Morning all. Are you ready to jump in to today’s prompt? I know I am. I also woke up early due to hay fever and have been pounding back coffee so I need to focus the energy somewhere. So timers set and lets see what comes out of our sentence.
I like the thought of the formerly replaced by computer person being called back when there is a major malfunction of the electronics. I would need to spend some time figuring out the details but I like the idea.
Tuesday, April 14th: Her hands were shaking.
Her hands were shaking. She grit her teeth and reminded herself that she did this routine a hundred times a day. This was in fact what she did every day of her working life. There were only breaks between when the routine worked its way through the cycles. Then she would take notes, adjust setting sand once it cycled through start again, with the minor adjustments.
The problem was she was accustomed to doing this on her own with no one watching.
Now there were three people watching.
‘Not just watching,’ she thought. One of the trio asked questions about her recent change and she answered while trying to complete the task she was in the process of doing. There were many questions. She had to answer them as her hands moved through the cycles on the equipment panel. She had to answer them while she was taking notations and making recalibrations.
All in all they wanted to question everything. She was uncertain if she would make it through without miscalculating as she had to answer questions and do the adjustments at the same time.
Figuring having the entire system go down while the important people were here would be a bad thing, she admitted long pauses in her answers when she needed to make sure the numbers were correct. She could see one of them tapping their feet when there was a pause between a question and her answer but she didn’t think the pauses were too long.
The problem was that the three visitors had no idea what the system entailed. It was, she admitted, the reason there were so many questions. The problem was that they didn’t really want to know how everything really worked. They wanted to know where they could cut costs and streamline things.
She tried to keep her tone blandly neutral as she worked and answered questions from both the financial officer and then the efficiency expert. Occasionally the CEO taking them around would ask something and she would answer that as well. The problem was, her department could be cut no further. When she started they had twelve people. The trio, or another identical to them came down periodically and made cuts and adjustments.
Over time the staff was whittled down to her and a computer program. At the moment the only further adjustment that could be made would be to install a computer program to replace her. At this point, she already accepted that as the inevitable outcome. However until they installed her replacement as the next cost saving measure she needed to do her job.
Finally they left and even thought the motion stayed the same her hands stopped shaking and she was able to breath a little easier. She knew her departments was not liked. They were a necessary function not something they could show off to investors or create a PR campaign for. They, or she and the computer now, just kept things ticking over.
She had already prepared for the inevitable and was not surprised when she received her redundancy slip a few days later. It was, in it’s own way a relief. She left, and another computer system was installed. She had the minor satisfaction in knowing that while it was installed the entire company had to be shut down.
She was as prepared as she could be. Her house was small but as she inherited it from her grandparents, it was paid for. She had saved well over the years and even made a few profitable investments. If she lived cheaply she could scrape by with a part time job somewhere even if she couldn’t immediately find work.
She had to admit that being the last one out had helped her. She saw her firing coming in advance and did her best to prepare instead of crossing her fingers and hoping she would not be replaced.
She was not prepared for the company to come calling two months after she was let go.
Ten til Midnight 