“That’s fine,” Sarah says smoothly, pulling out a chair for me. The chair faces both of them.
Except nothing feels fine. My stomach is in knots, and every nerve in my body is screaming that this is not about health and safety or admin or any normal HR issue. This is about Patrick. This is about the intercom.
Lindsey clears her throat and opens a folder. “Georgie, thank you for coming up. I’m afraid there’s been a significant issue over the weekend, and we need to understand what happened.”
My pulse thuds in my ears. “What kind of issue?”
“We’ve had disruption across the reservation systems. At this stage, we’re gathering information from everyone involved.”
Oh, thank God. Work stuff. I can handle work stuff.
“Of course, no problem,” I say, relief flickering through me that it’s not Patrick-related. Though I want to run back to my desk and start troubleshooting immediately. “We always do audits. If you give me a day, I can have a report ready. I’d better get to my desk; they’ll need me to help fix it.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Lindsey replies evenly. “But I will need you to cooperate with our investigation.”
“Of course!” Why are we wasting time with HR when there’s clearly a system issue? “What happened exactly? How can I help?”
“There was a major system failure over the weekend. Several hotels can’t access bookings. Guests are arriving to find their reservations missing from the system. In many cases, we can’t even confirm whether they’ve paid. Check-ins and check-outs had to be processed manually.”
My mouth goes dry. The spit just evaporates. “How bad?”
“Very bad,” she says simply. “Thousands of guests affected across multiple sites. Front desks are overwhelmed. Phones ringing off the hook. The financial and reputational damage is... significant.”
My stomach drops. Was it my change on Friday evening?
This is exactly what I warned Craig about. Exactly what I said would happen if we skimped on testing.
Now here we are, the great McLaren Hotels empire hurled back into the Stone Age. Front desks scrambling with pens and notepads like it’s 1972.
At least I covered myself. The warnings. The documentation. This isn’t my fault.
“Okay,” I say, leaning forward urgently. “I should be with the team. If I could just speak to them first, get them back on their feet, then we can come back and do this audit thing. I just—” My hands shake. “I need to make sure it gets fixed.”
Craig is going to explode when he finds out I’ve been dragged in here to talk process while the system is on fire.
“That won’t be necessary,” Sarah says. “The engineers have already been assigned. More importantly, there are concerns about how this deployment went live at all. We need to establish whether proper protocols were followed before you’re involved any further.”
I blink at her, confused. My brain scrambles to translate corporate-speak into actual meaning. “Okay…”
“As a precautionary measure, we’re suspending you while the investigation is ongoing.”
The words don’t land. They just sort of float there in the air between us.
“What?” I can’t have heard right. “Suspending... me?”
This must be a mistake. Some horrible misunderstanding where everyone’s reading from different scripts.
“With pay, pending full investigation. We need to understand how this unauthorized deployment occurred.”
Unauthorized? My brain trips over the word. “So, it’s related to my change, right? But Craig told me to do it. He called me and said to stop stalling. I don’t understand why I’m being suspended. This makes no sense.”
Lindsey adjusts her glasses. “According to your line manager, he specifically instructed you to delay rollout until further testing. He states he was unaware this feature had been deployed.”
The room tilts.
My chair might as well be on wheels because suddenly nothing feels solid. The floor. The walls. Reality itself.
Craig’s blaming me. For some reason, it went catastrophically wrong, and he’s throwing me to the wolves.
