Termination Man

by Edward Trimnell

  Let Shawn try, I thought. Claire would give him a lot more than he bargained for.

  “Shawn is strong-willed,” Claire said. “They all are, those TP Automotive people.”

  “Shawn is a complete asshole,” I said.

  “I’m going to take that as a definite sign that you don’t like him.”

  “You could say that.”

  I let the matter drop at that. Further discussion of Shawn Myers would have only worsened my mood, which had been partially uplifted by a vigorous session of sex with Claire. Most of the muscles in my body ached pleasantly; and Shawn Myers was far from this hotel room. Almost far enough to allow me to forget about him.

  Chapter 33

  We sprung the trap on Alan the very next day. Like I’ve said, Alan was not the sort of man who could be fooled for long. Sooner or later, he would have put the pieces together.

  We executed the plan around 1:00 p.m., shortly after everyone had returned from the lunch break. Alan studiously tried to ignore Claire as she approached his desk. As she walked in his direction, he bent forward in the direction of his computer screen. His nose might have been touching the display. But none of this was very convincing. Alan had noticed Claire the moment she had arisen from her desk, on the other side of the room.

  She walked around behind his desk and spoke quietly into his ear. I knew exactly what Claire was saying to Alan in that low whisper, because I had scripted her words for her: She was saying: “Come on, Alan. It’s now or never. I know a place in one of the storage rooms. A place where we can be alone.”

  You might say that Alan should have seen through the ploy. If given several hours to contemplate the situation, I have no doubt that he would have decided to side with his sense of caution. But ego and libido will overpower most men in the heat of the moment. And you also have to consider the unique circumstances of Alan Ferguson, the man who had struggled to believe that Claire Turner would be interested in him. His hopes had been raised and then shattered. Now they were being unexpectedly lifted again. Alan wasn’t thinking about long-term consequences.

  As he stood up from his desk to follow Claire, even I was surprised at the degree to which he seemed ruled by his emotions. The look on his face could be fairly described as a thousand-yard stare. We had placed before him a temptation that he could not resist. How long had it been since Alan Ferguson had been with a woman, I wondered.

  I waited until both of them had disappeared into the narrow passageway that led to the factory area. Then I stood up from my desk and sent Beth Fisk a text message: “In play.” It was another quasi-coded message, another step to establish plausible deniability in the unlikely event that our machinations were ever discovered or suspected.

  Beth’s reply was a bit less discreet: “Let’s go get him.”

  I cringed at her overeagerness. In operations like this, haste could bring ruin to the most carefully laid plans. Haste could lead to a lawsuit. In a worst-case scenario, haste could even land someone in jail.

  So I typed my response: “5 minutes. Wait for my signal.”

  I waited five minutes and sent Beth a third text message: one word, “Now.” Per our prearrangements, I stood up from my desk and walked into the factory area. I passed through the little hallway where Alan had begun the plant tour on my first day at UP&S. I avoided looking at the trophies and company photographs that had apparently meant so much to him. That had been a different company; and he had ultimately gained nothing by his attachment to it. In fact, his excessive nostalgia for the old days of management by GM and Takada Press had become the cause of his complete ruination.

  I approached the place where Alan and Claire would be via the cordoned-off walkway that led down the eastern half of the plant floor. I knew that Beth, Bernie, and Kurt Myers would be approaching from the walkway on the opposite side.

  We tracked them to their rendezvous site: a large storage closet at the rear of the factory. The ultimate cliché. But it was the ideal place for our purposes: It was the perfect size for a tryst, and it was sufficiently remote from the plant assembly lines.

  Kurt Myers yanked open the door of the storage room just as Claire, her blouse partially open, was violently twisting away from Alan. She shrieked on cue, and shoved Alan away. Then she bolted from the storage room, but not before pausing to give Alan a slap across the face.

  Alan was breathing heavily. His gaze moved from Claire, who was now staring at him with a look of indignant but manufactured shock, to the little gaggle of witnesses that were gathered outside the storage room door. And I knew that we would not be the only witnesses for long. Within a minute or two, employees on the factory floor would begin to abandon their workstations and gravitate toward the spectacle. How do I know this? I had been through similar scenarios before.

  Chapter 34

  Within five minutes the five of us were sequestered away in a meeting room: Kurt, Bernie, Beth, Alan—and myself. Only one relevant party was missing: Claire.

  Claire had walked away almost as soon as the scene in the storage room had unfolded, barely waiting for Beth to tell her to go. This detail, too, was previously rehearsed and planned: Claire would serve no purpose in Alan’s termination meeting. In fact, her presence could even complicate matters.

  Beth closed the door of the meeting room and joined everyone else at the table. We had walked back to this chamber in silence; now it was time for Alan to learn of his fate.

  It was ugly; but not as ugly as it might have been. Alan could see that he had placed himself in a corner. He had been caught in a storage room with a disheveled woman who now accused him of sexual harassment—sexual assault, in fact. It was the sort of thing that would never hold up in a criminal case; but in the corporate world, lesser standards of proof suffice.

