Company (4 page)

“Sydney's been on the phone to upstairs. It's about cost cutting, isn't it? Someone's getting canned.”

“Sydney's talking to upstairs?”

“That's what Megan says.”

“Well, that could mean anything. Don't jump to conclusions.
Hak-kah.
”

“Hey, guys,” Elizabeth calls across the aisle. “Are you having trouble with the network? I just e-mailed Wendell and it bounced back.”

“Haven't checked,” Roger says, not looking up.

“What was your e-mail?” Wendell says.

“I'm selling raffle tickets for the Social Club. Want to buy some? You can win a set of golf clubs.” Her eyebrows rise hopefully.

“Oh.” Wendell's eyes lose focus. “I'll,
hak-kah,
consider that when I get your e-mail.”

“They're only a dollar each,” Elizabeth says, rolling closer. “And there are many secondary prizes. Want to see?”

“I'm busy right now, Elizabeth.”

“Oh. Okay. Maybe later then.” She rolls back to her computer.

Freddy says, “So you haven't heard anything?”

“No. Why, have the others?” Wendell looks at Roger and Elizabeth fearfully.

“I haven't asked.”

“Leave it with me. I'll find out what's going on.”

“Thanks.” Freddy knows he can trust him. Wendell relies on Freddy to translate his outrageous expense claims into language acceptable to Central Accounting, a rare and valuable skill. Elizabeth and Roger are insanely jealous of Wendell in this regard. This year alone he has been compensated for parking fines, dozens of lunches, and a new suit, while Elizabeth's request for a new office chair was denied, forcing her to steal one late at night from Call Center.

Freddy heads out of West Berlin. Roger smiles at him as he passes by, which is so out of character that Freddy gets the heebie-jeebies. Roger is in the process of dialing someone, but he waits, his finger hovering above the number pad, until Freddy is gone.

“What's the story?” Holly asks.

“Nobody knows. Do you think we'd hear about it if we were being outsourced?”

“No idea . . . no one who's been outsourced has survived to talk about it.”

Jones says, “Why would someone be sacked? You just hired me.”

Freddy looks at him sympathetically. “You really don't understand this company.”

“There's a hiring freeze,” Holly explains. “Technically, we haven't hired you. We got you through the back door. See, toward the end of each financial year, Senior Management realizes we're going over budget, so they impose a hiring freeze. If an employee leaves, everyone else has to pick up their workload.”

“Did you have spare time before?” Jones asks, lost.

Freddy laughs so hard that his nose touches his keyboard.

“This went on year after year, but the departments all realized they had to do their hiring before the freeze, so everyone was packing a year's worth of spending into the first six months. And that made Senior Management order the freeze
earlier.
Then about eighteen months ago, it became permanent.”

“Permanent?”

“Well, they can't lift it now,” Freddy says. “Every department would start hiring like crazy. We used to have eight reps and eight assistants.”

“Also,” Holly says, “Zephyr needs to show it's serious about cost cutting. If we started hiring people again now, our stock price would tumble. Further, I mean.”

“Well, that's what they
say.
In my opinion, it's just an excuse to shovel work onto us guys in the trenches while Senior Management gets bonuses for meeting cost-reduction targets. Not to mention the golden handcuffs. You know about golden handcuffs?”

Jones nods. “Sure, the bonus an executive gets when he leaves the company.”

“No, no, that's a golden parachute.”

“Oh—right. The signing bonus, then.”

“That's the golden handshake. Golden handcuffs are what they get for working in a company with low morale. First they screw up the company, then because it's hard to attract good staff, they pay themselves more.”

“But that's wrong!” Jones says, shocked. “Did somebody take this up with Daniel Klausman?”

Freddy cracks up again. Even Holly smiles. “Remember when you first started here, Freddy, and you thought everyone was clever and helpful and only wanted to do what's best for the company?”

“Yeah. I used to shine my shoes.”

Jones says, “So with this freeze, how did you hire me?”

“It was Freddy's idea. We process your salary as office expenses. Copy paper, specifically.”

“That reminds me,” Freddy says to Holly, “do you have to xerox all of Elizabeth's orders? Because the paper in that machine has to last until January.”

“We
probably won't last until January. I might as well xerox while I can.”

“I'm
copy paper?
” Jones says.

“Don't worry, it's just a paperwork thing. It doesn't affect anything. Well, unless they cut our stationery budget. But there's nothing to sweat about, this is just a little creative accounting. It goes on all the time.”

A wave of red light sweeps through the department. For a second Jones thinks he's fainting. Then he thinks the building has lost power and the emergency lights have kicked in. But it's the phones: all their voice-mail lights are suddenly blinking.

“Argh.” Freddy picks up his phone. “I hate it when they do that.” He tucks it under his ear. “All-staff voice mail. There should be instructions on your phone, Jones.”

There are. Jones engages in a brief struggle with the voice-mail menu and comes out of it victorious.

“Click. Hi, it's Megan. Sydney asked me to pass this out. Click. Megan, this is Sydney. There's a message following from the CEO. Copy it to everyone, thanks. Click. Good morning, it's Janice . . . message following. Click. Hi, Janice . . . there's a message following this from Daniel Klausman. Please see that it gets out. Thanks. Click. Hello everyone, this is Meredith from Daniel Klausman's office. Please distribute the following message to all staff. Click.”

