The Resort Ambassador Pt. 01

Derrick was tall and had some muscle, kind of like he was Doug and Mathew morphed together. He also had a huge french looking nose and a serious expression. Emi wondered if he ever smiled.

Emi told Derrick his work email and emailed him some info so that he could get his work machine setup with source code control, a chat program (Slack), and issue/task tracking software.

'We have a Jukebox plugin in Slack called Bong' she messaged him with the chat program.

'Just type 'bong: your_song_name' and it will queue your song up on the ghetto blaster with the iPod in it. It automatically finds the first song on YouTube and plays it,' she slacked.

'Or you can type 'bong: your_song_url', if you want to be more specific,' she slacked.

'If you don't like a song you can type 'bong: bong' to vote to remove it. If three of us bong down the song then it skips it and goes on to the next one.'

'What if I just want silence?' he slacked.

'Then you can go next door and sit with the uncool web devs or go hang out in a coffee shop nearby. Don't worry, it's quiet in the mornings. In the morning if you want music you have to use headphones,' she slacked.

'You know I'm sitting right beside you. Can't we just talk normally?' he slacked.

'Talk normally??' Mathew slacked.

'Who talks normally? Not me!' Doug slacked and he posted a meme of Bill Murray moving his lips in a funny manner.

Everyone supported the funny mime with various thumbs up and approval like emojis.

Emi swiveled in her chair and looked at Derrick.

"In the morning we like to be quiet and concentrate on work," she said verbally. "It is just too distracting if too many people are chatting out loud all the time," she smiled.

He didn't smile back.

Emi sighed, "Today just browse the source code for the Karpinski app and try to get to know it better. We use agile here, with two-week sprints. Next Monday we will start a new Sprint and you can start working on new features if you feel ready. The rest of this week you can help with bugs," Emi suggested.

Derrick nodded and then turned away and began typing on his computer.

Emi looked at him for a moment longer then turned back to her own computer. Her mouse button was becoming unresponsive so she picked up her phone and called Jeffery from IT. The room next door had a dozen web developers and a young IT guy they hired last month. He was a cute looking intern. He talked so quietly and stuttered a bit as he gave Emi her new mouse.

"Hey Jeffery, we are all going out to lunch with the new guy. Wanna come?"

Derrick seemed to stiffen.

"Uh yeah, sure," Jeffery managed to say without stuttering.

Later, they all went out to Sushi. Emi sat down first and waved a credit card.

"Lunch is on the company everyone," she said happily. "The CEO gave me a 'food only' credit card just for when new devs join or we have something big to celebrate," said Emi as she put away the card.

Derrick and Jeffery seemed to perk up to that news.

"So Derrick," started Doug. "We are a small team that's been working together now for over two years and Emi, if you haven't guessed, she is the lead. I do server-side, Mathew is an Android app developer and Emi does iOS and helps both of us as well. Mathew and I thought we were pretty good but Emi can code circles around both of us, plus she can do a little graphic design and UX as well."

"Actually, she can design a proper UI and create the assets in Photoshop faster than I can," added Evan.

"I cannot," blushed Emi.

"She can, and does. She seems to have a better sense of design than I do, although I can do one cool thing that she can't. I'm also an illustrator. I can draw." Evan said with exaggerated mock pride.

"Yeah, my drawing sucks!" exclaimed Emi. "I can't draw for the life of me.", she held her head down in mock shame.

"You have a lot of experience?" Derrick asked Emi doubtfully.

"I'll say!" piped in Mathew. "Plus her brothers are both senior software developers, server-side and Android, just like Doug and I."

"WE are her REAL brothers," said Doug seriously.

"And get this! Her father is a computer science professor at the university," Mathew chuckled.

"I guess that really helped," said Derrick.

"Not really," said Evan. "They always just tell her to google stuff when she asks anything, and her father hardly ever talks to her."

"You guys..." interrupted Emi, "Enough about me, ok?"

"What, she still lives at home?" asked Derrick.

"I'm right here guys... hey, how about that hot new poster eh?"

"I love that poster," Evan offered, coming to Emi's rescue.

"Where did you get it, Doug?", asked Emi.

As they ate the guys shared the story about how the poster came to be, Emi got all lively reminding them that her first deluxe latte and extra-large brownie installment had better be paid in the afternoon. Everyone laughed.

