Okay, so a couple of my co-workers helped me come up with a solution, but we're not entirely certain why it works.
I had been focused on the client-side code, assuming that the issue was there, but it actually turns out that the problem was in the server. The first request sent to the server was to process a file - this request could take quite some time. During that time, this process places updates into the session so that other threads can monitor the progress. Subsequent requests attempt to pull those attributes from the session and send them back to the client code. When I looked at the session ID's on the server side, I found that the first request was pointing to one session (we'll call it session 1) while the subsequent requests were pointing to a different session (session 2). As such, the values were being set in one session and I was trying to read them from another session, which obviously isn't going to work.
We don't completely understand what's happening, but our best guess is that the first request creates a session but, until that request is complete (which could take quite some time), that session is not completely created. That means that any other requests that come in looking for a session won't see an already-created session and will attempt to create their own. One particularly odd part of this is that, while the file processing is taking place, that
thread points to session 1 while the update threads point to session 2 - as soon as the file processing is completed, session 2 is dropped and all further update requests go to session 1. The result is that, from the client side, it looks like you hang at 0% complete and, when the file is done, you jump to 100% complete. Subsequent file submissions work perfectly fine as, at this point, the session has been completely created.
So the solution...
I added an update request to the document.ready handler. This really just pings the server and tries to get variables from the session that I know won't exist. The benefit is that it forces creation of the session and, when I go on to submit a file for processing and request updates on that process, all requests now point to that single, fully created, session.
If anyone has anything to add to this, I'd love to know if this reasoning is correct, or not. It seems to fit this scenario, but I can't be sure how accurate we are.
Thanks.