Sylvia Bishop - Chapter 5: Getting to know you

 Chapter 4: link.

“Do you have to be close to an animal to talk to it?” I asked, curiously. We’d kept to mundane conversation during lunch, and finished eating right as the lunch rush really started – a ploy I’d used before to get out of awkward meetings. It was a glorious day, so we decided to walk along the Inner Harbor together.

“No, and that’s come in quite useful a time or two,” Bast replied. He was wearing almost the same outfit as when I first met him – jeans and a t-shirt – but with black sneakers instead of hiking boots. His cowboy hat attracted some odd looks from the city dwellers and tourists, but he wore it comfortably. I’d dressed similarly, though without a hat, and I squinted against the mid-day sun as I looked at him quizzically, inviting him to elaborate.

“I was out hiking one day not long after I moved out here,” he continued. “I wanted to check out the Appalachian Trail, because it’s usually not very busy, so you get to see lots of animals instead of humans. I was paying more attention to the birds in the canopy than where I was going when I suddenly heard something… it’s hard to describe, but – that feeling you get when you’re chatting with a stranger at a bar and suddenly they smash a bottle on the bar and face you down? It sounded like that feeling of ‘oh crap, this is bad.’”

Sylvia Bishop - Chapter 4: TGI-Frank

Chapter 3: Link

            Frank was still distracted when I said goodbye the next morning, but at least he was still around, as it were. Before going to my workplace, I visited the small business that wanted a network overhaul and was pleasantly surprised to discover that they knew exactly what they wanted and it was a reasonable request – a rare occurrence in consulting practices. I walked away from a two-hour consultation meeting with a solid budget, a plan, and a promise to have it done in three weeks. I could probably have done it in two, but I like to leave room for errors and avoid working crazy hours when crunch time came. I’d made it through college without having to pull an all-nighter, and saw no reason to break that streak for a job.

            Back at the office, I spent some time clearing out my inbox. I set up an appointment for another lost-and-found request, and put together a quote for some basic IT troubleshooting for a semi-regular client who knew just enough about technology to mess things up. It was somewhat frustrating, but I couldn’t complain since he always paid his invoices on time, never quibbled about the hours, and did make the effort to learn more each time I went out. He was also extremely outgoing, and referred me to people at the drop of a hat. Since I abhor having to self-promote – an unfortunately necessary part of being in business for yourself – his customer referrals easily outweighed his tendency to poke at things he oughtn’t.

            It looked like he’d been at it again. One of the emails was a proposal from a small, local law firm that wanted a dedicated, on-call technician. They didn’t have enough work to warrant hiring even a part-time employee, but when systems go down at a law firm, there are a lot of expensive employees wasting billable hours. It was an attractive proposal, but I didn’t want it to interfere with my other work, so after a few back-and-forth emails with the owner, we set up a meeting the following week to hash out the terms. I’d rather not get called out of bed at 11pm because someone’s laptop went down in the middle of a drawn-out council meeting; if we could avoid that, though, it would be a nice boost to my business.