“Morning, Jacob, do you want your usual tea?” Julie asked, throwing him a smile that should have dazzled him but which he totally missed.
She gave him the daily once over. She liked his six feet plus, athletic build, strong determined jaw, thick dark hair, and often fantasized about the possibilities. What she wouldn’t give to run her fingers through his hair and see if it felt as rich as it looked. He was nice enough even though he was oblivious to her flirting.
“Ah well!” she sighed.
“Hey, Julie. Yep, that would be great, thanks.” Jacob smiled at her but mentally went back to organizing his morning. He knew he had to finish up the Citybankers review project and review Tom’s pen-test for World Bank. A team meeting was also in his morning plan.
“Here you go, Jacob. That’ll be two dollars and twenty-six cents,” she said as she handed him his tea and a fresh muffin along with another dazzling smile.
A little extra notice would be nice, she silently screamed. Some guys were just too into their thoughts to see what was right in front of them. Someday, he will notice me, by hook or crook, she smiled.
“Here you go, Julie, thanks,” Jacob handed her three dollars and picked up the tea and muffin, not acknowledging that he was truly getting a deal. He turned to walk away toward the elevators when reality aligned.
He turned and smiled at Julie, “Hey, thanks for the extra snack. You’re sweet.”
She beamed and gave him one more megawatt smile and returned to the grumpy customer in line.
Entering the elevator with a few folks, he punched the 28th floor. The elevator stalled until he inserted his access card, and then the doors finally closed. The group inside was quiet, obviously all still waking up or focused on their day ahead. Exiting on his floor, he used his security badge with biometric hand scan to enter the PT office space. He was still a bit early and most of his teammates weren’t in yet. He did say hi to his boss Brian, as he passed his office headed toward his own cube.
He had no sooner connected his PC when Brian leaned over the cube wall.
“There’s a team meeting today at nine-thirty in the big conference room. I am handing out projects for the next month, Jacob. I wanted to warn you in advance that I expect you to head up the team review for the major New York bank project. We need to put a bow on this one and finish it this week for billing out. I really don’t have a long-term project for you yet, but there is nothing to worry about.” Brian’s confidence was catching.
“Sure thing, Brian,” Jacob stated with the same level of conviction. “I’m always happy to work on any project assigned.”
Jacob wanted to mention his success in locating the problem with the Open Source programs, but it really was not applicable to work. Jacob didn’t think Brian would even be interested. Brian was so ready to retire in a couple of years that he always seemed to simply want to keep things upright and on course. In Jacob’s mind though, Brian had been supportive, like a mentor.
Jacob finished up his current project just in time to attend the team meeting. Jacob was the newest member of the PT team. He felt like he was still being tested and measured in his performance on the team. He said little during the meetings and pretty much kept to himself, outside of team projects. Granted, the other team members accepted him and often sought his opinion on specific items, but the camaraderie was work related not personal. He knew that was his choice, at least for now. Yep, too much work and too little play made Jacob a dull boy.
He liked pen-testing as it provided a way to use his imagination like a bad guy and then apply practices to prevent bad guy security breaches. Over the last two years he had found and fixed many potential breaches. Being a part of PT, Inc., meant he was in a fairly elite position, which was really a boost to his career. But PT was smaller than he had originally thought, and they were so regimented in process and procedure that at times it felt like the team was not getting ahead of the curve. The leaders within the financial community globally frequently used PT to check out problems in advance, but Jacob felt they could do more.
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