Caught

J1 is here. Unlucky us.

We developed a new, modular Signal Generator based on VXI technology. VXI if you've never heard of it before, stands for Virtual eXtension Instrumentation or Virtual eXtension Interface and it was the next big thing coming in the world of high technology. Or some people thought so anyway. I remember reading about the concept of VXI in an early 1990s issue of Evaluation Engineering. VXI instruments usually have to be controlled from software as there is no front panel with a keyboard or display built in. Essentially these kind of boxes are nothing more than a standard mainframe packed with a bunch of instrument-on-a-card PC boards. They're flexible as each circuitboard in the box is a plug and play device. If a board dies, you pull it and slap in a fresh one. There's no hassles and you're back up and running in minutes. Provided you have an on hand supply of good spare boards that is.

Our VXI Sig Gen has one of the fastest signal switching speeds compared to anything else out on the market. I mean, it's like a supercharged race car blowing doors off the competition and leaving them in the dust. Funny thing is, it's not selling well. In fact it's turned out to be a real dog. This box is too capable and there doesn't appear to be any industry application that requires such high end performance out of a modular package. In that respect our marketing team royally screwed up. Coming along with high performance is a very steep price tag. So far only two customers buy this box, the military and some other product division inside our company. That's it.

With a less than desireable product launch and weak sales, management decided to roll the VXI Sig Gen product line into the department I work in. That's how we ended up with J1. He was in the R&D lab with The Drunk launching this thing so I didn't have to deal with him anymore. It was nice. Now that he's back and assigned to swing shift I have to work around him again. What a drag.

People are noticing he disappears every evening between 7 and 8 o'clock. Nobody can find him anywhere in the site after that. A few employees have gone out of their way to search for him on occassion. I know what's going on but I haven't said anything about it to his coworkers yet. J1 is evaporating into thin air just like he used to do on the graveyard shift and cheating on his time. Getting paid for a full eight hours every day while only working three or four hours is something J1 absolutely loves to do. He's bold to be pulling this kind of crap on swing shift though. Sooner or later a supervisor is going to catch him and hopefully fire his ass. I nailed him trying to sneak out last night, and I enjoyed beating him down for being a lazy dirtbag.

I was cruising through a deserted hallway in Building 2. J1 came around a corner, looked up and saw me. As I approached him I noticed he wasn't wearing work clothes. Instead he had on shorts and a tank top. He stopped in front of me and with a nervous tone in his voice he said, "Oh man. I'm so out of shape. I just finished working out in the gym upstairs, heh heh."
I asked J1, "So. What are you doing now?"
He replied, "I'm going to clean up and change."
"No, you're not. I know what you're up to. You are going to sneak out the back double doors into the parking lot behind the building, get in your car, and go home for the night just like you've been doing for the past couple of weeks and just like you used to do on graveyard when you were working with Musclehead."
J1 was caught and he knew it. He tried to babble excuses at me and I cut him off.
"Do you know what you're going to do?" J1 was silent.
Lecturing him while pointing my finger into his face I said, "You are going to change your clothes, and you are going to come back into the area. You are going to fucking work for once. That is what you are going to do. Got it?" He scurried away down the hall towards the locker room.

Hours later in the shift I passed by J1's desk. He was present and accounted for, the first time in weeks.