Taking Stock Read Online Free PDF

noticed. She shuddered, feeling a bit like she’d noticed a huge stain on the back of her outfit after wearing it all day. This was more than a day’s outfit; this was her life. She felt small sitting alone in the office.
    Alert and back in the moment, Eric a faced the identical laptops on her desk. With only eight days to go, the bug list was longer than ever and the testers kept finding new problems faster than her team could fix them. Eric a worked her way down the list of completed items. She read through each problem report then connected into the test system and verified that the fix solved the problem completely. Checking everyone’s work was monotonous, but she couldn’t count on the QA person Brad assigned. Like many things on the project, Eric a was doing this herself. She wasn’t neurotic. It was the pressure, Brad’s needless pressure and his fantasy that she could finish on time with half the resources identified in the initial project plan. She was project manager, lead developer, and quality assurance department all in one. That left little time for anything outside work except a couple hours sleep and a commute that was more about hygiene than spending time at home.
    Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall shortly after nine o’clock . They stopped outside Eric a’s door as Brad leaned a muscled shoulder against her door casing. There was only one person who came to her office this late. She knew it was Brad before she looked up and saw the fiendish look on his face. He had a way of studying her with a smile lurking beneath the surface, a grin he couldn’t let loose until he was out of view. His torment was intentional, but why her ? She was driving his biggest project. If she quit or if she failed, he was in deep. Maybe he hated strong women. She posed little professional threat since he was Marty’s brother-in-law. No employee was going to supersede him. His cruelty made no sense unless it was purely for sport. He was the perverse type and she wouldn’t put it past him.
    “I’ve got bad news for you,” he said.
    “It can’t be worse than this bug list.”
    “Actually it can. I’ve reassigned Jenkins to the attribution project starting tomorrow.”
    Eric a’s face went slack in disbelief. “You can’t do that. Tomorrow’s Saturday. My whole team’s coming in.” She’d worked hours shuffling the workload so they could meet the deadline. Without Jenkins it was hopeless.
    “He’ll be here, but he’ll be working on attribution.”
    “How can you do that ? What are you trying to do to me ? ”
    “I had no choice. The PMs are screaming. This business is driven by the investment team not client services.”
    “This isn’t some diddley project. This is mission critical. We’re revamping the way everyone looks at our investment history not just client services. There’s no way I can bring this in on time without Jenkins.”
    “Don’t preach to me, Eric a. I know how important every project is. What you fail to recognize on the other hand, is that there is other work going on here. It’s all interrelated and the schedule is set. If you can’t handle this, I’ll bring in Devlin to manage and you can go back to coding.”
    “You can’t do that!”
    “Nothing personal. We’re all tightening our belts. You’ve got to slog through one more week. I can’t push the schedule. Marty won’t have it. If you need Devlin’s help, I’ll get him on board Monday, just let me know.”
    “No thanks.”
    Brad turned and disappeared. Just like him to let her work on a project eighteen months and then try to give it to someone else when it was time to hand out the credit.
    Fuming, too angry to think about anything seriously except doing Brad bodily harm, Eric a got up and paced around her office. Her eyes darted around her workspace, finally settling on the pages Gregg left with her. She laughed at them as if Gregg could hear then placed them on top of a pile where she could see them. No time for