Back in the office, the rest of the day was rocking with all kinds of music, with the exception of a few bongs of some bad songs that everyone laughed about. Derrick put on his Bose headphones and listened to his own music.

After everyone had left, Emi was still there doing administrative tasks. Cutting a release candidate for the app for the QA testers, and moving some priority bugs up from the backlog and into the sprint in case Derrick was eager to get started tomorrow. Somehow, she suspected he would be.

Emi was the last one in the office, and ready to leave for the day when Jeffery came into the room walking stiffly. He sat down next to her looking quite upset.

"Emi..." he looked at her and blushed and then looked back at the table that his hands were on. He was shaking.

"I... I need to show you something.", he stuttered.

Emi started to worry. He was being very dramatic and serious. "What is it?" she asked.

"I... it's... umm... the CEO's computer."

"You broke the CEO's computer?" she asked.

His sweaty face was stiff. He got up and moved towards the door. He looked back once to see if she was following.

Curious, and suddenly concerned, Emi got up and followed. Not knowing what to expect, she decided to grab a couple of sharp-looking pens for self-defense and followed him out into the hall with one pen in each fist.

He went straight to the CEO's office and around the desk and pushed the chair out of the way so they could both stand there.

"What is it? A virus?", asked Emi, her voice almost whispering.

"Yes... er, no..." Jeffery answered confusedly.

"Mr. Woo asked me to upgrade his anti-virus and scan his machine for malware. I did and there was none, but he left a folder window open but minimized in the sidebar. I was in the process of closing all the browsers and apps in case the machine had to reset when I noticed a security folder that he had open." Jeffery said gravely.

"A security folder?" Emi asked, hoping he would hurry up and tell her.

Jefferey opened the folder and double-clicked on a file. A picture of Emi posing topless in front of a mirror appeared.

"Ahhh...!" Emi gasped pushing Jeffery out of the way and grabbing the mouse. She closed the image and clicked on the next one, where she was full-frontal nude coming out of the shower.

Jeffries' eyes got really big looking at the picture.

"Don't look! Don't look!" Emi spun the desktop monitor out of his view and then hit the power button on it to make doubly sure the image was out of sight. Then she grabbed him and lead him to the seat on the other side of the table. Then she turned the monitor back to face her and sat down in the CEO's chair. The monitor was still off.

"What... is this? Why?" Emi stuttered, her mouth and eyes both open in shock. She covered her mouth with her hands.

Jeffery kept looking down.

"I am not sure, but I think it looks like Mr. Woo has been spying on you using hidden security cameras in the women, shower room," he said to his left foot.

"Why... why would he do that, it's deeply illegal," Emi reasoned. Something was dripping on her hands, it was her tears she noticed finally.

She suppressed a sob and grabbed a tissue and dried her eyes and blew her nose. She grabbed one more and cleaned up her face some more and blew her nose again. She started squeezing the wet tissues in her hand until she had a really tight fist. Suddenly, with rage, she slammed her fist down on the tissue box partially crumpling it.

Startled, Jeffery looked up suddenly. He looked scared.

"Give me your screwdriver," she demanded in a voice that Jeffery had never heard before.

He grabbed it off his mini-utility belt that he always carried, and quickly handed it to her.

Emi grabbed Mr. Woo's PC sitting under the desk and slammed it forcefully on top of the expensive mahogany table. The side panel actually popped off from the force of the hit and she then dropped it unceremoniously on its side knocking his Rolodex onto the floor. She began unscrewing the hard drive.

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand while she fumbled with the screws.

In the back of her mind, she knew that this hard drive was likely important to the CEO, and she knew that she should examine the hard drive in detail. But right now she couldn't stop her overwhelming feeling to destroy the hard drive.

Finally, it was unscrewed but wouldn't quite slide out all the way. She wrenched on it but it only moved a bit so she picked up the computer and aimed the top corner of the side of the computer to the desk and slammed it down with all her might.

The hard drive slid out upon impact and landed heavily on her foot.

"Ouch!" Emi yelled as she picked up the hard drive and hugged it desperately to her chest. She sobbed again but then stopped suddenly. Quickly she opened the drawer and hunted around. There! A memory stick. She grabbed that too.

Emi looked at Jeffery and noticed that the young man looked quite shaken.

