Company (35 page)

“No, of course not. That's Blake's area.”

“Then I think you should come to 13. Right away.”

“What's happening?”

“Um . . .” she says. “I don't know.”

Stanley Smithson retreats, but only to gather reinforcements. He returns with the Phoenix. Freddy and Holly's eyes widen in recognition. To most Zephyr workers, Senior Management is a jury box of anonymous faces, but everyone knows the Phoenix. He's a thick-necked man with a red face, blue shirt, and graying hair. Currently his sleeves are rolled all the way up to his biceps, which, while not quite the gasp-inducing specimens they were when he was a storeman, are still highly impressive compared to the atrophied muscles of his fellow executives.

There is a well-known business principle that everyone rises to his or her level of incompetence, because employees who are good at their jobs are given promotions until they reach a role they're bad at, and then they stay there. The Phoenix is an exception: he has been incompetent at every job he's ever held, yet keeps getting promoted. When his job was to carry boxes from one part of the company to another, they would sit in reception for hours until, several reminder calls later, he ambled in to collect them. Then, via means that nobody ever quite worked out, they would vanish for up to two days before arriving at their destination, a few floors away. Also, employees soon realized they couldn't pass the Phoenix in a corridor without getting caught in a conversation. There was no escape: if you liked sports, you were in for a thirty-minute lecture about player wages, but if you didn't, he would try to educate you. If you were foolish enough to express a differing opinion, the Phoenix's voice would grow louder and more insistent as his thick eyebrows descended. If you still failed to concede, he would start poking his finger at you. People began feigning hearing problems, or waiting until some other poor soul had become ensnared before hurrying past, head down, breath held.

Then one day the warehouse was outsourced. There was quiet rejoicing: at last, workers could move between floors without a sermon on the declining skills of elite ballplayers! But, to everyone's horror and amazement, the Phoenix survived, being transferred to Inventory Control. Two years later, facing sky-rocketing employee turnover, that department was merged into Logistics. Twelve members of staff were laid off, but not the Phoenix. A decade and uncountable disasters later, he was assigned to head a Sigma Six task force, which was mission-critical for ten months, then crashed and burned and nobody ever mentioned it again. All task force members were let go or farmed out to distant fringes of the company, except for the Phoenix, who over the years had accumulated so much leave that he had become too expensive to fire. Human Resources forced him back into Logistics, despite that department's objections, until the vice president became so frustrated that he laid down a him-or-me ultimatum. This was unfortunately timed, as internal jockeying in Senior Management had left him on the outer edge of a new group of power brokers, who saw this as an excellent opportunity to replace him with someone more likely to share their views. The Phoenix thus became the new Logistics vice president. It is clear to the Zephyr workers that he is immortal.

Freddy and Jones exchange nervous glances at the Phoenix's approach. Holly's eyes fix on the bulge of muscle where his arms disappear into his shirtsleeves. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” the Phoenix bawls. He comes at them like a bad-tempered bear. “This is Senior Management, not the goddamn cafeteria. Get the hell out.”

Holly says, “We have a set of demands—”

“I don't care if you've got a gold medal.” The Phoenix is always coming out with lines like this, which sound as if they should be witty but when you think about them make no sense. “Get your asses out of level 2.”

The three shrink before his advance. Then, from behind, they hear it.
Ding!

An elevator-load of Zephyr employees spills onto level 2. They have taken a while to arrive because there was an argument about the elevator's load-bearing capacity; a little metal sign declared a weight limit and an uncomfortable discussion ensued, with people eyeing one another's waistlines and buttocks. Also, to convince the elevator to go to level 2 they had to swipe Jones's ID card and toss it out to the others before the doors closed, and on the first attempt a woman who used to be in Business Card Design—so deft with a mouse, surprisingly deficient in gross motor skills—failed to clear the doors and they had to all jump out on level 5 and try again.

But now they're here! They number more than two dozen: clerks, gnomes, elves, accountants, engineers—a Zephyr mixed bag. They pour out of the elevator like clowns from a tiny automobile: just when you think there couldn't possibly be any more, out come two more. Stanley's eyes widen. The Phoenix backs up a step.

“We didn't want to do it this way,” Jones says. “But we're prepared to.”

You carry out raids at dawn because that's when the enemy is at its most disoriented. It's like that on level 2 of Zephyr Holdings, except it's four thirty in the afternoon. Senior Management is weary from a long day of increasing shareholder value, the buzz from the wine over lunch has worn off, and it's been more than an hour since their last coffee. When Zephyr employees burst into their offices and tear the phones out of their hands, they are too befuddled to react. Every one of them, Blake Seddon included, is dragged from his or her leather office chair, hauled into the boardroom, and stuffed into a seat around the great oak table. They sit there in shock while a scruffy, angry throng coalesces around them. Every few minutes, above the growing din, they hear a
ding
and even more people crush into the boardroom. Soon they are pressed so tight that they are like a single animal, the zephyremployee, an enormous beast, normally docile and easily tamed, but (apparently) aggressive and unpredictable when provoked. The boardroom fills with their excited talk, the kaleidoscope of their shirts, blouses, and ties, and the hot, sweaty odor of their bodies.

Senior Management tries to protest, but the employees angrily shake their chairs. They try to communicate with one another via facial expressions. None has any idea what is happening, but as a young man clambers onto the boardroom table and holds up his hands for quiet, they all feel the same sickening feeling: the bulwark of the suggestion box has failed.

The noise drops away. Jones clears his throat. It is very important that Jones not betray weakness at this point, but knowing that and executing it are two different things. He feels his knees tremble. His eyes meet Blake Seddon's, and he sees rage in them. Jones swallows, then again. His throat constricts tighter and tighter.

Senior Management—not Blake, but an older man with outrageous eyebrows—grows tired of waiting. “Just what do you think—”

“I have something to read!” Jones shouts. The man falls silent. He swallows again. “It's an old speech, but we have adapted it for modern times. The important thing is that it still holds true today. So
you,
” Jones says, his voice rising, as Senior Management starts to interject again, “are going to
sit there
and
listen
to it.”

He takes a breath. “
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all employees are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are dignity, respect, and the pursuit of a life outside of work.

“That whenever any company becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the employees to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new management, laying its foundation on such principles as to effect their safety and happiness.

“Prudence will dictate that management should not be changed for light or transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that employees are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the management to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and degradations, pursuing invariably the same cost-cutting objectives, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such management.

“We, therefore, the employees of Zephyr Holdings, solemnly declare that we are, and of right ought to be, free and independent; that we are absolved from all allegiance to Senior Management, and that all authority of Senior Management over us is totally dissolved.” There is a lot of shouting and executives trying to talk over the top of him by this point, so Jones decides to repeat it.
“Totally dissolved!”
he yells.

There is bedlam. Senior Management struggles to free itself from the grasping hands of the employees. It shouts about proper channels. The employees shout back. A lot of hostile feelings fly around the boardroom. Years' worth of anger pour out. “We're not human resources!” Freddy shouts, his face red. “We're
people
! You got that, now? Are you getting this?”

For a while, nobody in the monitoring room of level 13 speaks. Finally Mona breaks the silence, her voice small and hesitant. “What is he doing?”