Pink Slips and Parting Gifts

by Deb Hosey White

  All these goodies were leftovers from the freebies and giveaways handed out at employee meetings, or given as mementos to clients and customers. Some boxes were full and newly opened, probably secured for some future event that would now never take place. Other boxes contained remainders from past company functions: T-shirts, windbreakers, sweatshirts, coffee mugs, key chains, expensive pens, leather business card holders, paper weights, aprons, golf balls, stuffed animals, umbrellas, thermoses, carry-on bags, lanyards, sun visors, golf hats, leather portfolios, desk sets, note cubes, golf towels.

  As human resources director Kate Cooper cut through the atrium to deliver an original signed release to the legal department, she couldn’t help but shake her head. The scene reminded her of modern art installations she had recently seen at the Hirshhorn. This would have fit right in, she thought. We could label it: Corporation Spilling Its Guts.

  Weeks later, after all the stuff had been cleaned out, there were conversations about what this junk might be worth someday on eBay. But on the day of close, employees’ inclination to pick up a few items from the boxes was motivated by the desire to hold on to a piece of personal history that was quickly and unbelievably ending right before their eyes.

  On that last morning most Easton headquarters employees still had no idea how much longer they would have jobs. Insecurity ran rampant around the building, with the exception of the corner offices where the company’s top talent was packing up for their grand exit. The merger agreement required the change in control group to leave the premises on the day of the close, their employment and access to the building terminated. These senior executives and division heads had their own cardboard boxes they were filling, but not with corporate giveaways. Their mementos included crucial files and contact lists, a few framed family photos, and visions of golden parachutes dancing through their heads.

  Outside the rain poured down in sheets so heavy it sounded tropical – the weather was depressing the masses, but the corner office occupants were packing as though headed for the grandest vacations of their lives. Nothing could dampen their moods.

  The previous evening, word spread among the change in control group that the deal was expected to close quickly the next morning, certainly no later than noon. But when news came from New York that the parties were breaking for lunch, most of the executives were too antsy to stick around the headquarters building any longer. A few had received a call or two with questions from the closing meeting underway at the law firm, but generally the change in control group members were unoccupied and weary of watching the nervous underlings around them.

  By 1 p.m. most of the corner office occupants had departed, boxes and laptops in hand, with instructions to their secretaries to forward any calls from New York to their cell phones. Few had said any real good-byes. Most had stopped briefly at the office doors of their direct reports to offer up a crooked smile and a farewell greeting of “Good luck,” or “Well, I guess this is it.” Clearly these were not individuals who were interested in reminiscing or lengthy farewells.

  At 2 p.m. the merger deal still had not closed in New York. But at that hour, 245 miles away in Virginia, representatives from Pratt-Miles’ Human Capital group entered the Easton headquarters building and began knocking on office doors. Sitting down briefly, the reps explained to selected employees that their services would no longer be needed after today. Before mid-afternoon nearly forty Easton headquarters employees had been handed their immediate walking papers. Many were long-service employees who had worked at Easton for twenty years or more. Many had grown up there, grown wiser there, grown gray there. They had walked through Easton’s front doors thousands of times – but when they walked out of the building on that Friday the thirteenth, they would never return again as employees.

  Conveniently, the majority of the division heads left the building just before their long-time assistants received pink slips. Those who had read the merger proxy knew this was likely to be someone’s fate. The proxy contained plenty of enhanced severance pay and benefits provisions for “our employees who are involuntarily terminated without cause before year end.” Yet in such situations there exists a reality gap between knowing something is going to happen, and realizing that it’s going to happen to you. For the average employee the time between the merger announcement in August and this day in November had accelerated exponentially. Then the day of the close arrived and every part of it seemed entirely surreal. In retrospect, some described the day as dreamlike; but for those long-service individuals who were handed letters of termination by someone they had never met before, it was more like a nightmare.

  Elvis Has Left the Building

  Bing Sullivan roared into The Easton Company parking lot on a custom Hurricane – the fastest, loudest bike in his collection. He arrived in the rain, parked under the portico at the front of the building, stowed his poncho and grabbed his bags. It was just before lunch on the day of the close, a perfect time to make an entrance.

  Striding through the lobby, Bing was already in character, smiling and nodding at the receptionist and a handful of other employees who were looking at him, mouths agape. Earlier that morning, Easton’s senior vice president of marketing had spent an hour with a make-up artist he had hired to help get him ready. Now his boots were making a wonderful clomp clomp sound on the polished hardwood floors, causing everyone to turn and stare. The white leather fringe swished and the rhinestones glittered as he moved through the reception area. Bing walked straight into the atrium and put down his two bags. From the first bag he quickly extracted the small battery-operated Fender amplifier and microphone, plugged in and turned on. When he arrived, people were clustered in the atrium sifting through an assortment of cardboard boxes. Others were stepping out of their offices to see what the buzz was about.

  “Thank you. Thank you very much,” he intoned into the mike as he adjusted the volume and bass settings. A small titter of laughter bounced through the gathering as he noticed a few more heads looking over the railing from the balcony above. “I sincerely appreciate y’all comin’ out tonight. And before I go, I want to sing you one last song.”