  Employment-at-will means that either side can end the relationship, with or without cause or explanation. You can stand up from your desk or workstation at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon and quit, with or without notice. Likewise, your employer can at any time tell you to gather up your personal belongings and vacate the premises. They don’t need a reason—they can simply say that you “weren’t a good fit for the organization.”

  In practice, of course, the break is not always as clean and complete as that. Moreover, the terminated employee isn’t always the party that desperately wants to hold on. On occasion the jilted employer is the clingy one.

  Sometimes employers pressure new employees into signing non-compete contracts, in which they agree not to accept employment with a competitor in the event that they leave their current job—for any reason. This means that an employer can effectively have its hooks in an ex-employee whom it has fired, in the event that the ex-employee goes to work for a rival firm.

  A terminated employee can find ways to make the pain linger for an ex-employer as well. There are a few situations that automatically nullify the doctrine of employment-at-will: evidence of racial or gender discrimination, the firing of an employee who has blown the whistle on corporate fraud, etc.

  Beyond these examples are the many, many grey areas of employment law. It depends on how much trouble one party wants to make; and how far each side is willing to fight the battle. TP Automotive had figured that Alan would put up a fight. I agreed with them; and we hadn’t missed that fact that Alan—as an employee over forty—could play the age discrimination card. Therefore, we needed to place him in an untenable position, where he would see a quiet departure from the company as his only viable option.

  We thought we had him in such a position when we caught him red-handed in that storage room with Claire. But he didn’t buy it. At least not completely.

  “She invited me to go back to the storage room,” Alan said. This had been his strategy throughout the meeting thus far. He was building a defense based on entrapment—which was exactly what the aborted tryst had been. But we were prepared for this line of argument.

  “So you say.” Bernie looked at the notes scribbled on his legal pad
. “But the preceding facts, and the situation we all saw back there, make that claim pretty unlikely. Did you not recently call Claire Michaels to ask her out—and didn’t she tell you no?”

  This seemed to fluster Alan. “Yes—but—”

  “And now you’re asking us to believe that this same woman asked you—in the middle of a workday—to follow her back to a location in our factory for a sexual encounter. Is that your version of the story, Alan?”

  “Yes,” Alan said. But there was no conviction in his voice. On some level Alan knew that this had actually happened; but he was in a room full of authority figures who asserted otherwise. Whatever he said, Beth, Bernie, and Kurt would find a way to contradict or twist his words against him. Alan would be overwhelmed not only by their official status, but by their superior number as well.

  This is a strategy that was understood and routinely utilized by agents of the Spanish Inquisition and the Soviet KGB. They understood that the perceived might of official authority is exponentially increased when the accused faces a group—even a relatively small group. Modern police forces employ this concept as well. Walk into any police interrogation room, anywhere in the world, and you’ll likely find that the interrogators outnumber the interrogated. Attacking the target from all sides, they eventually wear him down—to arrive at the truth, or (depending on the interrogators) the false answer that serves their ends.

  This is a combination that corporate managers also regularly use to their benefit with considerable effect—even in this age of employee empowerment and rampant (but superficial) individualism. When outnumbered and out-titled, I have seen even the most defiant of targets begin to doubt their own interpretations of events and situations.

  But Craig Parker was not an authority figure, at least as far as Alan Ferguson knew—although I believe that he was beginning to doubt even that. When Alan gave me a questioning glare, Beth informed him that my presence was meant to assure some objectivity.

  “We’ve asked Craig to attend this meeting as a witness,” she said. “And also as a representative at the staff level. We don’t want to create the impression that you’re being railroaded, despite what you did.”

  “How was it that Craig happened to be there when you opened that door?” Alan asked. “And how was it that you happened to be there? All of you.”

  These were questions that Alan had already asked; and they were questions for which he would receive no satisfactory answer.

  “We’ve already been through this,” Bernie replied. “You were in an area of the facility that any company employee has legitimate access to. No one here owes you an explanation in that regard.”

  “Well, I know at least one person who does.” Alan said. “I want to see Claire Michaels. If her name really is Claire Michaels.”

  I caught the full significance of his last words, and so did everyone else in the room. Alan obviously understood that this wasn’t a textbook sexual harassment case. But he probably hadn’t put all of the pieces together yet. How could he have?

  “Claire Michaels is the coworker whom you viciously assaulted in that storage room,” Bernie said. “And no, she is not going to be present in this meeting.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Alan asked. “What about the good old American sense of justice? Don’t I have the right to face my accuser?”

  “Don’t try to school me in the law,” Bernie said. “This is not a public trial.”

  “Claire is far too upset to be here,” Beth said. “I don’t have to tell you this, but I’ll inform you that we’ve told Claire that she can take the rest of the day off.”

  “That’s pretty damned convenient, isn’t it? The person who entraps me—who lures me on false pretenses and then entraps me—is not even on the premises. And you doubtlessly plan to shuffle me out of here within the next hour, so I will never have the opportunity to expose that woman for what she is: a liar, and a probable TP Automotive plant.”

  Bernie gave Alan a dismissive wave. “You’re delusional.”

  Alan Ferguson stared hard at me, then gave me the slightest hint of a smile.

