“I work for a relatively small company,” she said, “I’m
currently in the accounting department of the home office, but I started out at
the branch level.”
“What’s
your name?” he asked.
“Oh, sorry,
Corporate Man. I’m Tess Adams.”
“Call me
Don, Miss Adams. So this company you
work for, is that why you’re here to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Is there
some sort of trouble there? Some fiscal
misconduct?”
“I’m not
sure,” Tess said wiping tears from her eyes.
“I’ve been with the company a long time.
We started out very local and slowly expanded into a regional
powerhouse. That region is admittedly
small, and our growth was always slow, but it was unshakably steady. Recently though…”
Corporate
Man waited patiently for her to finish.
“It’s just
different now,” she said.
“In what
way?”
“We’ve been
getting a lot of new people. Executives
from competing businesses. They
don’t… They don’t… I know people say that when your company gets
big things become more corporate, but why does that always seem like a
justification for short sighted greed and callous behavior? We lost our former CEO a few years ago. You would have liked Jack. He was the kind of guy who always knew
everyone’s name. If there was extra work
to do, he’d be right in there with you. Getting his hands dirty in a manner of
speaking. The company picnics were huge,
and fun, and made you feel… like coworkers instead of subordinates. Like family.”
Corporate Man grabbed a juice from
the fridge, unscrewed the cap, and passed it to Tess. He sat down in chair by the desk, his cereal
bowl left on the counter, unfinished.
“Jack earned a huge salary, but he
was always generous with his money. If
he saw you out at a restaurant he paid your bill. If he got wind that your had fallen on hard
times, he’d cut you a personal check.”
“He does sound like that kind of
man I would respect,” Corporate Man said.
“So once he left, I take it that’s when the company began to
falter.”
“I don’t know if the line was as
fine as that,” Tess said. “He was pretty
old when he retired. As our company grew
our competitors shrank and people from their organization would apply for
positions with us. We hired from within
when we could, but, as we grew, more and more corporate types wormed their way
into our organization. Jack got tired of
fending them off I think. He stepped
down as CEO but stayed on with the company for a long time after that. I think he was trying to keep his successor on
the right path, so to say. Anyway, we’ve
continued to grow, but our work force seems to shrink.”
“Expand on that,” Corporate Man said.
“Well, a small branch office used
to have a minimum of twenty-five employees.
They now run with about ten or eleven, eight if the manager’s a real
ass. The excuse is always that things
are so much more automated these days that you don’t need as many people. But that’s crap. Branches typically have three or four times
the number of accounts than they used to.
There is no less work now then before.
In fact, there is more to do than ever.”
Tess took a drink of her
juice. She was trembling.
“So what happened?” Corporate Man
asked. “What changed?”
“Well that’s the problem. No one wants to talk about it. I mean, people talk, but that’s just
speculation and grumbling. It’s been
happening at the head office since Jack left.
Slowly at first, but the same pattern.
I have a cousin that got fired a couple of years ago. He was a branch manager when he got the ax
and he said there was this new incentive program being rolled out. It had something to do with trimming employee
wages, thinning out the payroll. I
couldn’t get him to talk about it. I
don’t know if he actually understood it or if the whole situation just
disgusted him so much. He says they
fired him because he wouldn’t get on board with the program.”
Corporate Man stood up, walked over
to the counter, and took a bite of his Cap’Tal Gains. The crunch was just as resolute as when he’d
first poured milk into the bowl. He
slowly ground the cereal into swallowable bits.
“I wish I
could say I haven’t seen this kind of thing before,” Corporate Man said. “It’s
all too common in the Corporate World.”
He took a
few more bites. Tess sipped from the
bottle of juice.
“Miss
Adams,” he said, “I need to get hired on at your company. Are there any positions available at
present?”