If you’re not familiar with Stac, they invented Stacker—a hard dirve compression tool. “Breaking the 2:1 ratio” used to be their motto. Stac was also the only company I know to successfully sue Microsoft; specifically for the stacker code that you can find in Windows 95. Check your registry if you don’t believe me.
Reachout worked much like PC Anywhere. There were originally six people on the Reachout queue but that was reduced to four when the calls stopped coming in.
I worked the Replica queue. It was backup and disaster recovery software that required a SCSI tape drive and operated on NT 3.5 and Novell 3.12 and 4.11.
Replica was a tough product. You had to understand NT, Novell, and SCSI in order to work around it. We didn’t have that many calls but they were usually long and difficult.
We were also one of the few groups allowed to have chat software on our machines at work. We used it to communicate with the level II techs in California and it prevented a lot of needless putting the customer on hold. Yeah, we got social when there was nothing going on, but it saved us a lot of time when there was a technical or administrative question.
After a while, we because a kind of autonomous collective. We didn’t really need our supervisor for anything because we could always ask the guys in California when we needed to. Eventually, we only saw our supervisor, Chris, when we needed our paychecks or received snail mail. Everything else was handled through chat.
Just as well, I guess. Chris was also co-supervising the Network Associates group with Fredrick Franklin. My husband, Phil, worked in that group and had butted heads with Fred a few times. Well, Phil and a few others had butted heads with Fred. Fred had a bad habit of hiring people based on their looks.
Finally, in May of 1999, Phil couldn’t take it anymore and left Software Spectrum to join his buddy Havoc at ASD. A week later, Chris handed me Phil’s last check. We deposited the check and thought nothing of it.
Two months later, checks were bouncing right and left. It turns out Software Spectrum had done a stop payment on the check 60 days after it had been deposited.
Phil called payroll and asked what had happened. They tried to explain it as a problem with direct deposit. The story changed when Phil pointed out we didn’t have direct deposit. Then they tried to tell him it had been mis-mailed. Again, the story changed when Phil mentioned it hadn’t been mailed.
There were other changes going on at Spectrum at the time. The two surviving co-founders were in the midst of an ugly divorce and Spectrum had lost the Network Associates contract. The Replica supervisor, Chris, had stepped down from the management position to work as a floor tech in the Windows 98 queue.
We now had a new supervisor: Toby.
I can’t really say we interacted with Toby any more than we did with Chris. Chris at least had been in the same building with us, in the same section. Toby was over in building 3 with the Microsoft contracts. If you needed to talk to Toby, you had to go find him.
I was getting increasingly frustrated with working at Spectrum. Debra Vilbig had re-appeared in everyone’s life (after her smashing job with Stream) and was pulling a lot of the same old tricks. Our insurance was getting more expensive and we were moved from salaried to hourly to “make us more market comparable.” (Oh? You mean like Stream?) Payroll had never given anyone a satisfactory answer to the what up on Phil’s last check.
Dart was also upset with the goings on at Spectrum. Her boyfriend at the time, Buddy, was having problems with his glaucoma and the change in insurance plans wasn’t helping. Everyone’s check was getting messed with one way or another and all of us were thinking about moving on.
Now, remember what I said about Replica being a tough product? If we were going to leave, we were going to need replacements. We didn’t have anything against Stac and that’s really who would suffer in that scenario.
With this in mind, Dart drew up a proposal letter to get two trainees and start the process so they’d be up to speed when we left. She sent it out to the rest of the group and we made our little changes here and there until everyone was happy with it. Once we had reached a consensus on the letter, Dart sent it out to Toby.
Now, I wasn’t in the meeting with Dart and Toby, so I can’t tell you what specifically happened, but when Dart came back she was livid.
“Did anyone here complain about that letter?”
No, we had all agreed to it. We had all worked on it together so if anyone had a problem they would have said something before it went out.
“That bastard lied to me,” said Dart. “Lied to my face. He said that he had received ‘numerous’ complaints about the letter when it was sent out.”
A quick tally revealed no one in either group had talked to Toby about the letter or anything else.
Now, I was cashing my checks at Ace by this time. Having not gotten a decent answer (any answer, really) to the incident with Phil’s check, I pretty much didn’t trust Spectrum to pay me and have it stick.
And then my paycheck bounced.
Now, if you’ve been to an Ace cashing center, you know it’s no big deal. But one day, they handed the check back to me and informed they couldn’t cash it because the bank had reported “insufficient funds”.
I tried calling payroll but no one there knew what was going on. I tried working my way up the chain—no one could, or would, give me an answer.
So, the next day, I told the guys in California what was going on and explained I would be taking a vacation until the check could be cashed.
It took three days.
I knew when I got back that Toby was going to fire me. I knew it and so did everyone else and I didn’t care. Dart had interviewed with ASD two days prior and Steve was looking at moving to Nortel.
Toby sent me mail and asked me to come visit him in his “office” (cube). I messaged everyone, “Well, it’s been fun.” and we all said our goodbyes.
I already had my access badge in hand when I saw Toby. I set it on his desk and asked, “You wanted to see me?” and he explained that I had taken a vacation without approval and that kind of behavior was inexcusable. I explained the situation with the check and he informed me I should have followed protocol and talked to payroll. I explained I had talked to payroll and he said he didn’t believe me. I told him he was a liar, that he had lied to Dart, that he had lied to the rest of the group, and I wasn’t interested in wasting anymore time with a company that couldn’t pay me and was run by liars.
And, Adios…I was gone.
A week later I was working at Compucom.
Two days later, Dart informed Toby she was leaving and sorry for the short notice and all.
Steve left for Nortel within the month.
The others went their separate ways and Spectrum lost the Stac contract. Boo-hoo.