A dramatic pause. Then: “Meredith, this is Daniel Klausman. Please send this on to my department heads for distribution to all headcounts.”

Jones blinks in surprise. He doesn't think it's a terrific idea for the CEO to call his staff “headcounts.” That's not what they taught at business school. Jones feels a touch of excitement at spotting the mistake, like a chess prodigy who finds a flaw in Kasparov. He begins a few wild thoughts with:
If I was CEO . . .
These distract Jones from observing that it may not be a terrific idea to be employed by a CEO who calls his staff “headcounts,” either.

“Good afternoon everyone. I hope you've had a positive start to the week and kicked a few goals for Zephyr. Today I want to address the recent movement in our share price. It's important for everyone to understand there's no need for panic. Share prices often rise and fall for reasons unrelated to a company's performance. The market can overreact to these changes and turn small swings into large ones. No one upstairs is panicking.”

Jones nods to himself. He hasn't been at Zephyr Holdings long enough to realize that it's always a market overreaction to unrelated events when the stock price goes down. When it goes up, it's due to the brilliance of management, and rewarded with stock options.

“That said, dropping 18 percent in a quarter isn't great news. If we're to remain competitive, every department must continue cost cutting. It's essential that we strip out the fat, focus on our core competencies, and tighten our belts. If we do this, and stick to our guns, I'm confident we can avoid significant retrenchments.

“That's it for now. I won't keep you from your work any longer.”

Freddy and Holly hang up together. “Ouch,” Freddy says.

“That can't affect us,” Holly says.

“He said every department.”

“But there won't be sackings. No ‘significant' retrenchments.”

“It's significant if it happens to you,” Freddy says.

Friday and Jones is heading into the bathroom when he bumps into Wendell. Jones is busting, because for the first time in his life there's free coffee available from a machine six yards away. It's four o'clock and he's had six coffees. The rest of the department is quickly learning that the best time to get a coffee is right after Jones, who doesn't mind replacing the filter.

He pulls open the bathroom's exterior door just as Wendell opens the interior one, so they face off in the tiny airlock, each with one hand on a door. Jones steps back to let Wendell pass, but Wendell doesn't move.
“Hak-kah.”
He glances around. “Jones, you don't know what Roger's up to with this donut business, do you?”

“No.” Jones can't help but notice that Wendell's hands are dry. He didn't hear the air blower.

“I haven't the foggiest idea who took his donut. But he's gotten it into his head that I'm somehow involved. He thinks I want to get back at him for taking my parking space.”

“Okay.”

“I've booked twelve hundred hours of training this month. That's more than Elizabeth. Roger's only got four hundred. If anyone should be nervous about getting fired, it should be him.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Wendell fingers the door handle. “So if you hear anything, let me know, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you, Jones. I appreciate it.” He puts a hand on Jones's forearm as he passes.

When Jones returns to his desk, his bladder relieved and his forearm washed and blow-dried, Freddy sidles over. “Did you hear? Sydney's called a meeting. To discuss ‘organizational changes.'” He adjusts his glasses. “Look, if it's you . . . remember, it's nothing personal.”

“
What
? Why would I be fired?”

Holly looks across the low divider. “Jones is getting fired?”

“No,
if.
I'm saying if Sydney's sacking someone, it's going to be Jones. You know, last in, first out.”

“There's a
last-in, first-out policy
?”

“No,” Holly says.

Freddy pats Jones on the arm. It is the most awkward thing Jones has ever seen. “She probably won't sack anybody,” Freddy says, but this is clearly just for Jones's benefit.

Sydney, the Training Sales manager, enters the meeting room at two minutes past five. She is tiny. She has bright green eyes, little pixie features, and a nose like the Easter Bunny's. She surely cannot weigh more than thirty or forty pounds, and that's including her tailored business suit. Her hair is a neat blond bob. When she speaks, her voice is high and strained. When you see her, you want to pick her up and hug the adorable little thing tight.

But this would be a bad idea, because Sydney is a vicious bitch. You don't get to be manager of a sales department by the cuteness of your nose. Manager of marketing, yes; sales, no. In sales, you can't hide behind glossy brochures and manipulated reach figures. You either sell or you don't, and your performance is on display so everyone can tell which it is. To succeed in sales, you need skills—not skills entirely consistent with moral integrity and emotional well-being, but skills nevertheless. You must be able to sell things to people who don't want them. You must be able to sell more things to people who do want them than they need. And most important of all, you must be able to cajole your way into a lower quota and more gullible customers than your co-workers.

When she was a mere sales assistant, Sydney was an amusing oddity. When her elfin eyes narrowed, her little nose wrinkled, and her tiny mouth raged, people suppressed smiles. Her rants about people who failed to take her seriously were funny; you couldn't take them seriously. Then she was promoted to sales rep, which meant she couldn't be ignored anymore. That was less amusing. Sydney was bitter about pretty much everyone; there was nobody, it seemed, who had not done her wrong. The Training Sales team suspects that a bitter incident lurks in Sydney's past, something involving faster-developing girls in the high-school locker room—or a series of incidents. If Sydney was male, they are sure that she would have a home gym and biceps the size of small children.

How she became manager remains a mystery. But there are only two possibilities. One is that Senior Management mistook her tirades for drive and a commitment to excellence. The other is that they knew Sydney was a paranoid psychopath, and that's exactly the kind of person they want in management.