White Collar Blues

by Mel Walker

  "Fuck 'em," Violet added.

  "Yeah fuck'em," Justin chimed in. "So you are going to take some time off?"

  "As if I have a choice.” He failed in his attempt at smiling, “It’s not like I planned for this."

  "Stupid question Justin," Violet chimed in. "Let me do it as I’ve been through enough of these to know how to handle it." She turned back toward Chris.

  "You'll be better off. With the separation package, take the next two months off; for the next two weeks don't do a damn thing. Sleep in, don't shave and take long walks and short naps. Catch the mid-day matinee at the theatre and did I mention you get to sleep whenever and where ever you wish."

  This assessment produced the smile in Chris which had been missing since he entered the room.

  "Sounds nice," Chris muttered.

  "When you get bored, swing on through for lunch, us stupid zombies will still be here. Once you are out and you hear the nonsense we have to put up with you'll realize how lucky you truly are." Violet continued with her separation sermon.

  "Hell, I already feel lucky. I heard about the all-hands meeting. Boy, I don't miss those. Though I will miss Bingo Lingo, you guys getting together in the conference room for that for the meeting?" Chris asked.

  Violet looked at Justin, "not sure, I know Marcus mentioned he would actually be going?"

  Although he had been planning to go Justin felt a tinge of disappointment in Marcus. "I actually have to attend as well."

  "Have to?" both of them chimed.

  "They are announcing the slotting process and are mentioning names."

  Almost as if on cue, another knock appeared.

  "Ready Mr. Grant?" Everett Cooper stood in the doorway.

  "Now it’s Mr. Grant," Justin said, "everyone this is Everett Cooper the Third, you can call him three... He's here for the meeting, my new boss personally sent him down to make sure I escort me."

  Everett nodded in the direction of the pair, "Actually you can call me Coop."

  "Oh sorry, I keep doing that. Don't I?" Justin gave a failed apology.

  "I'll write it down for you if you want. I know as you age it becomes more difficult to remember things." Everett shot back.

  Violet stepped toward him extending her hand, "grrr, looks like the model man has a little bite to him. Hi, I’m Violet Daniels. If you are here for any of our jobs just let me know as I will gladly disappear for the right amount."

  Chris pushed her hand down, "she's kidding Coop. She's been downsized so often she always assumes the next one is right around the corner."

  "Probably a smart approach in today's economy," Everett turned facing Chris as if it was the first time he fully noticed him, "but something tells me you already know that."

  The grin melted from Chris' face as Justin stepped toward Everett; he felt his hand close into a fist.

  Violet quickly grabbed Everett by the arm and led him away. "I'm really starting to like you kiddo. Why don't you lead me to the meeting room? I like to get there early so I can get a good seat."

  She led him down the hall but not before stealing a glance back at the still fuming duo and winking in their direction.

  Justin stood in the doorway and watched them disappear; the sight of a rapidly moving Marcus disappearing in the same direction didn't help his disposition. "See? This is the type of asshole the new organization is going to be filled with."

  "I didn't want to jeopardize my separation package otherwise that kid would have been laid out on the floor," Chris added.

  "I know you would ... and if you didn't, I would have."

  "Yeah, I know." Chris shook his head, "let me get going to finish up the cleanup. I guess Violet was right because I'm not only feeling better about leaving but starting to feel bad for you guys who are staying."

  Justin thought about Everett Cooper the Third, Barry Boyton, and the newly politically active Marcus and muttered, "You don't know the half of it."

  * * *

  The halls were empty. It seemed as if everyone had gotten the memo but Justin. His pace quickened as he approached the long corridor toward the largest conference room outside of the conference center. Another almost late arriving colleague had just entered as Justin heard the presentation already in progress. He stole a glance at his phone, one minute after one it confirmed.

  The all-hands meeting, just like most meetings at General Modification, started late. Universally, people arrived late from other meetings, got stopped in the hallway by other colleagues and/or as in Justin's case, assumed the meeting would be starting late, so they arrived late.

  Justin pushed the door opened and stepped in quietly. The room was occupied to capacity; the sizeable oval-shaped conference table which could accommodate up to thirty people had every seat taken. Off to the left of the room, a row of fifteen seats against the wall were occupied as were the matching row of chairs on the far side. Additional unmatched chairs had been rolled in and sat against the rear wall which generally housed presentation material and or snacks. Justin slipped into a seat in that section.

  Justin recognized the presenter by the photos posted on the corporate intranet, this was the first time he was in the same room as Senior Vice President of Operations Jim Carson. Justin immediately realized he had underestimated the importance of the meeting. Barry sat three seats down from Jim, Everett directly behind Barry. Taking inventory of the remaining leaders Justin for the first time noticed Marcus.

  He was sitting up front, at the oval conference table, two seats down from Jim.

  Justin folded open his portfolio and pulled a print out. If they were going to deny him the opportunity to dial in from his personal conference room he would at least keep himself entertained with his solo version of lingo bingo. At the top, he wrote ninety seconds, his estimate of the amount of time it would take him to complete the board.