  “And you,” he said. “You’re not exactly the person you claim to be, are you?”

  I played it straight. “You know exactly who I am, Alan. I’m your coworker, and I the only reason I am here is because I would lose my job if I refused.”

  “But what, exactly, is your job?” Alan asked, obviously unconvinced. “Funny how you happened to be in the area at the same time as Bernie, Beth, and Kurt. You expect me to believe that was all a matter of serendipity?”

  “You can believe whatever you’d like, Alan. But I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

  “You, Alan,” Beth said, retaking control of the meeting. “You have bigger problems right now than your paranoid suspicions about your coworkers.”

  “I’m not really sure who my coworkers are.” He looked at me again. “Or what they are.”

  Beth ignored this remark. It was time to wrap things up. Before long Alan’s shock would give way to the raw anger that would inevitably follow. Then he would be far less controllable.

  “If you’re lucky,” she said. “We can convince Claire not to file charges. But you should take this incident seriously, Alan. I strongly recommend that you seek counseling.”

  Alan laughed in Beth’s face. “Funny how you have all of this worked out, isn’t it?” He looked around the room, at each one of us. “Do you people really think I’m that stupid? Do you think I’m not going to go to the EEOC—and anyone else I can think of?”

  We had anticipated in advance that Alan would threaten EEOC action. That would be the logical thing for him to do, or at least threaten to do. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is a branch of the U.S. government. While Alan was neither female nor a member of any ethnic minority, he was, as I’ve mentioned, over the age of forty. He could conceivably appeal to the EEOC on the grounds that he was wrongly terminated; and he could cite his age as one of the company’s likely motives for ousting him.

  “Alan,” Beth said, her tone almost gentle. “Take a look at yourself, and take a look at Claire. Who do you think that the EEOC is going to believe?”

  “You people have accounted for every eventuality, haven’t you? You’ve set this up to be airtight.”

  “Listen, Alan: We’re prepared to give you two months of severance pay.”

  “Two months?” Alan asked, incredulously. “Do you think that I can find another job like this one in two months? In this economy? I’ve got two kids to put through college, you know. And I’m still paying on the mortgage of the house where my ex-wife and children live.”

  “You might have thought more about your children,” Kurt interjected. “Before you tracked Claire Michaels back to that storage room and assaulted her.”

  “I didn’t ‘track’ her!” Alan shouted. “She invited me. Ask Craig here: he was there.”

  Alan gave me an imploring look. His expression didn’t contain much hope. But he was asking me one last time to come clean, to resist this injustice.

  Was it really injustice? On some level it probably was. But hadn’t Alan followed Claire of his own freewill? He could have chosen a different path. He could have told her no.

  But how could any single, unattached man—a man as lonely and pathetic as Alan Ferguson—possibly tell Claire Turner “no”?

  I pushed this thought away.

  “I wasn’t watching the two of you,” I said. “My attention was focused on my computer screen. And anyway, I was sitting out of earshot.”

  “You son-of-a-bitch!” Alan pounded his fist on the table. He made as if to lunge for me. Bernie and Kurt half arose from their seats. They could have easily restrained him. There was nothing about Alan Ferguson that was physically intimidating.

  “Please, Alan,” Beth said. “Don’t make this any worse on yourself than it already is. Like I said: We’re prepared to release you with two months pay. But we have some preconditions.”

  Beth slid a prepare
d contract across the table to Alan. “This is our standard release form,” she told him. I knew otherwise: It was a contract that Bernie had written for the specific purpose of muzzling Alan Ferguson, and legally hamstringing him lest he attempt to seek redress against TP Automotive.

  The contract stated that the undersigned was voluntarily leaving the employment of United Press & Stamping, a subsidiary of TP Automotive. The document further stated that he would have no further contact with any present or past employees of either company.

  Finally, the contract stipulated that Alan’s severance pay would constitute a final settlement of all claims and responsibilities on the part of TP Automotive.

  “Allow me to counsel you for a moment,” Bernie said. “Think about your family. Your children are daughters, aren’t they? If you turn this into a public mudslinging contest, it will be revealed that you went back to that room with the intention of engaging in illicit sex during working hours—and all of us agree on that, don’t we? What is that going to say to your daughters, Alan?”

  “Damned right,” Kurt said. “A man with a family should exercise better judgment.”

  Alan couldn’t argue with this sentiment, at least: He should have exercised better judgment. In that instant everyone in the room knew that Alan had been defeated. Beth Fisk and Bernie Chapman had done their homework. They had calculated that Alan would be sensitive about his relationship with his daughters. He wouldn’t want to risk a public legal battle that would expose one undeniable truth: He had indeed followed Claire to that storage room with the intention of engaging in sexual activity with her.

  And this was the only fact that would matter to Alan’s daughters.

  “This is fucking blackmail,” Alan said.

  “Alan,” Beth said, lacing her fingers together on the tabletop. “If you would only pause to consider this matter rationally, I think you would find that we’re really being very generous with you. We could throw you out on the street without any severance pay. That’s common in cases of gross misconduct.”