Saturday morning was the slot with no structure. No alarm, no Metro schedule, no queue. I could sit at my kitchen table with coffee and not have to be anywhere about it.

She was on the couch with her phone. She'd been there since I woke up. Either she'd gotten up before me or she hadn't slept. She was reading something, still in the way she got when she was taking in a lot at once.

I made coffee, got my laptop, and sat at the table.

---

The IT support queue did not close on weekends. The ticketing system had no concept of weekends. I sometimes looked at it on Saturdays because otherwise Monday's queue would be bigger than it needed to be.

Two tickets from Friday afternoon. A password reset from the logistics floor, closed in two minutes. A printer network thing from accounting, routed to shared maintenance with a note.

I updated the LDAP routing request: twenty-two business days since submission.

Twenty-two. Standard was three to five. Documentation complete, root cause confirmed, two follow-ups and a summary attached. Still open.

I added a fifth note and marked it escalated.

---

"What's the LDAP problem."

I looked up.

She hadn't moved from the couch. Still on her phone.

"The sync issue," I said. "At Hartwell."

"Yes." She scrolled something. "You've mentioned it a few times."

I'd mentioned it to her twice, both times the two-sentence version. She was asking for the long one.

"The logistics division runs on a shared credential pool," I said. "Eight weeks ago somebody at admin level pushed an undocumented config change to the directory the pool syncs against. Four-hour drift window, twice a week. The sync goes out of alignment and authenticated users get locked out."

She looked up from her phone.

"They have to re-enter credentials every time it slips," I said. "Ten tickets a week off the logistics floor, all different users, all the same root cause. I had it on the first five. Fix needs admin-level directory access I don't have."

"And you put in the request for someone who does."

"Twenty-two business days ago. Standard response is three to five."

She looked at me steadily. "Who does the admin report to."

"I don't know exactly. Probably the IT director."

"Then escalate to the IT director."

I looked at her.

"The IT director," I said, "doesn't currently know their admin made an undocumented config change eight weeks ago."

"Yes. That's the problem you're escalating."

"If I escalate to the IT director, the admin looks bad. Next time I need something from the admin, they remember who went over their head."

"You're protecting the admin."

"I'm managing the relationship." I put the coffee down. "The admin made a mistake. Probably an honest one. If I go over their head, they know it was me. I work with this person indefinitely."

"So you're waiting for them to respond."

"I'm waiting for the routing request to move. That's how the system's supposed to work."

She looked at me steadily.

"You think the admin's going to respond."

"I think the system'll eventually push it to someone who'll push it to the admin." I pulled up the ticket. "They haven't connected the logistics tickets to their own change. Twenty-two business days and ten tickets a week is mine to document. Not theirs to notice."

"What would make it urgent from their side."

Better question than the escalation one.

"Visibility," I said. "If the IT director started asking why the logistics floor was having re-auth issues twice a week, the admin would have reason to close the routing request."

"So it needs to become the IT director's problem."

"It needs to become the IT director's awareness. Not the same thing."

She was quiet for a moment. Then, "You could mention it to him incidentally. Not as an escalation. As an update."

I looked at her.

"You have access to the IT director."

"I've seen him in the building. We've spoken twice."

"A passing comment. Not an accusation. You're updating him on a routing ticket. His question about why the logistics floor has re-auth issues is his own question." She glanced back at her phone. "He asks the admin. The admin closes your ticket. You don't become the one who escalated."

She'd put that together inside half a cup of coffee.

"Where'd you learn to do that," I said.

She looked up. Blue eyes, a little pleased with herself.

"I've been in a lot of rooms."

---

I closed the laptop at eleven.

She was still on the couch.

I didn't use the IT director suggestion. The routing request got picked up on day twenty-seven, and I never found out if it was admin pressure or just the queue moving.

But she'd been listening to me talk about tickets for four weeks. And when she weighed in, she hadn't thought about the system. She'd thought about the people in it.

I poured a second cup of coffee. I didn't say anything about it. I noticed I was glad she'd asked.