Company (34 page)

Q3: Do you feel that you and your colleagues deserve these improved working conditions?

Whoa! Whoa! Alarm registers on their faces. The huddles draw tighter. They know for a fact that Senior Management doesn't think they deserve better, because if it did, things would
be
better. But it has always at least pretended it does. During all-staff meetings, executives in well-pressed suits preach about how employees are the company's greatest asset—and while it's hard to reconcile this with the never-ending rounds of layoffs and outsourcing, it's nice to hear. This survey question suggests a line is being crossed: if Senior Management thinks its employees will answer “No,” it is no longer bothering to hide its contempt.

Q4: Do you have confidence that Zephyr Holdings Senior Management will implement improved conditions as a result of this survey?

Everyone falls silent. The answer is clearly “No”; you would have to be an idiot or an intern to believe otherwise. But that's why the company should never ask such a question. The point of a staff satisfaction survey, like a suggestion box, is to give employees the impression that the company cares without requiring it to actually care. So this question can mean only one of two things: either Senior Management has grown a heart, or the survey is not from Senior Management.

Q5: If you deserve improved working conditions but you don't believe Senior Management will implement them, do you agree that the only way to achieve a satisfactory work environment is to overthrow Senior Management and install new leadership, replacing the current regime of incompetence, greed, and corruption?

Ding!
On level 2, this is the sound of revolution. The elevator doors slide open and Jones, Freddy, and Holly step out. Around the floor, PA heads slowly rise.

Level 2! What a place! It is offices, offices, as far as the eye can see, and not a cubicle in sight. Sunlight streams through huge, floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Interior foliage glows with health. The carpet! The carpet! It's thick enough to wrap yourself up in—there are no well-worn trails leading to the coffee machine and bathroom. Is that a waterfall? Oh. No. Just a watercooler. But a waterfall wouldn't seem out of place, not in this land of honey and clover. It is exactly what they expected: a luxurious Paradise in which the powerful relax and are fed grapes by their PAs—well, not grapes, but coffees—while workers below toil in barely conditioned drudgery. They have seen glimpses of this promised land in Zephyr Holdings annual reports, the background for many a picture of a smiling senior executive, but the reality is even more galling. Where are the cutbacks here? Where is the belt-tightening?

“Excuse me?” a PA says. Freddy recognizes her as a girl who disappeared from Training Delivery about a year ago. He thought she'd been sacked. “How did you get up here?”

The answer is
Jones has special clearance,
but Jones is not telling the PA that. He's not even telling Freddy and Holly; they think he got one of the network nerds to hack the system. “We're here to see Senior Management. All of them, please.”

The PAs exchange glances. “You need an appointment. And even then, you're not supposed to come here. There are meeting rooms on level—”

“Get them out here,” Jones says. “Right now.”

The PAs look at each other again. They have apparently developed some kind of telepathic language, because once more they silently reach a decision. “I'll call Mr. Smithson. Would you like to take a seat?”

“No,” Holly says.

Stanley Smithson, vice president of Staff Services, is piloting a leather chair in the cockpit of his level-2 office when his phone rings.
VANESSA P,
the screen says. Vanessa is Stanley's PA, and less than an hour ago Stanley told her in what he thought was a clear and direct manner that he was not to be disturbed. Stanley blows air through his teeth. He does not demand extraordinary efforts from Vanessa. She needs to bring him the occasional coffee. She needs to type up his Dictaphone tapes, on which he records his ideas, insights, and general outlines for memos (the actual text to be drafted by her, since she's the one with the degree in English). And, most important, she needs to make sure he is left alone when he needs time with his thoughts. It's not much of a challenge, is it? Is it too much for a vice president of a major corporation to ask? Apparently so, because here she is on the phone.

He puts down his frequent-flier-miles brochure. It's essential for executives to stay mentally fresh, and that's why when Stanley feels the pressures of the corporate world closing in, he takes time out to meditate: he tells Vanessa to hold his calls, he pulls out the brochure, and browses through all the places he can fly for free. It's deeply soothing. Sometimes Stanley gets the gnawing sensation that he is faking his way through his career—that he has risen through the corporate ranks due mainly to obsequiousness and good luck, and it could just as easily be, say, Jim from Security (sorry, Human Resources and Asset Protection) up here deciding whether to form a Process Improvement task force while Stanley wanders around the parking lot, making sure nobody is walking off with a laser printer. But the brochure assures him otherwise, massaging away doubts and reinflating his confidence. Stanley must be unusually talented and insightful, because he can fly to Berlin for free while Jim (apparently) can't afford a car manufactured this century.