  "As you can see from this chart General Modifications has been running with an enormously high expense to profitability ratio - so high that it has been affecting the bottom line. This coupled with our poor performance in the marketplace has led the executive leadership team to implement these changes. I know from where you sit you may consider some of these moves as excessive however trust me when I tell you they were necessary. And be warned if things don't improve dramatically there will be additional moves." Jim pontificated.

  Justin looked up from his grid and stared up at the chart. It was a simple combination line and bar chart mapping performance over the previous five years. It showed the declining market share of General Modifications products as revenues declined year after year at an increasingly falling rate. At the same time, during that same period, the bars indicated growth in expenses, almost an inverse line.

  "At today's session, we will be discussing the out of control expense and how we will address this. In a future session, we will address the lack of innovation and performance from our products division and why we have such a high rate of dissatisfaction by our customers."

  Justin scanned the room; every eye was locked in on Jim as if he was revealing the secret formula to Coca-Cola.

  "As most of you are aware," Jim continued, "we have had to make some difficult decisions resulting in the dislocation of colleagues,"

  Justin bit his lip as he thought of Paul, Chris, and Maria. The term dislocated stuck in his throat as if they were lost at sea. As if their loss of employment were somehow their fault. They were fired.

  "We have also implemented additional constraints in the expense category also. We have cut our food budget, cafeteria services slashed, ability to order in meals slashed, travel budgets greatly slashed, we are calling for a hiatus for paid training, we will lengthen the replacement cycle for key office equipment like laptops, probably extending their replacement life cycle from every two years to four." Jim, an experienced politician, however, could read the tenseness in the room and have come prepared with a carrot.

  "We are hoping these measures are temporary. They are drastic but necessary other
wise this room would be even emptier."

  Nice - thought Justin, appeal to their base instinct for survival.

  "There will also be one other measure that will take effect next week, everyone with a title below Senior Director will no longer have a private office, we will be moving to shared spaces -two colleagues to an office. As you know, we have announced some locations closing. The employees being retained from those sites, along with our new colleagues from Parker Medical, will be co-located to this facility. It will prove to be a good opportunity to get to know your co-workers up close and personal so to say."

  Justin tried not to react but could not contain himself. He drew a large x on his grid and shook his head side to side.

  Jim scanned the room once again, "Well then, that's that. Let me turn it over to Stuart Harrow to explain probably the area in which most of you are interested in; the slotting and posting process."

  With that statement, the slight buzz in the room subsided as the zombies straightened up and paid attention. Justin flipped the page on his portfolio preparing himself for real information.

  Stuart Harrow came across as a dry well trained human resource careerist. In dry, unemotional terms he walked through the difference between slotting, whereby an employee has been identified and tentatively mapped to a new position, versus posting, in which the employee must apply and compete for a job. In carefully legally approved language Stuart explained the term position elimination which essentially allowed the organization to fire just about anyone for any reason under the guise that the position they were hired for no longer existed. With this restructuring, General Modifications had essentially eliminated every job under the previous structure thereby allowing them to reinvent themselves in any format and within any shape they desired.

  After about twenty minutes of dry presentation, three-quarters of the room was nearly comatose. Only when Stuart began to wrap up did any life return to the room. Jim stepped in, "and now we will have Bart Zoolander walk us through the new organization, let me tell you this is a highly irregular step. However, several of you in your manager reviews had expressed interest. So under the guise of transparency, we wanted to inform you, our most important asset in the company."

  Justin coughed. It took all his self-control not to cough out the word Bullshit.

  Unlike the other presenters, Bart Zoolander stood. Showing off an impressively expensive custom European suit he stepped toward the screen, "As I proceed with the breakdown, please hold any comments to the end. These are also the current mappings. However nothing is final, and placement is subject to change. Also, if you don't see your name on any of the charts, do not read too much into it at this time, there may be other opportunities in which we feel better fit your skills outside of these key areas we will be discussing."

  His forced smile of knowing did little to calm the ever-increasing nerves of the room.

  "First up is the back office operations area headed by Daniele Portran."

  Justin relaxed as Bart walked through the names of mapped employees in the back office. The group had been down in size by fifty percent. Only eight boxes were listed and of that only two employees were mapped. The remaining six boxes had over thirty names in the posting list. Justin scanned the room feeling the insecurity of the team members as each quickly scanned the listing to locate their name and then promptly tried to memorize the names of the competitors for the open slots.

  Justin noticed the shared glance between Bart and Jim, the bastards were enjoying the peons scrambling for the few remaining life rafts.

  After having his entertainment quotient filled Bart flipped to the next chart, "Logistics" he called out as if he expected applause. A similar reaction crossed the room as this group had a similar experience, almost fifty percent reduction in headcount, minimal slotting and a list of forty names for twelve positions for the posting process. As the buzz in the room grew again, as did the smiles of upper management, Justin realized that the sharing of this information wasn't for the benefit of the employees but rather for the entertainment of the leaders.

