“Good morning, Richie. This is Mondrya Foster.”
“Mondrya, good morning, this is a surprise.”
“I need a favor, Richie. Could you come to my office?”
“I'll be right up.”
With all the questions she had about Frank Collins, Mondrya wanted to access his personnel file. Since walking into HR and pulling the file wasn't an option, the HR system on the network was her only option. But the system had safeguards and she needed Richie to circumvent them. It wasn't too long before Richie knocked on her door.
“Mondrya, how are you?”
“Long weekend, Richie. Come in and close the door. How are Mary and the kids?”
“They're all fine. And your boys, how are they doing?”
“They eat too much.”
“I know how that feels,” Richie laughed. “So, to what do I owe the honor of this audience, your highness? Since you moved up two floors I don't get to see nearly enough of you.”
“You know you can come by to see me any time you want to. You do have access to this floor.”
“You could see me up here a lot more often if you would get Sheldon fired. Then you could use your influence to get me the I S Director job,” Richie paused. “But I forgot; you're a new style VP. Nothing like your predecessor, the late Mr. Coleman Wilson, may he rest in peace. None of that inter-office back stabbing politics on your watch. But I shouldn't speak ill of the dead.”
“No, you shouldn't even if it is true,” Mondrya said. “But everybody was tired of that stuff, Richie.”
“That's why they created that senior exec spot for him. They had to get the crazy old bastard out before he did something else stupid. Who knew all they had to do was wait a few months for him to kill himself.”
“Yeah, who knew?”
“You know what was interesting?” Richie said and made himself a little more comfortable.
“What's that, Richie?”
“Coleman killed himself on the same day as some state official.”
“I remember hearing about that. What was his name again?” Mondrya snapped her fingers a few times. “John Heard, I think that was his name. Well anyway, those days are over. No more office infighting. No more secret conspiracies. And I'm not committing suicide. So you come by any time, my door is always open.”
“Yeah, well, I notice that it’s not opened now.”
“I need a favor, Richie.”
“What's that?”
“I need to look at something in the HR system.”
“I can show you how to do that. It’s easy, let me show you,” Richie hopped up.
“Richie, I know how to access what I want to see.”
“So what do you need, Mondrya?' Richie asked as he sat back down.
“Doesn't the system have an automatic trigger that sends out emails when non HR personnel access the system?”
“Sure, it sends an email to a predetermined distribution list, with details of who accessed the system, at what time and what information they looked at.”
“Can the system be bypassed?”
“It can, why?” Richie asked slowly.