, pulling the paper back slightly. This is the voided contract. Excuse me? Alan Sterling asked. As a Friday evening, the bandwidth allocation previously reserved for NextGen Synergies was released to the open market, I said.
It has been purchased. Purchased? Thomas’s eyes widened. By whom? Omnitech? I said. Thomas slammed his hand on the table. Omnitech. The guys across the street. You sold our fiber to our competitors. I sold my fiber. I corrected. To a paying client with a signed contract. You didn’t have a contract, Thomas, but a handshake and a renewal that your representative threw in my face.
Undo it, Thomas commanded. Cancel their deal. Give it back to us. Well pay double. I can’t, I said. It’s a 5-year binding agreement. Penalties for breach are astronomical. Besides, they’re already using it. Their traffic is live. So, what are you saying? Jared piped up, his voice cracking. We just don’t have internet.
You have the base building internet, I said. DSL speeds. Good for email, bad for whatever it is you do. Visionary ops, I believe. We can’t run the platform on DSL, Jared shouted. Then I suggest you relocate, I said coldly. Because this building can no longer support your needs. Thomas Vance stared at me. He looked at his son.
He looked at the lawyer. He realized finally the magnitude of the screw-up. You’re evicting us, Thomas whispered. Without serving an eviction notice, you’re starving us out. I’m just the landlord, Thomas said, standing up. I just provide the walls. What you do inside them is up to you.
But if you want cooling, power, and data, you need a friend in infrastructure, and you don’t have one anymore. I walked to the door. Oh, and Jared, I paused. The freight elevator is booked tomorrow. Omnitech is moving in their new server racks. You’ll have to wait until Wednesday to move your things out. I’d suggest using the stairs. The move out was painful to watch, which is why I watched every second of it on the security monitors.
On Wednesday, the next gen team began the strategic relocation. That’s corporate speak for running away in shame because I had blocked the freight elevator for emergency maintenance. A loose bolt I found very dangerous. They had to use the service elevator. It was small. They had to dismantle their server racks piece by piece. Jared wasn’t there.
I heard through the grapevine eating Marcus told me over beers that Thomas Vance had reassigned his son. Jared was now the director of special projects at a satellite office in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I checked the specs for that office. It’s a warehouse district. The internet there is copper wire. Good luck, Jared.
Omnitech moved into the 37th floor 2 months later. NextG broke their lease, paying a massive penalty that went straight into the building owner’s pockets. owners gave me a nice bonus for aggressive yield management. Omnitech is a great tenant. They submit tickets properly. They say please and thank you. They bring donuts to the security guards.
I was sitting in the 37th floor conference room again 6 months later. Robert, the Omnit CEO, was signing off on a request for additional power. You know, Robert said looking out at the skyline. I still can’t believe they just left. Why would anyone walk away from a setup like this? I took a sip of my coffee. Poor management, I said. They didn’t understand the foundation.
Well, Robert smiled. We’re happy to be here. By the way, my nephew is starting an internship next week. He’s a bit of a hot shot. Thinks he knows everything about computers. I froze for a second. I told him, Robert continued, that the first person he introduces himself to is Tess.
I told him that if he ever snaps his fingers at you, I’ll throw him off the roof myself. I smiled, a real smile this time. He’ll be fine, Robert, as long as he knows where the power comes from. I walked back to my office, the bunker behind the elevators. I sat down, checked the monitors. Temp 72° F, stable, bandwidth optimal, tenant satisfaction 100%.
I opened my drawer and pulled out a fresh file folder. I printed a label, Omnitech infrastructure agreement. I filed it away. The building hummed around me. It was breathing. It was alive. And everything was exactly where it was supposed to be. My dignity was intact. My bonus was cleared. And somewhere in Tulsa, Jared was probably waiting for a PDF to load.
We’re all healed. Places don’t hand out justice memos, but somehow it always finds the right inbox. This story was proof that quiet moves beat loud egos every time