  Justin's heart began to race. He thought of Maria having her office boxed while on vacation, he thought of Paul groveling for a job which he didn't even want just to secure medical benefits, he thought of Chris nearly in tears after he told his wife.

  Then he thought of his colleagues in the room already plotting, not on ways to address the cause of the issues at General Modifications. No, instead they were already planning against one another to salvage their measly jobs.

  As the next chart was flipped up and the Quality Assurance group was listed whatever remaining breath remained was taken away. His team would be cut in half, like the others. However the senior positions were reduced to two, one had a slotted employee - Marcus Levins. The other slot was a posting, it listed only two names, Justin Grant and Everett Cooper the Third.

  Justin stared across at Barry. Everett Cooper was leaning forward toward Barry whispering in his ear. They shared a laugh, both looking up at him. Justin stood.

  Bart reacted, "Like I said we'll take questions at the end."

  Justin didn't say a word; he pushed past his colleagues as he headed toward the exit. The smiles from Everett and Barry grew as he noticed Marcus rising as if to follow him. Barry quickly reacted, whispering something to Marcus. Justin caught Marcus' descent back to his seat in the corner of his eye as he left the conference room. As he stormed back to his office, he wanted to vent, but there wasn't another soul roaming the halls. Every room sat empty.

  As he reached his office, he plopped himself down onto the chair. Only then did he notice the memo placed squarely on his desk. It was from the maintenance department. He had been instructed to work at another location Friday as his workspace would be reconfigured to accommodate the new shared policy.

  –Justin’s eyes raced through the rest of the corporate speak, only stopping when he saw the name of his new officemate - Everett Cooper the Third.

  "Freaking peachy" Justin muttered as he slammed the door shut.

  * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  The clock stated that it was still early in the day, barely passed eleven yet, Leslie felt as if she had been at it for twelve hours. Her phone trembled across the desk, practically demanding her attention. She ignored it.

  Leslie had broken the rules; so many recently that she was losing count.

  As she sat on the stool in the workshop her current indiscretion right in front of her – wearing a headset on with the music blasting while operating heavy equipment. A quick thought of being reprimanded by Justin only made her crank it up louder. For a second she let herself be transported away by the music, picturing Jason Aldean pressed against her back as they stared up at the sun side by side.

  Attempting to focus, she placed a block of wood on the table as her eyes drifted toward her phone. Seven missed calls, all from Peter.

  Just the sight of his number caused the wave of guilt to pass over her once again. The guilt quickly transformed to anger – the anger directed at herself. She knew the possibilities from the start. Peter had dropped more than enough hints over the previous weeks that his interest in her was more than just professional, yet she continued to meet with him, spending more and more time alone with him. She stomped her right foot on the concrete floor, "stupid, stupid," she shouted as she thought of the number of times she flirted with him.

  But still.

  There had been other men. Through twenty-five years of marriage, every woman had come across men who they knew had an unhealthy interest in them. For twenty-five years it had never been an issue. Why now?

  The question stuck in her head as she glanced over at the broken wedding portrait, heat radiated from her chest as if she had been punched. The rip in the center was too clean, too recent for it to have occurred in the attic. She knew she had placed it against the beam; there was no way it could be damaged.

  Justin.

  Filled with guilt the previous evening she did
n't put two and two together until just that moment. She ripped off her earbuds and turned off the drill. With renewed focus and redirected anger, she punched in the phone number before she had a moment to think.

  The phone rang, each subsequent ring taking a bit of the anger away from her. The sound of professional Justin on the voicemail dissipated the rage; this was the gentle soul she had fallen in love with so many years ago. The man she knew she still loved. They were in a dark place, but it was recoverable, right? She tried to convince herself.

  "It's me. Please call me; there is something we need to discuss regarding what happened yesterday."

  She clicked off the phone before she could say anything further.

  Her mind drifted as she stared across the workshop. The thought of losing Justin caused her eyes to suddenly well up with tears. In her crossed arms she caressed the phone willing it ring with her husband.

  A tear finally escaped her eye, drawing a wet river down her cheek. The sudden buzz of the phone caused her to sniffle; her upper lip lifted into a small smile, she answered, "I'm glad you called right back, we need to talk."

  The line was silent for a second before the voice finally spoke, "I’m glad you finally picked up."

  It was Peter.

  ***

  The crumbled paper never made it to the wastebasket. Justin had initially crumbled it with the intent of tossing it but changed his mind mid-toss. The document laid in the middle of the floor as Justin stomped on it like a two-year-old after discovering his favorite toy no longer worked.

  Only the flashing of his phone caught his attention as pressed the speakerphone button and a voice from the past greeted him.

  "I didn't think I would catch you."

  "Holy cow," a happy reply came from Justin instantly transforming his disposition. He recognized the voice of Simpson Bolle immediately. "You are the first thing that has gone right today."