The Boss and Tom Hartley

Stupidity is annoying. If Tom Hartley has a mantra, this is it. Annoyance is the highest emotional response of which Tom is capable. Tom has overheard co-workers speak of peers, bosses, tasks and projects with terms such as hate, loathe and despise. He knows intellectually that these people are expressing their deepest feelings about their work environment, but these terms and their owners seem unreal to him; they are caricatures.

Tom has only been with Global Financial for six months, but he has never felt like he fit in. Little annoyances have accumulated until they seem to fill his days. It started with the day his boss insisted he arrive no later than 7:30 a.m. and leave no later than 4:00 p.m.

"I'm not saying you have to tell me where you are every minute of the day. I just need to know if you are leaving early or coming in later in the morning so I can track your PTO hours."

Tom was annoyed with his cubicle. The window shades did a poor job of cutting the glare on his monitor. The low whine from his computer's CPU fan was nearly subliminal, an ambient annoyance. The way Karla in the next cube over greeted him with some insincere inanity every morning was quick and dull, but its chronic nature left an annoyance residue. He was annoyed with making his move to Minneapolis just in time for a particularly annoying winter.

Tom considered himself a capable professional who knew the best ways to apply technology to business solutions, particularly in the financial services industry. Tom had been an independent Registered Representative at one time, selling mutual funds, annuities, life insurance, and even stocks, bonds, and options. He knew the products better than most senior reps. The only problem was that he was a lousy salesman. So, he took a job with a small AI development shop in the early days of the boom. He taught himself neural networks, genetic algorithms and Bayesian inference. He was no programmer, but he could throw together a simple, single-layer expert system for prototyping purposes.

His knowledge of the financial industry coupled with his grasp of AI technology eventually made Tom a valuable asset to large companies like GF who were playing catch-up with upstart competitors who had been employing AI technology for the past several years.

Tom had already worked for four other companies like GF in the past three years. Each time he was thwarted in his efforts to be promoted he'd get annoyed enough at the company's lack of vision regarding his executive potential and leave. There were plenty of opportunities out there. However, even though his salary had grown to many times what it had been four years ago, Tom still had difficulties finding an opportunity to move into a Director or VP position. This was particularly annoying to him.

The recruiter pointed out that there were more opportunities for advancement at GF than at Tom's previous place of employment. "It's not really a lateral move because you'll probably be a Director in less than two years. You'd have to wait for someone to die at Allied before you'd get a slot. Plus we're going to raise your salary by twenty percent through end of year bonuses."

Tom was reaching annoyance saturation with his former employer so he took the Global Financial offer and started two weeks later.

A month into the job he was having lunch with some old friends and found himself struggling to explain his rationale for joining GF.

"It was kind of a lateral move, but I'm sure to make Director in under two years. Plus the bonuses are great."

"Yeah, if you can put up with the bullshit and bureaucracy at a company with 250,000 employees scattered all over the entire solar system." GF had been one of the first commercial enterprises on the moon once the Lunar Interim Authority opened up to free markets.