I swallow, mouth dry. “I need more time. I haven’t been able to test it to the standard I usually do.”
Now he looks up, face already going red. “Unacceptable. You’ve had plenty of time. We’ve committed to this deadline.”
We?I didn’t commit to anything. He’s the one who stood up in front of the senior management board and promised them this because, apparently, he’ll get major brownie points for it.
“It’s too high risk without enough time for proper testing—”
Craig flicks his hand like I’m background noise. “Don’t want to hear it. The board’s breathing down my neck about deployment. We stick to the timeline.”
Ten more days. Just ten more days of this, and I can hand in my notice.
“I’m formally advising we push the deadline back. The Quality Assurance team won’t have time to properly test—”
“Deploy tonight.”
“Craig, this affects live systems. If something goes wrong during deployment, it could crash the reservation system for every hotel. We need proper QA.”
“Don’t tell me how QA works,” he explodes, shoving his chair back so hard it slams against the wall. He leans over the desk, using his height to tower over me. “I’ve been doing this since before you could spell ‘computer.’ I’ll handle QA. Deploy this evening as planned.”
My hands are shaking, but it isn’t exhaustion. It’s fury.
The bastard knows I’m good at what I do. That’s why he pushes me—he knows I’ll break myself in half to get it right.
That doesn’t mean we should go ahead with this.
“Fine,” I manage, voice tight. “But I’m documenting that I advised against this. If something goes wrong—”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Hell of an attitude, Georgie,” he sneers. “Maybe if you’d spent less time playing Highland games and more time working, you’d have confidence in what you’ve built.”
I just stand there, mouth open, staring at him. My face prickles, throat too tight to swallow.
“Just get it ready for QA,” he says, already swiveling back to his screen. “Close the door on your way out.”
Fucking idiot.
I walk back to my desk on jelly legs. Now I have to stay late again, but at least I pushed back. If he wants this deployed against my explicit professional advice, fine. But I’m creating a paper trail.
I wipe my face with the back of my hand, square my shoulders, and get to work. It won’t be on my conscience without every safeguard I can cram into the system.
I rerun every unit test, even the ones I could do in my sleep. Then I get creative, throwing the weirdest scenarios at IRIS: hotels with no rooms, infinite staff but no guests, a February with thirty days. Anything that might make it stumble.
I wrap everything in bubble wrap: error handling, extra logging.
My eyes burn and my back aches, but I keep going.
Two hours later, I’m hollow but finished. The code is as safe as I can make it with not enough time.
I write Craig the most detailed handover notes of my life. Every test I ran. Every safeguard I added. Every reason this needs proper QA, and tell him it’s ready to hand over to them.
He better have mobilized the entire QA department for this. Though knowing Craig, he probably told them they have fifteen minutes.
Four hours later, my phone rings. “It needs to go live now. Deploy ASAP.”
“QA signed off?”
“Yes! Just do it. Stop stalling.Now, Georgie.”
I hit deploy.
