Her Bully

This is kind of a slow build with some systems development discussions along the way. If you have trouble with those, just speed read past them.

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My name is Mireille, (pronounced Meer-ay) which is a French girl's name, since I was named after my one great grandmother who was French. The problem, of course, is that no one knows how to pronounce it. I grew up with teachers and everyone else calling me Mary-elle or some such thing. It didn't help that I was a nerdy girl.

I had slightly darker skin, thanks to my great grandmother from the south of France, along with curly brown hair. To make it worse, I had braces and glasses for most of my youth. Beyond that, I was a late bloomer, so when all the other girls began to get boobs, I remained flat chested for some time after. Even now, I have no more than a small b-cup.

I was smart and studious, though not at all athletic. In fact I was almost a klutz and pretty much uncoordinated. Forget trying to fit in, I just tried to survive. I was bullied by some of the more popular girls. One of the worst was Angela. I had to think it was wishful thinking when her parents named her. Now it was more ironic, since she was as far from angelic as possible.

Angela was pretty, blonde, sexy, and quite popular. She was a head cheerleader and all the boys swooned over her. You'd think she would bask in her popularity and just ignore the likes if me. Instead, she went out of her way to make fun of me any time she could. All I had to do was exist for Angela to find something to make fun of.

"Ohmagod, here's the girl who can't even pronounce her own name."

"It's a French name, and they -- "

"And she thinks she's French instead of American."

"I'm American, but my name is -- "

"Of course if you look at her, it looks more like a boy pretending to be a girl."

"We can't all have your assets."

"No boobs, no ass, and she's always in jeans and tees. Why do we even pretend she's a girl?"

"Why do you even care?"

"Glasses, braces, and dorky looking. She's too ugly to be a girl."

Angela could go on like this for much longer than I could take it. She was athletic and bigger than me, so it wasn't like I could even physically respond. She could have beaten my ass with little effort. Mercifully, she limited herself to verbal assaults. We went to the same middle school and high school, so I had to put up with her teasing for years.

I went away to college, on a scholarship and got far away from dear Angela. Obviously I am being sarcastic in referring to her as 'dear'. I majored in computer science and became a damned good programmer, with a thorough knowledge of all the behind the scenes stuff. It isn't enough to know how to code, you're better if you understand how it all works.

At any rate, after I graduated, I began working for a company that did contracting for computer clients. I was a top notch coder, but honestly I am not an artist. I was criticized for having my screens be dull and very run of the mill. I worked with some more artistic types who did screen design and had much prettier screens that pleased the clients more.

I was working on a web system for ordering for one client and had the guts of it down solid. It worked exactly as it was supposed to and had all the options needed and only the options that applied to the product in question. Having gotten the basis down, they brought in someone to do screen designs to make it zippier.

So who do they bring in to do the more artistic end of my project? None other than Angela, my high school tormenter. I had not even realized that she was employed at that company. Frankly, if I'd known that she would be employed there, I'd have gotten a job somewhere else. At any rate, now I had to deal with Angela doing my screen designs.

"Well, if it isn't Mary-elle."

"Hello, Devila."

"Don't you wish you were clever?"

"Tell you what, call me, Miri, and I'll call you whatever you prefer."

"All right, Miri, call me Angie."

"So, Angie, you're doing my screens?"

"I hope to hell that your back end works better than the last clown I did screens for."

"My code works, and works right."

"Well then, Miri, we should get along."

I showed her my rough layouts, and explained the options and how they worked. For one product, there might be two or three options, while another might have as many as ten. There were levels of options, and some options didn't work with some other options, and my code would not allow them to choose incompatible options.

"And you have that so it works right?"

"Beat it up. Try it out. See if you can build some incompatible options."

"If it doesn't crash or lock up, you're doing better than my last."

"What the hell happened?"

"Raoul coded it. My screens were beautiful, and the damned thing would crash if more than three people were on it at a time."

"We can stress test this with multiple users, but it should be fine."

"The project with Raoul went so badly, they almost fired my ass."

"Even though the problems weren't your fault?"

"My fingers were on the project, so I shared the blame."

"That sucks. I'll make damned sure I'm not the problem."

"Given how I treated you in the past, I couldn't blame you if you took me down."

"I don't do shit work, not even to spite someone."

She shook her head and bit her lip. I had tested my stuff pretty thoroughly, but had not tried to stress test on multiple simultaneous users. I wrote some code to duplicate the effect of hundreds of users accessing it at the same time. When that still held, I then altered it to check on over a thousand at a time. The user had said they have a few thousand orders per week, but I upped that.

At ten thousand simultaneous users, the system slowed, but still worked and didn't crash. I went back to my client contact and asked how many simultaneous users it needed to be able to handle and what server capacity they would provide. They said max 250 users at one time and their server looked like it could handle that. I felt secure on that front.

I knew I was good from my end. The question then was whether Angle's screens would be so cumbersome as to slow things down. I looked at her first ones and figured out how to get that effect without being a drag on things. Given that I know my stuff worked, some people would ask why I wanted to make sure her part worked well too.

