Termination Man: a novel (20 page)

And in my own small way, I thought, I was doing my part to preserve the jobs of men and women like Roy and Helen—hardworking Americans who wanted nothing more than a shot at a solid middle-class life. 

The monthly meeting was about to begin, and Shawn Myers was absolutely terrified.

He passed through the doorway to the meeting room, his personal copy of the inventory report tucked under his arm. He was five minutes early, and the meeting room was still a chaotic flux of people.

I would give anything to be in a strip bar right now
, Shawn Myers thought sourly. Then he reflected that even his desk back at the UP&S factory in New Hastings would be preferable to these high-pressure surroundings.

He saw his father on the other side of the room. Kurt gave him a smile and a nod. Shawn returned the gesture as best he could, nodding back at his father and smiling weakly.

They were in a large meeting room within the TP Automotive headquarters complex in Livonia, a suburb of Detroit. The other attendees were taking their seats among four empty tables that had been arranged in the shape of a wide square. At one end of the room a screen had been pulled down to display images from a projector. A prim and attractive female assistant sat at the projector, making last-minute preparations prior to the start of this month’s dog and pony show. Shawn wondered, in complete futility, if there was any chance that the projector would malfunction. Then the meeting would have to be delayed, even cancelled. There was a chance…

Don’t be a fucking idiot
, he scolded himself. Nothing short of a nuclear war would delay the monthly meeting. And even a nuclear war would be no guarantee—unless a warhead happened to land somewhere in the Detroit metro area. 

Shawn knew that this last thought was an exaggeration; but he also knew the gravity attached to the monthly meeting. This was the gathering in which TP Automotive’s management team convened each month to put their accomplishments on display, and to scrutinize the accomplishments and shortcomings of their peers. What took place here would be talked about for weeks, in every branch office and factory that bore the logo of TP Automotive or one of its many affiliates. The monthly meeting was a highly ritualized, highly anticipated event throughout the company, one that demanded the preparation of high-level managers, mid-level staff professionals, and lowly administrative assistants alike.

A total of about fifty TP Automotive executives would be in attendance, and most of them seemed to have already arrived. The conversations were dying down now. Shawn took a seat at one corner of the table that was closest to the door.

Tom Galloway had been designated as the leader for this month’s meeting. As he opened his mouth to speak, the last traces of whispering faded to total silence.

“All right, everyone. Thank you for attending this month’s meeting. We have quite a packed agenda today, so let’s get started.” Tom Galloway was a senior executive who was more or less at his father’s level. He spoke imperiously, without humor.

This entire meeting is without humor!
Shawn thought frantically. In the hours before the meeting he had dared to imagine that if his presentation hit a few rough spots, then he might be able to bluff and joke his way through it. Perhaps, he had speculated, his audience would go along with the gag if he gently poked fun at himself. But now he saw the stark fact that he had previously denied: These people took this meeting as a deathly serious business, as if they were planning a military operation in which lives and the fates of nations hung in the balance.

Galloway motioned to the assistant operating the projector. She clicked a few buttons on the device, and the agenda appeared on the screen, a PowerPoint slide with white letters and a blue background. Shawn noted—with a minor bit of relief—that he was not the first speaker, at least. Three people were scheduled to give their presentations before his turn would come.

As he listened to the first three presenters, Shawn made several last-ditch attempts to fully grasp all of the details of the inventory report, and the questions that he knew would be inevitable. The UP&S plant—like most automotive plants nowadays—ran according to lean production principles. That meant a detailed accounting of inventories at each stage, cycle times, and takt times (whatever
those
were). Each of these factors was interrelated to the others—or so he had been told.

“And now we’ll hear from Sean Myers,” Tom Galloway announced. “Vice President of Operations at UP&S, one of our new subsidiaries in Ohio.”

Shawn rose and stared at the projected image—the summary table from the first page of the inventory report. He knew that all of the senior managers in the room had been previously provided with a copy of the document. Each of them would now be analyzing its contents and drawing their own conclusions.

Where to begin?
The inventory report was nothing but a sea of numbers, and these people expected him to talk about them in some meaningful way for ten minutes.
How could you talk meaningfully about numbers?
There was nothing to talk about:
Numbers were simply numbers, after all.

Tom Galloway cleared his throat. “I think we’re all ready, Shawn,” he said. “Please begin.”

“Okay,” Shawn said. He pointed his laser pointer at the screen. The little red dot landed on the first number in the table column labeled “WIP”. Then Shawn began to read each number along with the descriptions given in his printout copy of the report. He knew that this was not what they were expecting, but maybe it would get him through, he thought.

There was the sound of shuffling throughout the room. One male voice—whose owner Shawn could not identify—said “
mmmm
” in a mildy skeptical tone.

“As you can see,” Shawn said. “WIP has decreased over this month.”

He knew immediately that he had said something wrong. Every face in the semi-darkened room was fixed on him, taking cruel delight in his torment.  

“I uh—” Shawn began. But the words seemed to be stuck in his throat.
Why did they all continue to stare at him so intently?

Finally the silence had to be broken. So Tom Galloway, as this month’s designated meeting leader, took it upon himself to break it.

“WIP has
increased
this past month,” Tom Galloway said, as if WIP were the most important thing in the world.
Increased—decreased, so what?
The point was that the number had changed. Why did these people have to be so goddamned
picky
?

Then the gray-templed executive leaned back and held his own copy of the report out in front of him, drawing the attention of the room to the printed pages.

