Finnegan's entire week quickly went downhill. By Tuesday afternoon he still hadn't heard from Emmett, not that it was all that late in the week but he had called last Tuesday so a small part of him expected it. More accurately, considering how the date had gone, he was scared Emmett wouldn't call at all and since it was Tuesday, that bit of worry had transformed itself into a huge ball of nastiness that he couldn't quite name.
Then, at a little past three o'clock, his general manager came into his office holding two of the new circuit boards and looking like someone had died. Finnegan tried to smile and reassure Richard; two fails was perfectly acceptable this early in the game. That's why they had done the run through today and not Friday. They had three days to fix whatever was wrong before they went into full production on Monday. "Two's not bad, Richard." He wasn't quite sure why the man had brought them to his office; he certainly couldn't fix them.
"Uh, no boss, I don't think you understand. These are the only two that passed."
"Out of 40?" he exclaimed. That's impossible."
"Yeah, It's not good" Richard confirmed. "Even worse, we've found three faults so far. It's so random and the engineers are down there scratching their heads."
Three faults? One fault, even as widespread as this one was, was fixable. It was probably a small calibration, even a timing issue. Unfortunately, the two working circuit boards that Richard held in his hands proved that the problem was much worse than that, and having three faults to try to track down was going to make everything incredibly difficult. Finnegan wasn't sure where to start. Luckily, this is why he paid people well. "Send Howard up." He wasn't sure why his head engineer wasn't here already, he would just have to pull himself away from the complete clusterfuck that was going on in their QC department right now.
Three hours later he was no closer to an answer then he'd been earlier that afternoon. Everyone seemed to be pointing fingers at each other or at machines no one had any ideas for solutions. He spent an hour running a meeting And at the end of it, nothing had been accomplished. Oh, there were going to be lots of technical experts in the building tomorrow and they were going to do another test and everyone had thrown pennies into the wishing well just hoping something would work but the fact of the matter was that he still had two functioning circuit boards. Two.
Then his father called. "Finny, how did it go today? Are we going to be ready on Monday?"
They had an amazingly close relationship but even he wasn't sure how to answer the question so he went with the easiest part first. "Hey dad, we'll be ready on Monday but not quite sure how. We had a 95% failure rate on the PCBA's. PCB's look good, relatively. We have a fix."
"For both?"
Finnegan hated to say most of this out loud but he refused to lie to his dad. "Just the boards, the assemblies are a disaster. Three separate faults."
Finnegan Walker III was a renaissance businessman and knew just enough about electronic manufacturing to know that with more faults, the problems and difficulty increased exponentially. "Damn, Finny."
His thoughts exactly. "I've got four engineers down there taking one board through the line."
"Good, that'll help take the human element out of it. Have the mechanics scheduled?"
Of course he did, but they had insisted the machines were working fine when they were installed. "Yeah dad, they're coming tomorrow, but you know how that goes."
"I do. If you're not damn sure it's their machine, they're very unlikely to find the problem. Okay son, sounds like you're busy. Give me an update tomorrow. And Finny?"
"Yeah?"
"You sound tired. You taking care of yourself, son?"
"Yeah dad, promise." A small lie, but he'd do better tonight.
"Good. Your mom and I love you and I know you can do this. If we have to delay a week--"
"Not happening dad."
He chuckled, knowing his son all too well. "If we have to delay a week, the world will not end. You should get out of there now, get some dinner and have a good night and come at this tomorrow with a fresh head."
"Alright. Thanks dad. I'll update you tomorrow."
He hung up the phone, closed his eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths and then spent two more hours putting out fires. By the time he fell into his car that evening it was dark and raining. He crossed his arms against the steering wheel and rested his head, trying to mentally prepare himself for the drive home.
Ten minutes later, when he turned off his headlights, he was in front of Emmett's house instead of his own. He had no idea why except that he knew being alone tonight, even in his pajamas with some cartoons, wasn't going to cut it. He couldn't just show up though, especially since he hadn't heard from Emmett since Saturday evening. Sure, they had parted politely after having a great dinner, hell he even got a kiss, but that didn't mean he could show up at the man's house uninvited. He'd almost gathered the strength to leave when he saw a shadow pass in front of Emmett's front windows.
FW4: Hi. I know this is weird but is there any chance you're up for some company tonight?
He regretted the text as soon as he sent it. Emmett might be up for having company tonight but Finnegan wasn't. He had typed out a quick apology when Emmett's text arrived.
Locke: Sure. Come on over.
He quickly deleted his message. Just how long did he have to sit in his car before he went in so that Emmett wouldn't know he was currently sitting in his car? He hoped 10 minutes would do it. After two he got antsy and uncomfortable and considered leaving. Instead he opened the squeaky gate and knocked.