Life has been far from easy for the last few months. When my company cut back due to the economy and I was let go, I figured I'd find another job quickly. Good tech types are in high demand and my computer skills are VERY good. What I didn't count on was how many other really good techs were in the job market. So unemployment drug on from weeks to months. Eventually I reached the point that any job was worth investigating or I'd be out on the street pretty soon.
So with the mindset that I would take any job that offered a decent salary, I headed into an interview in a small fashion company of all places. I wasn't really sure what they wanted with a computer network expert, but hey, the dollars looked pretty good.
I found the address, a small brick building in an out of the way rural area. I entered through the single glass door with "Amanda's Creations" emblazoned in bright colors on the glass.
"Hi, Chris Marking here for a job interview?" I said to the extremely good looking blond receptionist sitting behind an oak desk just inside the door.
She looked up at me, almost startled or confused.
"Um. One moment." She said as she picked up the phone and pressed a button. "Miss Jennings. Mr. Marking is here for the interview... Yes maam... Yes maam." She said before hanging the phone up. "Miss Jennings will be out momentarily. Please, make yourself comfortable." She said pointing toward a plush love seat sitting against the office wall.
"Thank you." I said politely as I moved to sit on the love seat while she went back to work on the computer in front of her. I waited for several minutes before a tall slim woman stepped through an office door and walked toward me, her long muscular legs clopping across the tile floor in four inch tall high heels. Her long legs disappeared into a thigh length black dress that hugged all her curves, which were to say the least, ample.
"Hello, Chris Marking?" She asked as she stopped a few feet from me and held her hand out.
"Yes maam." I said, standing up and taking her delicate hand and getting a surprisingly firm handshake from her.
"I'm Amanda Jennings. I'll admit, I was expecting a woman." She said as she released my hand. "This is a predominantly female office. Not a lot of men that really want to work in this field."
"Well, when I looked up information on your company I didn't find much. I presume that the sketchiness of your web site is why you are looking to hire someone with my experience? I'm not exactly sure why that would require a woman." I said hesitantly.
She stood and looked me up and down for what felt like minutes before a she smiled for the first time. "Ok Mister Marking, come with me." She said as she turned and walked around the desk. "We make specialty fashions here. That includes everything from high end swimwear to wedding dresses, everything made custom to order, frequently one of a kind. Our customers come from high end, and sometimes celebrity, ranks. What we would like to do is to assemble a better web presence, order tracking, virtual wardrobe, that kind of thing."
"Ok. I don't see anything particularly difficult with any of that." I answered honestly, having already built similar systems with my previous company, although for machine tool products instead of clothing.
"The job isn't only being able to deal with the technical aspects. We're a small company and most of our management employees wear more than one hat. Your position would also be involved in customer service, helping our online customers with any issues. Do you think you can handle that kind of thing Chris?" She asked as we walked down a long wide hallway through the middle of an office area.
"I don't see why not." I answered.
"We'll see." She said with a suppressed smile as she pressed the swinging door at the end of the hall open to lead me through.
I followed her into a large floor area that was broken down into a large number of spacious cubicles that were about five or six feet high in a large bay type industrial building. I could see over the top of the cubicles that they were set in the center, with an aisle surrounding it and a number of more permanent rooms built around the outside of the surrounding aisle. The area above the rooms, and below the better than fifteen foot high ceiling, was enclosed with a railing and appeared to be used for a storage area. As we made our way down the main aisle of the cubicles, I did my best to keep my eyes from popping clean out of my head. A good many of the cubicles contained a people working at sewing machines or cutting materials at a large tables, usually one per cubicle. A couple of the cubicles however, also had a naked or partially naked woman standing on small round stage in the center, being fitted with items of clothing that were apparently being made.
"As you can see, we use real models instead of hard inflexible dress forms for working on our fashions. It allows us to make sure that the product moves the way we expect. Most of the girls we use are fairly easy going and won't be bothered by the presence of a man working in the office. The question is... can you concentrate on your work with this going on around you? How would your wife feel about you working around half naked women?"
"Well, as far as my wife, I'm divorced many years ago. As far as concentrating, most of these women are significantly younger than I am, so while it may be a distraction, I don't see a problem."
"I'm not supposed to ask, but would you feel uncomfortable telling me your age?" She asked, curiosity etched across her face as she stopped in front of a door at the end of the aisle of cubicles and punched in a code to the electronic lock.
"No, I don't mind. I'm fifty-one." I answered truthfully.
"Really? I wouldn't have figured you were that old. It certainly won't influence my hiring decision one way or the other though." She said as she opened the door and stepped in, flicking the light on. "This is our server room." She said, waving at the racks of computer equipment.
I quickly surveyed the monitors on the racks, recognizing the windows server screens and the all too familiar Apache web server screens. What I wasn't quite ready for was the large monitor that was flicking through image after image, apparently live feeds from a significant number of security cameras.
"As you can see we have a very complete coverage of the building, inside and out. Even my office is included, as is this room. I have a duplicate of this monitor in my office with the ability to manually flip to each camera. We archive the video feed for at least a month. Of course security of these feeds are paramount!" She said emphatically.
"I can understand why."
"So what do you think?" She asked.
"Well, I can see your last tech had you fairly updated on server software, but I can tell that you're going to need some new software and some serious firewall hardware to accomplish what you want safely. I'm guessing, just off the top that you're looking at something over seventy thousand to set up what you have suggested. That just includes the hardware and software, not development time. I'm guessing that we're looking at six months or so to get online safely, excluding the virtual wardrobe, unless you throw some kind of twist at me on the order tracking software." I answered, looking over the hardware available and trying to put a quick mental budget together.