“No, that’s not it,” he said. “That’s not it at all. I’m afraid we have a few inconsistencies between your presentation and the information presented here.”

Shawn detected a murmur in the room. They were not really saying anything that he could discern—and yet they were saying so much. They were damning him.

Condemnation in the corporate world comes in many forms. Sometimes it is overt, as when an employee is lectured about his deficiencies or sat down for a formal disciplinary meeting. More often, however, condemnation is delivered subtly, with backhanded remarks and shifts in tone and facial expression. Tom Galloway’s raised eyebrows spoke volumes about the failure unfolding before him. Shawn might not have understood the inventory report—but he understood that his performance had already been judged a major screw-up.

And then he felt another emotion welling up from beneath his embarrassment and awkwardness:
Rage.
Tom Galloway was deliberately accentuating his blunder, going out of his way to make him look bad.

Shawn was seized by the notion of how satisfying it would be to drive his fist straight into Tom Galloway’s smug-looking jaw.
That
would divert his attention from the inventory report and the presentation. And Tom Galloway would be just the start. There were others around the room who were giving him similarly snide expressions, savoring his moment of defeat and humiliation.

He felt blood rush to his head, felt a familiar throbbing there. He was within a few seconds of losing his reins, of letting the rage take control of him.

He knew that this was something that he could not do. If he struck Tom Galloway—or even called him a name—there would be severe repercussions. Galloway would not be silenced by the mere fact of who his father was. Nor would the others in the room. Many of them were of equal or greater rank than Kurt Myers.

At the same time, there was so no way that he could force himself to grovel before these people. He therefore reached a decision: He had to leave the room.
Now.

There were more murmurs and a few gasps when Shawn dropped his laser pointer and his copy of the inventory report on the table and started toward the room’s exit. He could imagine what they were saying about him.
Let them talk.
None of them would have had the courage to ridicule him to his face. He would find a way to get even with them later. 

*     *    *

“Well,” Tom Galloway said, after Shawn had left the room. “That was most unusual. I’ve heard of going to a meeting a little unprepared; but I’ve never known a case of a TP Automotive manager walking out of a monthly meeting during the middle of a presentation. This is something that will have to be discussed later. For now, though, let’s move on to the next speaker on the agenda.”

Before the next speaker could be called upon, though, Kurt Myers stood up from his seat.

“Kurt?” Tom Galloway asked. Like everyone else in the room, Tom’s focus was now riveted on the elder Myers. “Do you have something to say?”

“Please, Tom. If you’ll allow me.”

“Of course,” Tom said. Kurt nodded his thanks before proceeding.

“I’d like to apologize for my son,” he said. “I fully understand that Shawn’s performance here today did not meet the high standards that we set for management personnel here at TP Automotive. And I want you to realize that I take complete responsibility for today’s disaster.”

“Well, I hardly think that this was
your
fault,” Tom Galloway said.

“No. It
is
my fault. Shawn is new to the management of manufacturing facilities,” Kurt went on. He spread his arms wide, in a gesture that simultaneously invited criticism and sympathy. “We all know that Shawn is a new manager. And we also know that when we train a new manager, we make every effort to give that manager the tools that he needs to perform—to excel.”

Kurt paused to let these words sink in. Then he continued.

“Well, gentlemen—and ladies—this is where I failed in my role as a mentor, a senior manager, and, quite frankly, as a father. Shawn has taken over a situation at UP&S that is very unstable, and fraught with dissension and open rebellion within the ranks. I’m afraid that Shawn may have been sabotaged by some subordinates today, who sent him into this meeting with data that he could not possibly explain or defend.

“We all know that no manager in this room is involved in the creation of detailed items like inventory reports. How many of you would be capable of creating an inventory report from scratch?” Kurt paused and looked around the room before going on, as if challenging each one of them to contradict this implied assertion. None of them spoke up. “Of course not. That isn’t what a manager does. A manager must rely on his or her subordinates to summarize, to explain the details—to give the manager what he or she needs to do the analysis and make the important decisions. This is what Shawn did not have, and he told me as much last week.

“I want you all to know, however, that we’ve already taken steps to correct the situation at UP&S, so that these individuals will never be able to disrupt our management process as they have today.”

“You’ve fired someone?” Tom Galloway asked.

“We will fire someone,” Kurt replied. “Or rather, they will fire themselves. We’ve employed the services of a very skilled consultant who specializes in getting the deadweight employees and troublemakers out of organizations. And he’ll do it in a way that will not expose the company to any legal liabilities or bad publicity.”

Kurt exhaled. “So there you have it. As you know, we don’t make excuses here at TP Automotive. We get the job done. Nevertheless, I felt that all of you deserved an explanation for the substandard performance that you witnessed today.”  

Heads began to nod.  And just as quickly as the current in the room might have shifted against Kurt, it was now shifting in his favor. The vice president of strategic planning had laid himself bare, had given the room a mea culpa. They had been ready to strike at him, but he had beaten them to the punch.

How could they, now, censure a man like Kurt Myers, who had practically handed them the tools by which they might reproach him?
His explanation was reasonable, after all.
And didn’t Kurt’s son deserve an equal measure of latitude, given the challenges that he was facing in Ohio?

Finally, Tom Galloway spoke up for all of them: “All of us, Kurt—and I think I can say with confidence—
every
single one of us
, has been hampered at one time or another by a subordinate who either didn’t meet expectations, or decided to play the role of backstabber. No matter how hard a manager may strive, it seems that there is always that one bad apple in the bunch.