"Jeffery..." Emi went to him and broke her no-hugging rule.

"We have to call the police, Emi.", he reached for his cell phone.

"No... NO!, I need to talk with him first." Emi insisted.

"If he has more pictures on his laptop then that will be part of the investigation. He might hide or keep those. I want to be here in the morning when he comes to work. I will grab his laptop and check that too, FIRST. Before we call the police." Emi said as she grabbed another tissue from the crumpled up box.

"Promise me that you won't call the police", Emi demanded.

"Let ME do that please, Ok." Emi requested again.

"Ok...", he said quietly.

"Promise me!"

"Ok, I promise," he said.

Emi felt that she could trust him, but he was so traumatized that she was worried that someone would be concerned and coerce the info out of him.

"Let's go get coffee. We need to calm down and talk about this," she said, trying to make a friendly face.

Before leaving, she picked up the Rolodex and put the computer back underneath the desk, trying to make the desk look normal again. She covered the damage that she did to the table with a newspaper that was on a side desk.

It was dark, cold and raining lightly as Emi and Jeffery left the building. She had the hard drive and memory stick in her backpack. Jeffery was still hunched over and Emi was limping a bit.

They went to a donut shop and talked for a couple of hours. They speculated on what would happen next. Mr. Woo could very likely be arrested tomorrow and likely the company might shut down since he is the sole owner. Everyone could lose their jobs. Emi might even end up being a famous workplace violation example.

Emi really disliked many of the various possible outcomes.

She also worried about Evan, he was out of work over a year before this gig. Work doesn't seem to come to him so easily. He has a tendency to screw up interviews somehow.

"Jeffery, I'm a lead software developer. Do you know how rare that is for a young woman? I'm only 24 and I have an excellent career ahead of me. I don't want all this crap. I don't want to pay more of a price for this than Mr. Woo. Also, I don't want anyone else to have to pay a price for this. I want only Mr. Woo to pay. I've got to think of something," she said as she bit into another overly sweet donut.

"I'll fix this ok!" she said, trying to convince herself along with Jeffery.

After making sure that Jefferey wouldn't tell anyone, ever, ever, for the 6th time she finally seemed satisfied that he would keep the secret.

"Don't worry, I will make sure that you, Evan, Doug, Beth, Mathew, and everyone in the other rooms all don't lose their jobs, ok?"

"I'll figure out something in the morning. I'll meet with him and handle this privately."

"I'll make him, and ONLY him.. pay for what he has done to me."

Jeffery nodded.

"Go home, and just go to sleep. Don't talk to anyone ok? People will ask you what's wrong if you interact with them." Emi said.

They parted shortly after leaving the donut shop.

Emi tried running, but her foot hurt, so she walked all the way home in the rain.

When she got home, she walked directly into her neighbor's tool shed and grabbed a hammer. She looked long and hard at the drive. She wanted to destroy it so badly, but knew that she shouldn't destroy the evidence. At least not until Mr. Woo agreed to everything. So reluctantly, she put back the hammer.

She went inside with the hard drive and noticed her brothers and father watching her carefully. It seemed like they were watching a movie before she came home. The place was a mess. She went to her room, put the hard drive under her bed near a bunch of other old hard drives that were there and laid face down on her bed. She took a deep breath and pressed her head into her pillow. She screamed as loud as she could until her throat hurt. Eventually, she fell asleep.

- Furious Tuesday -

Emi woke up and got dressed. She took a peek at the hard drive under her bed and then left to go to the bathroom. She sat there and thought that it's going to be a hard morning, she will need nourishment for her brain. She decided to get an apple from the kitchen. Amazingly, there were no dishes in the sink and the kitchen was spotless. It even sparkled. Was she still dreaming, was this the twilight zone? She looked around and even the living room looked better than it had ever looked before.

Despite her dark mood she couldn't help but smile briefly. Those morons thought she was upset last night about the messy house and so they cleaned up for the first time in years. Suddenly she couldn't stop laughing. She must have looked so miserable last night that it scared everyone.

That felt good. To laugh again.

Emi put on a hoodie and ran to work two hours early. She stopped and grabbed a latte and a brownie. If she had to wait a couple of hours then she wanted something to eat.