He lets the phone ring a few more times—because Vanessa should know better—then punches for speakerphone. “Yes?”

“I'm very sorry to disturb you, but there are some people here to see you.”

“You didn't tell me I had an appointment.”

“Ah, you don't. But . . . I think you should come out here.”

Stanley's brows descend. This is highly irregular. He sighs, loud enough for the speakerphone to pick it up. “All right. I'm coming.”

When Stanley emerges, he has a faint smile on his face. But this quickly fades at the sight of Jones, Freddy, and Holly, who are clearly not fellow executives or important investors or anyone else of consequence. His eyes flick between their ID tags. Stanley himself doesn't wear one; he considers it demeaning. “What do you want?”

The young man says, “We're here on behalf of the employees of Zephyr Holdings. We have a set of demands.”

Stanley starts to smile. But none of the three people facing him joins in, so he turns it into a frown. “You're joking.”

“No, we're not. It's very important. We need to see the whole of Senior Management.”

“Well, you can't. How did you get up here?”

The other man, the short one, says, “We think the working conditions at Zephyr Holdings need to improve. And we want to talk to Senior Management about it.”

“The company
has
a suggestion box,” Stanley bristles. He has no idea who these people are, but nobody in scuffed shoes tells Stanley Smithson what to do. You need much more expensive shoes than that to give Stanley orders. “I really don't see what you're trying to achieve, barging up here—”

“You're not listening. These aren't suggestions.”

“That's enough. You three are leaving, right now.” Stanley starts forward, planning to physically bundle Jones, Freddy, and Holly into the elevator. But he has forgotten that people usually do what he tells them because they are paid to, not because he is a dynamo of hot, charismatic masculinity. None of the three budges, and when Stanley realizes they're not going to, he pulls up. He feels his face redden. “I'm calling Human Resources and Asset Protection. You only have yourselves to blame. I hope you realize that.”

He strides to the closest PA's desk and picks up the phone. His hand is trembling. The last time Stanley was involved in such a physical confrontation, he was seventeen. Then the handset clicks in his ear. Stanley turns. The young woman has followed him to the desk and pulled out the phone cord. Stanley stares at her in disbelief.

“Nobody's calling HR,” she says.

Daniel Klausman is wandering through Treasury, emptying trash baskets while keeping an eye on an interesting political tussle between three accountants, when his pocket starts shaking. It's his cell phone. He has it on vibrate because the idea of a janitor with a cell phone might alarm the Zephyr workers, might get them thinking about their own careers and the ratio of the work they put in to the rewards they get out. This is an idea Klausman has tried to impart to other Alpha agents, mostly successfully. The exception is Eve Jantiss, who parks a blue sports car in front of the building. Eve's argument is that Blake gets to drive a sports car to work so why shouldn't she, and the fact that Blake is in Senior Management while she answers phones hasn't swayed her. Klausman has a great deal of respect and admiration for Eve, but he is aware that she is driven by something like pure greed. For a long time now he has had the niggling feeling that one day Eve will, at least in a political sense, knock him down and clamber over his limp body.

He walks to a service closet, leaving behind the Treasury cubicle farm and its emerging political dynamic. As well as being out of the sight of curious Zephyr employees, the closets have the advantage of being one of very few places in the building that are not under electronic surveillance. This was not always the case, but Klausman once had an embarrassing incident wherein he said uncomplimentary things about an Alpha agent while that person was standing in the monitoring room. Also they kept catching employees having sex in the closets, and while everybody quite enjoyed getting those tapes out for the Alpha Christmas party, he worried that if the terrible day ever arrived where Zephyr's secret was blown, this would look very bad. It's one thing to simulate an entire company in order to secretly study its employees—if that ever becomes public knowledge, Klausman will still hold his head high in any gentleman's club in the nation—but another to build a collection of hidden-camera sex tapes. That could give people the wrong idea.

He closes the closet door and fishes his cell phone from his overalls. “Yes?”

“Mr. Klausman.” It's Mona. But her voice is oddly tight. “May I ask—has Jones been assigned some kind of project with Senior Management?”