Beyond Blame

Chapter 3. Operator Error

Owing to its location across the street from the firm’s headquarters, O’Gradys was such a part of the social fabric of the firm that it was referred to as “the dining room.” As Linda made her way to the second floor of the bar, she nodded and waved to her colleagues packed in small groups around tall tables cluttered with beer glasses.

The second floor was far more subdued. Linda saw Bill and Ollie sitting across from each other in a booth. As she slid into her seat next to Ollie, Bill was shaking his head.

“The thing that makes absolutely no sense is, does anyone really believe that now that Mike is gone, we’re never going to have network outages?”

“Of course not,” said Ollie.

“We’re not even a little bit less likely to have these incidents,” Bill continued. “In fact, we’ve just fired the guy who knows the most about our network.”

“He’s certainly the expert in these particular incidents, having caused them,” said Ollie.

“You’re right. Mike was the guy who could have made the network better and more resistant to these types of errors.”

“No one is arguing that Mike was a great engineer,” said Linda. “But we have to hold people accountable for their actions.”

“What does that even mean, ‘accountable’?” Bill said, a little too loudly.

Linda was taken aback by Bill’s anger. “You know what it means. We need to hold someone responsible so that people think twice before doing these kinds of things again.”

“Which kinds of things?” Bill asked.

“Is there any disagreement,” ...