The simple answer was that I considered myself to be a professional, and I wanted anything that I was a part of to be top notch. If her part sucked, that would reflect on me. If it was all her, I guess I could care less, particularly with all the shit she laid on me when we were on school. I had no intention of letting her drag me down in my work.

It took her a while to get all the screens done and I had to work with her to make sure they provided all the functionality that I'd built into the system. As each was complete, I tweaked it to make sure it all interfaced with my code smoothly. I had to admit that what she designed was far prettier than what I'd done, but then I work for functionality, not beauty.

Angie almost obsessively tested the thing as we went along. I think she was afraid I'd take vengeance for her bullying when young by making this fail and costing her job. As tempting as that might have been, I don't ever do less than the best I can do. I have a reputation and I'm not going to hurt myself in order to hurt her. Besides that, she was actually being decent to me.

I didn't think her change in behavior was anything but trying to make sure I didn't sabotage her. I had to admit, she did a great job on the screens for this project. Not only did they look great, they worked properly with my code. She no longer mangled my name, and called me Miri, most of the time, though she even properly pronounced Mireille a few times.

I probably should mention that Angela was still very attractive. She had maintained her shape, even hitting the gym a few times each week. Though her behavior when young had quite belied her name, her appearance was always almost angelic. I was no longer quite as homely as I'd been, though I still had my Mediterranean complexion with curly brown hair.

I now had breasts, though only a small b-cup, in contrast to the nice c-cup boobs than Angie had. My braces were long gone and I traded out glasses for contacts. I also hit the gym regularly so while I might never be truly athletic, I was at least fit looking. Beyond that, while I always wore slacks, my attire was more flattering to my shape than the shapeless mess I wore in school.

Angie was usually in skirts and dresses and always drew the attention of men, which she seemed to enjoy. I probably should mention that I had no interest in men, and had always been attracted to women. Pretty clearly, I kept that to myself when we were in school, and even now was pretty subtle in my interest in women.

I had few relationships and none with people in my company. Too many people talk and it's almost inevitable that it won't last, then you have people taking sides, even if it's a cordial breakup, but more so if the ending was unpleasant. I don't need that shit, so I never expressed interest in anyone I worked with. Now Angie was very attractive, but straight and we had mucho baggage.

Back to business, we had a test system set up which mimicked what the client would be using. So we beat the thing up, including stress testing, making sure only valid orders were accepted, making sure all valid orders were accepted, and that everything was properly specified. Angie was almost paranoid in her testing. After the last project, she knew she couldn't fail again.

She came to me with a question. "On product Z240, it won't accept both LM203 and MN586 as accessories."

"Talk to Brad Johnson. He didn't want both specified for that product since the performance and life is much worse when it has both."

"Shit. I didn't know that, Miri."

"I tried to head off problems like that up front."

"So you have a lockout on that."

"Brad has an override, so he can have that built, if the customer insists. He'll tell them up front that the warranty will be void if they do that."

"And you even built in the override?"

"It can only be done with a certain user level code, Angie."

"And you won't give me that code."

"I had Brad test it. I didn't even give myself that access."

"Not even for testing?"

"Only when I was doing unit and system integration testing. Not for any other testing."

"A little paranoia there?"

"The users won't even know that access is possible."

"What if something happens to Brad?"

"I can change user access to allow someone else to do that."

"I didn't see any of that in your documentation."

"There's a separate mini doc which has that with only limited distribution of that doc."

"That's sneaky."

"If the other users knew about that, they might try to wangle that access for themselves."

"Not trusting, are you?"

"I had a budget system which had payroll data. They had a user with admin access but not payroll data access. The user changed their access to look at the payroll data and download it before changing their user access back."

"So if the admin doesn't know how to specify the access, they can't give themselves access."

"Especially if they don't even know that access exists."

"Damn. You're a lot more clever and sneaky than I gave you credit for, Miri."

"Brad and a couple top execs are aware of that twist."

"You're so fucking smart, it's scary."

"Angie, as far as the client is concerned your work and mine are one thing. We either succeed together or fail together and I don't intend to fail."

"So my work?"

"I test as thoroughly as my own. We will not fail -- period."

"You could probably survive a failure."

"Maybe, but I don't intend to find out."

"When we were in school -- "

"You were a major bitch to me. I won't say I forgive you, but I'm not going to do less than excellent work just to spite you."

"You could get me fired."

"My focus is on my job and my client, not on petty vengeance for what happened years ago."

Angie nodded and we went back to work. We were almost to the point of user acceptance testing, so we would be porting this over to the client and letting them make sure it worked according to their specs. As careful as I was, I knew there would be tweaks we needed to make after user testing. That is almost a given with any project, but I wanted to eliminate all bugs, and especially major ones.

The issues were pretty minor. They wanted to change the shade on one screen and they found minor typos, but they didn't affect the functionality. We made the changes and the client raved about it. In fact they sent a letter to all the major executives and board members of the company praising the work of Angie and me. She went from pariah to a star in one project.

Because we completed it not only well, but on time, we each got a bonus. That in itself was something of a shock. Seriously, the company never did things like that, but now the client was telling other companies how great our work was. In itself, that was great, but now the company wanted Angela and I to partner on projects on a regular basis.