  People were chuckling. Behind his sunglasses, Bing was sure most of them had no idea who he was, which was how he’d like to keep it for the moment. He hadn’t spotted his secretary yet, which was a good thing. She would likely be the first to figure out it was Bing in the Elvis regalia and spread the word. Her office was two floors up. He was counting on that distance to buy him some time to remain anonymous.

  “I had a really, really hard time decidin’ on what song to leave y’all with – I thought about doin’ ‘All Shook Up’ or,” he paused to let the laughter subside, “or maybe ‘It’s Now or Never.’”

  More people were coming down the stairs.

  “Of course I considered ‘There Goes My Everything’ and even ‘Don’t Be Cruel.’” Bing leaned down to start the recorded accompaniment. “But in the end, it just had to be this one.” And with that, Bing launched into his winning Elvis impression:

  “Well it’s one for the money

  Two for the show

  Three to get ready

  Now go cat go.”

  Much to Bing’s satisfaction, the crowd was already whooping and laughing.

  “But don’t you step on my blue suede shoes.

  Do anything that you want to do, but uh-uh Honey, lay off o’ my shoes.”

  Now the crowd was clapping and moving and singing along. As he finished the final verse and moved to the last chorus of the Elvis hit written by Carl Perkins, it looked like Bing’s performance had attracted most everyone left in the building.

  “You can do anything but lay off o’ my blue suede shoes.

  You can do what you want just stay off o’ my blue suede shoes.”

  Bing gave the crowd a huge bow, “Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

  While the group whooped and applauded, Bing quickly stuffed the mike and amp away, grabbed his bags and jumped int
o the nearby elevator just as the doors were opening. Before anyone knew he was really gone, he had punched the button for the top floor and headed for his office.

  It only took him ten seconds to reach his corner office after leaving the elevator. There was no one in sight. Everyone was either out of the building or down in the atrium. He’d already packed and moved all his personal belongings from his office. There was just this one last thing to do.

  Unzipping the second bag, Bing pulled out the larger than life-size color poster he had Kinko’s make for this occasion. Using heavy-duty two-sided tape, he quickly attached the three-by-six-foot tall glossy to his office door. He took just five seconds to stand back and admire his work.

  Laughing, he grabbed his bags and dashed for the fire exit stairwell. Now he was cackling like a maniac, taking the stairs two at a time, but he couldn’t help himself. If the building was taller I could have parasailed off the roof, he thought. Still, this was one of the best moments he’d ever had. Reaching the ground floor just nine minutes after he arrived, Bing left the building by a side exit and was back on his motorcycle in no time.

  Roaring past the front entrance, someone yelled after him, “Who the hell are you?” Bing just waved.

  Meanwhile, employees who had watched the show from the upstairs balcony were returning to their desks on the top floor, speculating about who had sent the Elvis impersonator. Then they saw it. There on Bing’s door hung a gigantic color photo of the guy they’d just seen perform downstairs crooning into a microphone. There was no mistaking the long sideburns, gold sunglasses, diamond rings, white rhinestone leather jumpsuit and the pointy white boots. Across the bottom of the poster in big bold block letters were the words, ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.

  Dressed to Shred

  Sometime after 2 p.m. on the thirteenth of November, Kate Cooper suddenly became Easton’s most senior human resources executive. The “promotion” occurred by default and without ceremony in the waning hours of The Easton Company’s existence. Larry Baxter left the building and Kate found herself in charge of the division’s sprint to the merger finish line.

  In the past, Larry Baxter had dangled promotion like the proverbial carrot on a stick whenever he sensed Kate might be exploring other career opportunities.

  “I don’t anticipate staying here indefinitely, you know,” he would tell Kate behind closed doors. “It’s not my plan to still be here running HR when I turn sixty.”

  As time passed, however, Kate realized Larry Baxter really didn’t have any other opportunities that might tempt him away from his lucrative career at Easton. It took a merger for him to walk away from the company.

  Although they had been working closely together on merger-related project requirements over the past several weeks, Larry provided no final instructions upon his departure. His last words to Kate as he passed her office door were, “Goodbye. Good luck.”

  By mid-afternoon, Kate stopped taking calls long enough to run next door to the coffee shop. Even though it meant streaking through the pouring rain and maneuvering around massive puddles, she desperately needed a double espresso and a few minutes breathing room. At 3 p.m. it was so dark outside the parking lot arc lights were already aglow, rimmed with blurry halos.

  Her break took only minutes, but as Kate reached Easton’s portico and lowered her umbrella in front of the glass doors, she stopped mid-dash to grasp the sight she was witnessing. Although the deal still had not closed, there were workmen inside removing the name “The Easton Company” from the doors and replacing those letters with “Pratt-Miles.” Seeing the company’s name scraped off the glass sent a jolt to Kate’s heart and lungs. “This is really happening,” she whispered only to herself as she stood dripping and staring. Moving past the workers, she walked through the lobby. Two men on ladders were dismantling The Easton Company logo that hung on the wall. The workers were not the usual Easton building maintenance staff. Who are these guys, Kate pondered. She laughed, realizing her thought also applied to the new owners who had the balls to change the name on the building before they actually owned it. Yeah, who are these guys, Kate wondered.

