Читать книгу Cubicle Envy - Geoff Jarok - Страница 4

-Let’s not spin our wheels-

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Come Thursday morning all of the important managers were in a mess of meetings. With corporate simplification in full development mode, it had become a running joke that the Chief Financial Officer wouldn’t notice if someone stole the muffin that seemed to sit on his desk until lunchtime most days. Similar to SoundTech, PW had made a few strategic acquisitions over the years in the US. The simplification plan, ‘The Squeeze,’ as the employees called it, would require a shut-down of the corporate offices of the sister companies in Sacramento, Houston, and Nashville. Offers had already been made to the people whom they wanted to bring to Massachusetts. The remainder were given severance packages and laid to rest. At least their career was killed near their home and they were not relocated to be executed.

Few accepted the transition. These new positions were to start by May 1^st. While there was tempered excitement about getting some fresh blood in the office, with the managers especially ringing this news far and wide, there was also some trepidation from the old SoundTech crew who legitimately believed that their identity would be polished away.

“This PW Peter kind of looks like a child molester,” explained Lisa.

“Ugh, what!!??” Chris chimed in, not actually surprised.

“You know, PW Peter from this crap that corporate HR sends around or corporate somebody talking about our great plans for the next quarter. Nothing says corporate like corny cartoon characters.”

She started into a quasi-Cockney accent.

“A-low, moi name is Peda, Peda File, and oi luv PW products. Oi also luv children.”

“Oh man,” Chris replied. “You ripped that off ‘IT Crowd’, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I’ve been given full authority by the president of this company to make you laugh by any means possible, copyrights be damned.”

“We’re meeting at the Nines tonight. ESO! Are you going to be there?” A rhetorical question by Lisa as she would shoot down any excuse that Chris had.

“Yeah, I can do it. Who’s we?”

“Oh, uh Kelly, Tim, Me.”

Kelly Govoni was the payroll administrator. She had been with the company longer than any of the others. Tim Lovett was the AP manager. There wasn’t a person in the company either of them hadn’t spoken to at some point, though often not under the best circumstances. So, as hard as Chris and Lisa liked to believe that they had it there were others who had pretty lousy jobs that they were stuck in. While Kelly and Tim were certainly very loyal to those in finance, if you crossed them they could be brutal and had a semblance of power to back it up.

There’s a point where those who are injured watch their slow recovery and the mind asks if things will ever be the same. Like many of their colleagues at PW, these four were teetering on resigning themselves to the fact that the workplace they had and bragged about to jealous peers was irreparable. This group was one stitch in the hem of the American economy silently ripping at every new step. Sadly, for as much adversity as Kelly, Lisa, Chris and Tim might have faced in their individual lives outside of work, they couldn’t always apply lessons learned through struggle to fix the inherent problems at PW. Work just isn’t the same as life, though management doesn’t always help make that distinction for its workforce.

# # #

“So Timmy, who are you going fantasize about tonight, Jenna Jameson, Ashley Allan, another porn star to be named later?”

Chris didn’t want to know what this conversation could possibly be about.

“She is a virgin, that’s what she told me and I respect that.”

“I don’t think you can be a virgin if you have a graduate degree in sucking cock,” Lisa deadpanned.

Chris slid into the bench seat. “I don’t want to know….no.”

Lisa cradled the Killians in her right hand and took a strong swig. The 99 was about three quarters full, typical for a Thursday. Customers were trained on the various televisions hanging in each corner of the room. There were guys checking out the scores scrolling across the screens, knowing the consequences of the Yankees being up by two in the third. They would refresh their eyes rolling to the side of the room to meet a coed waitress bouncing back fast enough to see that A-Rod hit another one.

“You know why they don’t have 99s in Maine?” The table stared blankly, expecting that they would soon get down to business.

“Because the people can’t count past seven.” Lisa snorted at her own joke.

“How much crack were you able to buy when you pawned your Ms. Dorchester 1988 crown?” Tim offered.

