One rung at a time

[Raziel]

“Good morning, AEL technical support how can I help you?” The first phone call, of the first day. Much tedium awaited.

“I see, have you tried turning your datapad off and then on again?” He smiled for the holo-camera before him as he spoke into the microphone, all part of an efficient and friendly customer service.

“Excellent, happy to have been of service. Please do respond to a short customer satisfaction report that will b…” he continued, before the line was cut off. He sighed, this job had better be worth it, he thought to himself.

Kirkstan Bolo was a spy. He didn’t even know who he was a spy for. They’d got in touch very discretely and he’d spent the last few months in training whilst continuing his old support job. Apparently his background was so clean and so boring, he was the perfect agent. He didn't feel like the perfect agent.

“Good morning AEL technical support, how may I be of assistance?”

They’d sat him down with several Force Users, teaching him to keep his thoughts to himself. It turned out it wasn’t about closing one’s mind off – that was obvious. It was about ensuring that your surface thoughts projected the information you wanted to be found.

“Have you tried turning it off and…oh ok. Could you please give me your terminal number and I’ll check that out?”

Of course, sat at a desk doing the job any VI could take a crack at wasn’t going to get him anything. He had access to his scripts and some basic functionality. He would have to slowly climb the ladder to get to anything useful.

“Can you see your messages now?”

So far his new employers had smoothed the process of getting a mortgage and sorted out some training for him, but that was all. If he turned up to work in a flash car, or his bank balance suddenly rocketed it would be noticed.

“Excellent, I’m glad to have…” he replied before being cut off again.

It was a long game. Once he was promoted and had more access he could provide more valuable information. At some point in the future he would be extracted and would receive the pay of a mid-level executive for all his months or years of service in one lump sum. He may not even send anything of use back, for all he knew this job could be for life, in which case he’d get the extra pay as a pension top up. More than enough to make his life extremely comfortable once he was finished. But for now there was only tedium.

“Welcome to AEL tech support, have you tried to turn your terminal off and then on again?”

 

[Velok the Younger]

[member="Raziel"]

A corporation as nouveau grande as Akure Executive Interstellar had, of necessity, a problematized capacity for employee monitoring. By what few indicators were available to them, however, Kirkstan Bolo approached a sort of bland impressiveness. Call monitoring revealed no real anomalies, he generated few callbacks, and he handled calls quickly. He did not wear perfume in his office or deface it with unsightly foliage or knickknacks. After three months he was promoted to Team Lead, which functionally equated to assignation of donut duties for weekly morale meetings.

The corporation was trying to eat his soul. AEI being AEI, this was a longstanding office joke which had long since been leached of humor.

On week fourteen, the qo'saarai moved in. He'd heard of them, doubtless -- eight feet tall, blue-gray pelts, boneshattering tails, canine features in the same sense that a nexu is a cat. They'd been working security for AEI for a while now. This facility got a pair of them; he never caught their names. Once, offhand, he wondered aloud where they'd come from, what their homeworld was, and why they had what looked like surgical scars around their thumbs. His supervisor's supervisor gave him a quick, sharp, and perhaps unenlightening call, even if his observations had been situated in the context of bathroom maintenance and hair.

 

[Raziel]

[member="Rave Merrill"]

“So, as you can see from this month’s chart – once again – some of you are seeing a lot more calls through to successful completion,” Kirkstan droned. Behind him the colourful, three-dimensional plots expanded to show the names against each of the employee’s tracks. “Next week we’ll get the results of the customer experience survey. If any of you who have some out in the bottom quartile for calls handled do not come out exceptionally, and I mean exceptionally – I’m talking every customer feeling emotionally, spiritually and sexually satisfied at the end of every call – we’ll be having words.

“For those who have achieved an “outstanding” level, there will be tangible rewards!” The last few months had been hard work. He’d put in long shifts and come up with innovative ways to invigorate the team. At a chance encounter at a bar, someone had mentioned that his own progress had been slower than expected.

His ace in the hole had turned out to be zero-g golf. He now had a regular session with Derek. Derek was an important man in third-line support. Those were the people who had direct access to the core network. Each week he made sure to mention ways that he’d got the first line call handlers motivated. If there was to be a direction of travel in his career it would have to be that way to ensure he could provide something useful to his shadow employers.

At that moment one of the blue-skinned Qo'saarai padded past the glass-box meeting room on all four. Surely no other companies in the Galaxy had such bizarre creatures for security guards. He’d once worked somewhere where they kept a Gamorrean on the door, but those things made his skin crawl.