  At the front desk, the receptionist said to Kate, “They’re looking for you in the finance area. Something about a Rabbi Trust? You’re supposed to stop by before you go back to your office.”

  “Lucky me,” Kate replied jokingly to the receptionist. “At least they didn’t track me down in the bathroom this time.”

  Peeling off her raincoat, she left it along with her dripping umbrella in the visitors’ closet and headed for the finance department. As she turned into the hallway leading to their offices, she slowed to observe the kluge of people gathered at the end of the corridor. For such a historic moment – at least in the annals of The Easton Company – it was certainly a strange sight.

  It took Kate a minute to recognize who she was seeing. Slouched and leaning with their backs and shoulders against the walls stood the company’s chief operating officer, Lee Martino, and several members of the senior level finance team. Normally, these men wore conservative suits, ties, starched white dress shirts and polished shoes to work, even on casual dress days. Now here they were in rumpled golf shirts and wrinkled khakis with boat shoes and no socks. A couple of the men wore baseball caps, the visors pulled down hard. Good Lord, Kate thought. They look like they slept in those clothes. And just as she finished the thought she realized that was exactly what they had done. A few more steps and she could see the two days beard growth and the dark circles under their eyes. Everything about them looked weary.

  Before she could get any closer, one of the team’s administrative assistants, Nancy Andersen, stepped out of an office and said, “Oh there you are, Kate. Lindsey has a question for you. She’s either in her office or at the shredder.” Lindsey Gordon was the company’s chief financial officer. She and Kate often collaborated on projects related to the funding of the company’s qualified benefit plans. “Thanks, Nancy,” Kate replied. Then in a lower voice, gesturing with a glance up the hallway she asked, “so what’s going on up there?”

  Nancy looked up the hallway and back at Kate. She responded quietly, “They’re waiting for the final call from New York. They’ve all been here since around seven last night researching and answering questions coming from the final close meeting. It’s been grueling. Very early this morning the team was hunting for a missing mortgage on one of the large Nevada properties. It took hours to locate. Everyone thought this whole thing would be done early in the day. Now apparently there’s some serious concern they won’t close today and this will drag on through the weekend and into Monday. That wasn’t the plan, but if they don’t wrap up soon in New York, that’s exactly what will happen, and nobody on either side really wants that. So they’re waiting – and trying not to fall asleep on their feet.”

  “Thanks for the info,” Kate replied. “I’ll go find Lindsey. See you later, I hope.”

  “God willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” Nancy smiled, answering in her best southern Virginia twang.

  As Kate slipped quickly through the exhausted group at the end of the hall with a low key “Hi. Excuse me,” she felt as though she was nearly invisible. A few of the men nodded to her as she passed but no one moved or spoke a word.

  Glancing past them she caught a glimpse of the senior vice president of accounting, Lauren Bradley, stepping into her corner office. At least Kate thought it was Lauren. Normally Lauren Bradley wore dress slacks and tailored shirts to work with loafers or dress flats. Her wardrobe’s color pallet was exclusively shades of black, brown, gray and white. But the person Kate had just seen enter Lauren’s office – who certainly looked like Lauren – was wearing a royal blue designer suit and three inch peep-toe pumps.

  Just then Kate spied Lindsey Gordon. She was standing on the other side of a glass wall efficiently feeding stacks of papers through the company’s industrial-sized shredder. Lindsey, Easton’s brainiac chief financial officer, had the stature of a runway model. A
lthough she was no clotheshorse, Lindsey was a stylish dresser, but seldom wore skirts. Her trousered apparel let the financial world know she was all business. But today, Lindsey was standing at the shredder in a bright white Dior dress suit and black stiletto heels. With her short white-blonde hair and slim long legs she looked stunning. Lindsey picked up the now empty box and headed back to her office, just as Lauren emerged from her office with a box of papers, headed to the shredder. Kate glanced back over her shoulder at the weary men in the hall and then at the two women in designer suits who looked amazingly fresh and energetic. The contrast was unreal. Just as weird was the fact that these two female division heads – both members of the change in control group – were still in the building and apparently doing their own shredding.

  As Lindsey emerged from her office with another stack of documents for the shredder, she saw Kate.

  “Ah, just the person I need to talk to. We need to put the Rabbi Trust to bed. Want to help?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Kate chuckled.

  “Nah. I was just being polite,” Lindsey countered.

  “Must be the glad rags,” Kate grinned.

  “Must be,” Lindsey replied. “There’s no doubt we’re dressed to shred.”

  Easton Transportation – Fate Unknown

  Jeffrey Elkins was in possession of his Hawker 800A for less than a year when the merger with Pratt-Miles closed. At the negotiation table on that final day, one of the many remaining loose ends was the fate of Easton Transportation. With more pressing pieces of the merger deal still under discussion, Easton Transportation remained far down the agenda by mid-day.