Lisa ignored the comment and blustered into a monologue somewhere between Police Academy 2 and Revenge of the Nerds in its dramatics.

“This latest crap from Ogre is killing me. The reality is that he and his cronies have a strong hold of our team – it’s not legitimate. We know how to do our jobs. It’s one thing to do what they ask of you and get no recognition. I’m an accountant, nobody loves me. I accepted that a long time ago. When they’re in meetings eating danish and bitching about how the company would only give them an Audi to use while their Beamer was in the shop they don’t say ‘When we put together a spinoff the first people I need are the accountants.’ We’re last and we’re losers.”

“That’s old news, though. I think we’re all used to being ignored,” Chris interrupted, “I don’t get your point.” As he finished his last syllable his Coors Light bottle tipped back and Lisa explained,

“I don’t want to be told what to do by someone who has no background to do my job and I certainly won’t stand for being made the scapegoat when there are problems. That’s what’s happening and obviously now it’s left the boardroom and is slowly congealing in the minds of the non-finance people. Do you want a reputation of being a fuck-up?” Beyond her skills as an accountant, Lisa was a master administrator. When things got done in the office it was because of her assertiveness.

She clarified: “So the solution is that we take it to this guy.”

“You mean we’re going to tell him off?” Kelly was bemused.

“Nah, he’s already got the rest of the company poised to attack us. Talking to him or about him is like holding your own grenade.” Somewhere between her lashes and eyeliner, her eyes had a faded intensity, as if she knew there was no plan that would be perfect retribution. It didn’t stop her from making a call.

“Look, he’s got a bonus payment coming from HQ next week, $50,000.”

“Wait a minute, na-uh, there’s a bonus freeze on.”

“How does it feel to be left out in the cold, Chris? Yeah, what they neglected to tell you is that your balls make a very pleasing sound when they squeeze them. Don’t be naïve, man – they break the rules left and right and leave us to figure out how to account for it because there’s no Fucking Around expense on the P&L.” She paused to let the crowd soak it in. “I’ve got an idea, though: We take the payment and give it to him same as usual net of taxes, but instead of paying all of those taxes in maybe they ‘accidentally’ get spread across the whole company in a little bonus payment to the employees. Merry Christmas, Love, Accounting. Ogre won’t notice until he goes to do his taxes at the end of the year and owes money. By that point it’s completely covered over and if they somehow find that you didn’t withhold on this one you just say ‘sorry, I missed that one’ – case closed. We do have to figure out how to get the CFO to sign off on the payroll run, though.”

“But ya talkin’ fraud!” Kelly’s Worcester accent would come out when she got excited.

“Mmm let’s see: opportunity – check, rationalization – check, oh intent to deceive – ever so much, check, actual completion of the transaction, well that’s yet to be determined. I really liked you better when you were dumb, but yes, there is an element of misconduct involved. If you spread it across enough layers, though, no one’s going to be the wiser and it just simply looks like a mistake when you’re talking about 600 people getting ten extra bucks one week in their pay.” She noticed a fuzzy white lint ball on her shoulder which she aimed to pull off while Chris did his usual party-pooping.

“I just don’t understand why you would go to the trouble of risking your job to try and pull something like this off, when it doesn’t send a direct message to anyone. It’s just a freakin trick or treat game.” This concern snapped Lisa back.

“Stop it.” Lisa paused to bring all eyes upon her. “I’ve been working my butt off for years to get to this place and now someone’s going to question me or my team – not fair, not fair, NOT fair. We had a real system and a real team when we were Sound Tech. It’s slipping away. I make noise because nobody else will. Let me ask you this: how does HQ, who is all the way over in England know what doctor you should be seeing or what phone service you should use? They don’t, but they change the freakin’ benefits to whatever seems right. We make noise and suddenly the kitchen door is closed on us or maybe it’s a round of layoffs coming around the corner.”

