"We have a… problem, Sir," Nathan said.
Theon had a deadpan expression on his face. He was really not in the mood for any of what they had to say. "What is it?" His tone was flat and Nathan subconsciously edged behind Idris to hide himself a bit. Theon made him nervous.
Nathan stepped forward reluctantly and turned the tablet around. On the screen was what appeared to be a group chat of the Operations floor internal channel. Theon scrolled through it with one finger. There were a lot of messages. They were coming in fast, even as he was looking at them, new ones popping up at the bottom like something boiling over.
Does anyone know where the Harmon account files went?
The Q3 folders are completely gone from the shared drive. They are not where they're supposed to be.
I've been looking for the Reyes contract for forty minutes. FORTY MINUTES.
Who reorganised the system??
Was this approved??
I'm supposed to be on a call in ten minutes and I have literally nothing.
Theon put the tablet down on his desk with a confused look and an arched brow. "How long has this been going on? What is going on?" he asked.
"It's been going on since about seven this morning," Nathan said. "A few people couldn't find things,they thought maybe they were just looking in the wrong places. But by nine it was clear that the whole system had been restructured. The filing systems, folder hierarchy, everything just reorganised overnight."
"...It was Celeste," Idris said carefully.
Theon looked at him.
"Celeste did this," Idris said again. He was annoyed by the entire thing and all he could feel was regret for letting her take that seat. Celeste had barely worked two weeks as the new Director of Operations. She had come with nothing but her connection to the Aldrith name and an impressive resume for wedding planning. He knew he was part of the problem for letting her take control of the operations of the company, so he couldn't really pin all the blame on her.
"Let's go," Theon said.
__________________♤♤___________________
On a normal day, the Operations department had been very steady. Of course, it had been under the watchful eye and professional expertise of Azaria Freeman. Today, it looked like a building that was on fire. People were moving with urgency. Two people were crouched in front of a filing cabinet near the far wall, pulling folders out and spreading them across the floor, speaking to each other in low voices. A woman named Priya, Theon recognised her from the quarterly presentations, was standing at her desk with both hands pressed flat against the surface, staring at her screen like she was trying to solve a maths problem by looking at it hard enough. A small group had gathered near the printer. Nobody was printing anything. They were just standing there, talking, occasionally looking toward the office at the far end of the floor.
The office where Celeste was sitting.
Theon walked across the floor. He was aware of people noticing him with the sideways glances. Some people quickly moved out of his way. He didn't stop to talk to anyone and kept his pace steady and his face neutral and he thought, as he walked, about the chat messages on Nathan's tablet. I've been looking for the Reyes contract for forty minutes.Forty minutes. He thought about what forty minutes multiplied by however many people were on this floor multiplied by an hourly rate meant in real numbers. He thought about the clients who were probably waiting for things right now. The calls that weren't being answered. The emails sitting unopened.
He pushed open the door to Celeste's office. She looked up from her desk and smiled. It was a very good smile, wide and bright and completely unbothered. She had a cup of tea in front of her and a plant on her windowsill that she had apparently brought from home and she looked, Theon thought, like someone sitting in a coffee shop on a Saturday morning.
"Theon! Good morning." She gestured at the chair across from her desk. "Come in, sit down. I was actually going to come find you today. I've been wanting to walk you through some of the changes I've been implementing."
Theon did not sit down. Idris and Nathan came in behind him and stood to one side. "Walk me through them. Now," Theon said with a hard expression. If she noticed the particular tone of his voice, she didn't show it. She straightened up a little in her chair and folded her hands on the desk in front of her, adopting the posture of someone about to give a presentation they were proud of.
"So," she said, "one of the first things I noticed when I came on board was that the filing system was a bit of a mess. The folders were organised by date and department, which made a kind of surface-level sense, but it wasn't intuitive. It didn't flow with me." She said the word flow the way some people said obviously. "So I spent last week redesigning the whole structure. I've organised everything by colour code and alphabetical order. Each category gets a colour, and within each colour the folders are alphabetical by project name rather than by date. It's much more visual and a lot more organised. I actually think it's going to make things so much–"
"The Harmon account," Theon said.
She blinked. "Sorry?"
"Where is it?"
"It would be in–" She thought for a moment. "Orange. Because Harmon is a client account, and client accounts are orange. So it would be in the orange section, under H."
"And where was it before?"
"I don't know. It was all so confusing, so I organised it. It didn't make any sen–"
"That's how people knew to look for it," Theon said. "Because they'd been putting things there and finding things there for years. It was a good system. It worked. It didn't need changing without our knowledge or the knowledge of the department."
Celeste's smile fell. "Change takes adjustment," she said. "I know it feels disruptive right now, but once people get used to the new system–"
"Do you know how many open client cases are currently sitting in that floor?" Theon asked. He didn't wait for her to answer. "One hundred and fourteen. Do you know how many calls were supposed to go out this morning with documentation attached?" He looked at Nathan.
"Thirty-seven," Nathan said quietly.
"Thirty-seven calls," Theon repeated. "With documentation that nobody can currently find because the documentation has been moved and not a single person out there–" he gestured toward the glass door, toward the area where Priya still had her hands pressed flat on her desk then toward the group still standing uselessly near the printer. "--not one person was told where it went. You didn't send a memo. You didn't schedule a training session. You didn't create a transition guide or a map of the new system. You just moved everything. Overnight and on your own accord."
Celeste sat up straighter. "I can always do a training for them this week. I wanted to get the system in place first and then–"
"You reorganised the entire operational infrastructure of this company," Theon said, "without telling anyone, without a transition plan, and without any consideration for the fact that people needed to be able to use this system today."
There was a silence. Theon looked at her for a moment.
"You're fired."
Celeste stared at him. "I–"
"Today is your last day. Nathan will arrange your exit package." He glanced at Idris. "I need you to get the old structure restored. Pull whoever you need from IT."
Idris was already on his phone. Theon turned and walked back out onto the floor. Priya looked up from her desk as he passed. He stopped.
"We're fixing it," he said. "The old system is coming back. Should have it sorted soon."
She let out a breath that seemed to have been waiting in her lungs for a while. "Thank you," she said. He nodded and kept walking, back toward the elevator, back toward his office and his coffee that was now certainly cold.