However, Elsa was almost specifically picked to counteract that, at least in the mind of Clay. Though honestly, Brandon had to agree with Clay's wife Amber, that sending a 20 something, ultra-smart, cute little blond into that office was a bit unwise, and almost certainly doomed for failure. Elsa was a people pleaser though, and Clay thought he would try the soft approach before deploying other options. That and his best tech, Brandon, had outright refused to participate despite pleas from both the owners. Now he had been cornered out of necessity, he liked the Garnets too much to let them lose this foolhardy venture because he did not really try to help them.
So, when he strolled into the office, he was not surprised at what he found. An average height woman with extremely short cut in a suit was practically ordering around everyone in sight, like some kind of drill sergeant on a power trip.
"You must be the new guy I asked for." She said barely looking at him.
Brandon tried to be polite, "Yes, I'm Brandon" he said extending his hand, "You must be Miss Murphy."
She ignored him and his hand except to say, "Yes, I am, and I hope you're better than the previous girl. She clearly was not what I requested, and I hate wasting my time. I have a meeting to get to, in my office you will find a list of stuff your predecessor didn't get to. See if you can't finish them without making too much of a mess."
Brandon then watched her leave the floor in a hurry, no sooner had she left, than the previous flurry of activity by the others in the room suddenly slowed. Brandon smiled, and looked around the room, he saw a few fellow contractors from Resin, and some others he did not recognize, but it was clear no one on the floor liked the management style of Miss Murphy one bit.
His analysis of the room was interrupted by a voice to his left. "Welcome to the Ice Palace Brandon, I see you've met her majesty the Ice Queen." Brandon looked over to see Larry, who was one of Clay's other go to techs for tough clients. "I can't believe Clay got you to agree to come, but I'm glad you're here, maybe you can solve the enigma. Elsa certainly couldn't, she just spent the better part of two weeks trying to please the hell out of that woman and got nowhere. Not sure what you can do, but with your skill set if you can't give her what she's asking for, no one at Resin can."
"Funny, Clay said something similar, I best not let all this praise go to my head." Brandon said with a chuckle, "What's our status? Apparently, I have a list of stuff to work on, but what's she got you guys working on."
Larry ran down the project, the long and the short of it was Resin had been hired to setup the technology nerve center for what was to be a new regional office for their client Proud Stone Financial Inc. Apparently, they were an investment firm looking to create branches all over the Midwest that would be under the authority of this office. Brandon could tell they had big things in mind since they had rented out several floors of a building in downtown Chicago, which could not have been cheap. They had made it clear they wanted a top notch and very secure network installed along with several very powerful servers, a customer care center, videoconferencing in every conference room, and the hundreds of PCs required for all its various employees. It was a huge undertaking for a firm as small as Resin and Clay had had to divert most of his resources, as well as hire a few more, to meet the demand. Brandon knew his ultimate hope was that Proud Stone would sign a huge maintenance contract for all the technological hardware they were installing. To do that however he needed a good report from the head of the project which was of course the aforementioned Ice Queen. This was the reason he had first sent his best people pleaser, and now sent the best he had in to make the picky exec happy. Brandon knew if he could succeed here, it would be a massive boost to his friend's business, but cracking the Ice Queen was going to be no simple matter.
Especially given that Larry's report was not good. Long story short, they were behind. The delays were due to a combination of factors, from construction issues, to Clay over promising a bit, to Miss Murphy changing her mind every couple of days, the result was a slowed work pace that was well off target. Admittedly Brandon could see the Ice Queen had a lot to do with the delays, sure construction was slow, but it was not helped by her insistence on reviewing practically everything despite having no expertise in most of what she was reviewing. As was the case with the items Resin had been had been tasked with, her micro-management of the project was clearly causing delays. As for Clay's overconfidence, well he could not help that, but he would certainly try. He thanked Larry and went to look at the list left by Elsa.
The list was outrageous, half the stuff on it was certainly not agreed to in the contract, and the others were clearly more errands for Miss Murphy than actual IT needs. Brandon decided he would work on the list and, in a few days, see where things stood before confronting the Ice Queen herself. He called Clay to let him know that he would be focusing full time on this account in order to observe and try to figure out how things had gotten so off.
Brandon was able to easily dispatch most of the tasks on the list fairly quickly and ordered any items he needed to complete the rest. He ignored the items he knew were not in the scope of the contract, as well as the items he was sure were more the execs' personal errands than anything to do with helping set up IT. He had to admit it was a marvel she had managed to procure a full-time contractor assigned just to her since there really was not a ton to do. However, he soon figured out why she had requested someone assigned to her as, once the list was finished, she sent him running all over the place to speed along his coworkers. She even tried to get him to resolve some of the construction issues. After a few days of this, he had had enough.
Miss Murphy came in one morning to find Brandon sitting in her office waiting for her. From the look on her face, it was clear something was angering her.
He opened his mouth to wish her a good morning, but she immediately rounded on him, "Where the hell is the rest of your team? We have a contract Mr. Metcalf, and your company is clearly behind."
Brandon looked at her with a surprising amount of calm and replied, "First off, Good Morning Miss Murphy. To answer your first question, I gave them the morning off. I figured we needed to chat first, and funny you should bring up that contract because, while I admit Clay clearly over promised, I believe it is you who are far more in breach than we are miss."
"And how did you come to that conclusion?" she asked incredulously.
"Well for starters, I am not your assistant. Elsa may have done your personal errands, but I certainly won't. Second, on this list are several things I know for a fact aren't on that contract, which means you're either trying to bully us into giving services you aren't paying for, or you're trying to screw us. Finally, your construction crews are massively behind ever since you sent the project manager packing for apparently disagreeing with you. We cannot, and will not, install any of the hardware your bosses are paying for until construction is fully completed, as the dust and debris will be harmful to the inner workings of the very expensive machines we've been asked to install. Something we were sure to put in the contract to protect your companies long term investment."
"Your predecessor said work would be completed on schedule regardless of the construction delays."
Brandon smiled, "That's because Elsa is a people pleaser first and foremost, she hates disappointing people, and will do everything she can to avoid failure." Brandon paused and said, "But you knew that about her, so you bullied her because you could, and you knew she'd agree. I, on the other hand, am a realist Miss Murphy. The fact is you're using that we're small, and probably desperate, to take advantage of us, and what's more after your assistant and project manager quit you've been trying to do everything all by yourself. So, here are my terms, you and Proud Stone figure out a way to resolve the assistant and project manager issues. I don't care how you do it, but we can't do our job until those are back in place and these floors get finished. Second, if you want the more expensive items on my list, call Clay and renegotiate, we won't do those for free. Finally, from here on I'm the onsite manager for the Resin team, not you. They take orders from me, and no one else, all requests for their work goes through me." He paused to make sure he covered everything then finished, "Those are the terms take it or leave it. We don't need this so bad we'll be taken advantage of, and honestly, we've already been paid enough to have made this worth our time."