They had been here before to rail about working conditions, but never to this level of urgency. No one would argue the company was completely mismanaged. There was a trail of success that, while fading, was still evident. A company that lets its staff make all of the decisions is a happy drunk in a cycle of ineptitude. It wasn’t lack of management that roiled the employees there. The frustration at PW was the bureaucracy. An example had recently been established. Worldwide HR had ordered local HR to have its employees brainstorm on ways to improve the workplace. There was some silly acronym attached to the whole process, but local HR diligently passed along the message. While eating tuna fish in her office (because even tuna in the kitchen would catch hell with Lisa’s extraordinary sense of smell) on Valentine’s Day of the previous year, Kelly came up with an idea for a ‘Suggestion Box’ which could be placed in the mailroom where people could put anonymous suggestions for local improvements. Somehow her sincere idea had to be vetted through global auditing and others. In the end it was a suggestion email address that was settled on somewhere in the October time frame. Kelly was not given credit for the idea, but she had long since given up hope of being credited with anything that left her desk.

As top management was moving its Chinese Checker pegs around its local management teams, Lisa’s strategy to bring the employees a win was tied to a message they would send. She wasn’t waiting for a suggestion box. She continued to sell it to her makeshift team as a plate of fajitas sizzled by them. “Chris, I understand your hesitation. Look, I’m not saying we should run out of the place on Friday with a $10,000 bill hidden in our pocket hoping we have a job on Monday. But, even in that case, if they let you back in the door you still have the same crappy job. You took some of their money, but they’re still not afraid of you. This plan…I don’t even really want to call it a fraud is just a slap to Ogre and the top management to wake up. Will they even get what we’re trying to say? I don’t know, but like I said we’re not risking jobs or jail time here. We’re just flexing a little muscle and we can’t lose.”

Lisa took a conflict and negotiation seminar once. While the tricks she learned never seemed to work on her cats at home, she figured her coworkers might be more malleable. She continued, “Why do I say that? If they don’t catch it, Ogre gets a pinch in his wallet. If they somehow do catch it we just handed all of the employees a little bonus check. If management demands that money back because of a ‘mistake’…wow they look like dicks.”

As she continued she could feel their hesitation softening as if the anesthesia of reason was starting to take hold. Lisa was a game-player and a politician, yet she was awkwardly stuck in her place as a staff accountant in a massive company. “I remember the day SoundTech made the announcement that we were going to be sold to an overseas company. I was in the kitchen eating Cheeze-its and worrying about a cash rec. I knew this was how it was going to be. I knew it! I decided that I wanted to get the experience and I liked you guys. Not to get all sentimental, but I’ve worked with a lot of jerk-offs in the past. When you find the right coworkers it’s like finding the right husband. I haven’t been real good at that, lord knows, so I might as well be satisfied to get one out of two. I figure you guys would’ve ditched this place a long time ago if you didn’t feel similar feelings.”

The moment was snapped as a batter in the Sox game got a fastball directly in the helmet, causing the room to gasp.

Chris escaped to the bathroom and found himself standing slightly dumfounded at the urinal, the ear of the Earth that any man can tell his secrets to. “Why did I come tonight?” he wondered in the silence. “If I just left the company they could play whatever games they wanted and I’d hear about the silliness over email somewhere down the line. It wouldn’t matter. I’d have a new job, with new friends. But now I freakin’ know stuff I don’t want to know…Jesus.” The door opened and Chris battled the sound with his own flush.

“She’s a nut, huh?” Tim said grinning. “I don’t know where she comes up with this stuff.” While standing at the urinal he had his head turned about three quarters of the way to make eye contact with Chris.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Chris in a resigned voice as he stuck his hands under the weak hand dryer.

Tim continued the conversation. “Do you think it could work?”

“Oh man, why did you ask me that?” thought Chris. “Maybe. I’ll catch you tomorrow, Tim” Chris stormed out of the bathroom and waved quickly to the crew remaining. The car is an even better listener than the urinal and there was a lot of talking being done on that ride home.