I was happy about the bonus and happy that we were appreciated. I was less than thrilled about being partnered with my high school tormentor. Sure, she was no longer tormenting me, and in fact was downright nice to me. Still, there was a lot of baggage there, which I had not even begun to unpack. Could I really put all that behind me to work with this woman every day?

Sure, I'd been working with her every day on the project we just completed, but that was for like a month. It was something that I figured had an end date and I just had to hang in until it ended. Now this was supposed to be an all the time thing. I thought about it before going to my boss. I wanted to see if there were other options.

"Chris, normally we match up people on an ad hoc basis. Now you're assigning Angela and I as a fixed team?"

"Miri, we have a few high profile projects coming up. It is crucial that we have our very best people on these next few projects. You proved that you and Angela are our best people."

"Fuck."

"I have never heard you cuss before."

"That's because you never saddled me with the girl who made my high school years hell."

"You just worked with her on a project, and frankly you saved her job. Has she been nasty to you while working on it?"

"No, she hasn't."

"If she gives you any problems, let me know. Until then, just grit your teeth, forget high school and do your job."

I took a deep breath, then went back to my work station. I had my next project and I began to look at what I was given in the business requirements document. I began to build a functional design, then looked at who I'd need to contact to get more information. I had a decent rough outline of the high level specs when Angie came by.

I looked up at her and spoke. "So I guess we're partners now."

"Miri, I know you probably still hate me for what happened years ago."

"You think?"

"I've tried to become a better person."

"Does the leopard ever change its spots?"

"I'm no leopard, and I'm not being driven by what the cool kids think. You're smart and capable, and you didn't take me down when you could. I swear, I'll try to be a good partner. Haven't I been decent to you while we worked on the last project?"

"You were, it's just a lot of bad memories to get past."

"Let's start fresh then."

I decided to include her in the zoom meetings with the client to make sure we were doing what they needed us to do. I was surprised to find her asking intelligent questions, often about things I hadn't come up with yet. At the end of that first meeting, we both had a far better idea of what we were supposed to do. She actually was proving to be a competent partner.

Angie mostly focused on colors, fonts, logos, background images, placements, etc, but she needed to make sure the client approved of what she did. She got into some ideas to make the whole thing more visual. She clearly had the mindset of an artist. I clearly didn't. I just wanted to make things work right and didn't care about image.

I established the basics and began work on my technical design. I suppose some folks get straight into building and just do the tech design to cover their ass. For me it's an imperative, in order to make sure I build it right. That's why my projects work with a minimum of bugs. Angie and I often consulted each other and had regular meetings with the client.

Given our history, it may seem odd, but as we worked together, I developed real respect for Angie and even began to like her. In the back of my mind sometimes I wondered when she would revert to the bullying girl that I'd known years ago. She didn't though and she seemed to have respect for me and was even friendly and sometimes flirty.

I knew Angie liked guys, and as I said, I don't mess around with the people I work with. She was quite pretty and sexy and the kind of feminine woman I was most attracted to. I could just see me making a pass at her and destroying whatever working relationship we had and even having her revert to the bitch she'd been in high School.

Angie did flirt with guys around the office, and they loved it, though I never heard her go out on a date with any of them. She did a more subdued flirtation with the clients, which made them open up and cooperate better. You'd think that they would always cooperate, since it's in their interest to get their project done right, but some seemed to have a stick up their ass, at least until Angie softened them up.

In one sense, we were an odd pairing, with me as the no nonsense tech type who was maybe a touch anal retentive, while she was the social and arty type. Somehow it all seemed to work though. The client was quite pleased with what we did, though some of that pleasure might have been from Angie and how she buttered them up.

With yet another success under our belts, Angie and I as a team were stars at that company. The next project was a bit different. We had to travel and work at the client's site for three to four weeks. This was a new client who had been drawn in by the rave reviews Angie and I had gotten, so they couldn't foist another team on these folks.

I had no pets and so significant other to protest or take care of. Angie seemed on board with it as well. Part of it, I think, was her being happy to be on a team that was successful, instead of the idiot she's been paired with previously. In spite of my mild attraction, or maybe because of it, and despite our working relationship, I was uneasy about working remotely with Angie for weeks to come.

The company arranged for plane tickets and hotel accommodations as well as transportation. I had a couple of plants and arranged to have someone check my apartment regularly and water my plants. Since we were told the hotel had laundry service, I packed some clothes but did not go overboard. Of course I had my company and personal laptops.

I met Angie at the airport, and found the company had us in business class, which gave us more comfort, but had us sitting together. I had a book to read, but Angie seemed rather chatty, not that I really wanted to spend time talking with her. We were work colleagues, but certainly not friends. Say what you will, but I still carried some resentment from high school.

We were book in a hotel that was pretty close to the client location. Of course the company was only paying for one vehicle for the two of us, so we went together to the hotel. There I had my first shock. Apparently, there were several large conventions in town and nearly every hotel was booked to capacity. Instead of having separate rooms, Angie and I would be sharing a room.