She was the first one in the office, and almost went to the shower room by force of habit. She felt disgusted at the thought.

She went to the CEO's office and moved a chair to where he wouldn't see her when he entered the room. She sat there quietly in the dark, slowly sipping her latte. Once in awhile taking a bite out of her brownie. She didn't touch the apple.

With the hoodie, she felt like an assassin from Assassin's Creed, the video game. She wished she WAS an assassin, with hidden sleeve blades that pop out. A stab into the back of the neck and into the brain, in one elegant move. A split second and lights out forever. She smiled at the dark thought, and then she stopped smiling as she thought about what this was doing to her.

She decided that she was going to scare the shit out of him for a while, and then have him agree to pay her two years wages and then she was going to quit. He was also going to have to remove the shower rooms completely. No more shower rooms. He was going to give Jeffery a big raise. Jeffrey was getting peanuts as a co-op IT, but he was doing everything a normal IT would have had to do. Woo was taking advantage of him. Plus Evan needed a raise as well, she mused. A big one. He would need it since she wouldn't be there anymore to help him and the job would be more stressful for him.

An hour later, Mr. Woo walked in with his briefcase and his laptop, right on time. He took off his hat and his silver hair was illuminated briefly as the sunrise shined weakly between the blinds. He sat down and noticed his monitor was moved and he moved it back to where it should be. Then he pressed the power button on it. He tapped his mouse and keyboard trying to get it to wake up. Nothing.

Emi was surprised that he hadn't noticed her yet.

He moved the newspaper and noticed the damage to the table and looked at his computer under the desk and gasped. Then he looked around and saw her. The old man literally bounced in his seat he was so startled. It was almost comical.

"Good morning," said Emi in a surprisingly normal voice.

"Emi...?", said Mr. Woo as he put on his glasses to get a better look at the intruder.

She pulled down her hood and looked at him accusingly.

"What happened to my... the... comp...", he stuttered.

Emi just kept looking at him with dark angry eyes.

Wr Woo was a smart man. He suddenly looked really worried. He froze.

"Jefferey found some naked pictures of me on your computer last night. We figured it all out, Mr. Woo. You are in a great deal of trouble," she said in a still surprisingly normal voice.

Mr. Woo's hand shook quite as he took off his glasses.

Emi walked up to him. "Hand me your phone," she demanded.

Afraid and deflated, he reached for his phone.

"Unlock it, and then log in to your laptop, I want to look at that as well," said Emi, she was surprised how well she was holding it together.

He did, she grabbed both devices and sat down on the other side of his desk and started scanning his photo library and looking for a remote camera app on his phone. He did indeed have a remote camera app on his phone, but no photos of her in the photos area. Nothing in recently sent or deleted emails either.

He started to get up.

"SIT DOWN Mr. Woo!" she said slowly and firmly through her clenched teeth. Her eyes never left the phone.

He slumped back down in his chair.

The phone was clean, but the camera app had a remote history kept on a server that wasn't responding now. Likely it was trying to load from the removed hard drive under her bed.

She spent a half-hour carefully checking his laptop, it seemed to be clean. She liked that he was terrified, but a small part of her, a part that she didn't like right now, felt sorry for the old man.

"You know that you're going to jail for this right?" her grim face magnified the comment.

He looked at her, with a weird painful-looking grimace.

"That's right, you will lose the company and you are going to jail. Your life is over Mr. Woo." Emi said with a wavering voice due to all her pent-up emotion.

He started to get up but his wobbly legs gave out and he went down on his knees. He fumbled for something in his jacket and dropped a small container. It hit the floor and little white pills rolled everywhere.

"My heart... pills, water..." he gasped.

Startled and forgetting her anger suddenly, Emi quickly jumped up and carefully helped him to a chair. He looked like he was having trouble breathing. He looked like he was going to die.

Forgetting all dignity, almost in a panic Emi crawled around grabbing pills from the floor and awkwardly reached for a few under his desk.

She quickly filled a little cup of water from the water cooler by his desk and handed it to him along with the pills. With shaking hands he managed to eat them and drink the water.

While he slowly recovered Emi went back to scanning the laptop and found some emails that indicated that the security cameras were installed two weeks ago.

After he finally recovered, Emi told him that she had a deal that could save him and all the jobs of her friends and co-workers, but it would cost him a great deal.