Shark Tank: Souvenir
It's years ago, and this pilot fish is a developer working for a small company. "Staff consisted of a few programmers, an office manager, a tech secretary and a part-time bookkeeper who's also the office manager's live-in boyfriend," says fish.
"Things were going as smoothly as could be expected until the boss left on an extended overseas trip."
Actually, things still go pretty smoothly: Invoices are paid, checks are written, and regular e-mail keeps questions answered. But fish notices that the bookkeeper is acting a little strangely -- and he's carrying a backup tape with him every time he leaves the office, even for a few minutes.
Since fish also serves as the company's sysadmin, he takes an opportune moment to check the bookkeeper's computer. There are no financial records on the hard drive, but he does find a very high-quality data wipe program installed.
"Since the bookkeeper wasn't a computer geek, this seemed a rather unusual program for him to have installed," fish says. "Adding in the missing data files, I felt a bit worried and decided to take a proactive approach."
So fish waits until the bookkeeper is back at work, and then copies all the accounting files over the network to his own hard drive. From there, he copies them to an experimental magneto-optical disk drive he's been evaluating.
Finally, fish looks over the accounts payable and check records -- and he doesn't recognize several "suppliers" who have submitted invoices. "Remember, this was a small operation, and I pretty much knew where things came from," says fish. "Maybe not down to the last box of paper clips, but paper clips don't cost that much.
"That evening, I stayed late and placed an overseas call to the boss while waiting for an after-hours locksmith.
"A few days later, the office manager had moved in with her mother, the bookkeeper had been arrested for assault, and I had a cut over my eye -- but I didn't look as bad as the bookkeeper.
"Two decades later, I find the magneto-optical disks while discarding old 5 1/4-in. floppies.
"The memories make the scar itch."
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