It was Monday morning and Ron was sitting at his office chair, the whole place in silence. A graveyard of workers who would only get moaned at if they started talking to each other by the boss , Neal. He was so stupid he didn't realise that half the sounds of keyboard clicks he could hear outside his room were people on Skype and other messaging tools chatting to the person opposite them rather than working. For some reason he thought the odd chat meant no work got done and many a time he had come out to shout at the room to be quiet.
Ron sat in his chair watching Neal through the glass window he always stood at when on his phone. He always pulled the blinds back and forth looking around to make sure people were working not talking as he himself yabbered bollocks to whoever was on the other side of the line.
Ron hated his boss, he was a money grabbing, fool who knew nothing about the work that the office did to make his millions. He only hired people cheaply, then promised them the world before disappointing them and letting them down. However he always kept a carrot on a stick just close enough, to keep the employee interested in continuing to work at the company.
Today Ron was extra pissed off, he had been promised a share of a big payment from a company, if he would stay working all weekend, day and night, to create a new section of their companies website.
He had been coding non stop since Friday morning, no showers, clean clothes, and no decent meals all weekend. However earlier today, Neal the boss, had brought him into his glass cubicle to tell him that his payment for doing the hard overtime work, was actually only a 10th of what he had been promised only last Friday. Neal apologised, making up on the spot excuses about delays in payment from the company, and promising that next time he would make it up to him for sure. Yeah right, next time thought Ron. There would surely be a next time, but he was pretty sure the same disappointment would happen. He had had enough and wanted some payback. For too long Neal had taken advantage of him and now was the time to screw him up a bit.
Ron opened up Peerblock on his laptop, and a special PHP page he had written that took any command through at least 6 proxy servers around the world before delivering it at any computer.
As he opened up his application and prepared the code, he watched as Neal’s little lackey, Nick half skipped towards Neal’s office.
Nick was now the IT Manager, not that he should be, he was half his age and only knew just enough to get the job done. He had only got the job by accident when Steve his old tutor and the old manager had stunned Neal by telling him he was leaving after a heated argument. Neal expected Steve to come back on Monday, as he was always throwing hissy fits, but this time Steve kept to his promise, now Nick was made the dictator over developers on the office floor.
Nick was always telling him, what apps he could install and what code he should and shouldn't be be using, something totally out of his territory and expertise. He would often comment when he found Ron using a new tool to speed up a job, that he should “Stick to what he knew as learning new apps took time”, he was such a Luddite.
Also he would sit in his chair for hours scanning the gateways log files for any mention of people requesting banned, or non work related sites through a search engine. Often he would even spend time scanning the files just for any mention of his name. It was common practise for the developers who felt like East Germans under Stasi rule, to often write a search query in Google that would appear in the logs that mentioned Nick doing unspeakable things with animals or sex toys.
Nick couldn't do anything about it, and he could never pin point the person making the search as everyone used code to hide their computer name. As he wasn't supposed to be looking at the files anyway even having a go at someone for doing this would get him in trouble. Ah lovely data protection rules.
As Nick entered Neal’s office, Ron implemented his BOT, and ran it through the proxies, from China to Canada to France and then back here so that the last computer was Nick's. The final result was an email that would be sent to Neal, supposedly by “accident”, calling him names, talking about how useless he was, and what a tool he acted like as if he was supposedly emailing Steve.
It was the perfect time to strike and he pressed the button that started the proxy chain that would hide his own IP address from being found out. The email was sent and he sat back to watch Neal’s cubicle as he could see him in his chair notice that an email had just come in.
Neal turned away from Nick to read the email on his computer, as Nick stood there, hands in pocket just waiting for Neal to finish. He had no clue that when Neal returned round to him the cubicle would erupt in noise.
It was pleasure beyond belief as he watched Neal scold Nick for the emails content. He could hear Nick protesting his innocence but the proof was on Neal's computer and he was so IT incompetent that he would have no technical ability to trace back the email past Nick's PC and through all the proxy servers Ron had set up.
The argument lasted ages and Ron sat back in his chair satisfied at the outcome of his malicious behaviour. Neal ended up sacking Nick, and the office watched stunned as Neal opened his office door, scolding Nick as he walked down trodden to his desk to collect his personal affects.
Just as Nick got to his desk he turned round and caught Ron's eye, the contact seemed to telepathically suggest that Nick knew Ron was responsible. He would never be able to prove it but he just knew it. Nick had never liked Ron and vice versa. However someone had to take the fall for his revenge attack and Nick fit the pattern perfectly.
It was the price for being a lick ass and always sticking up for Neal the dictator. He just sat back in his chair and smiled as Nick collected his affects and left the office.
He may not have been paid for his work this weekend but this hack had surely made up for it.
For once Ron sat in his office chair feeling satisfied and happy. Today was a good day.
© 2021 Robert Reid – All Rights Reserved
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