Corporate
Man knocked on the door to the bosslady’s office. It was already open, but he always gave a
courtesy knock. She looked up, her grim,
sallow expression morphing into a something not quite pleasant but far more
amiable.
“Yes,
Donald,” she said.
“Told you
so,” Corporate Man said and smiled.
“Told me so
what?”
“That it
was too late to affect this check.”
“What do
you mean?”
“You said there would be something on this
paycheck relating to my newly acquired bonus.”
She took a
moment to look perplexed, almost pained.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Nothing,” Corporate Man said, gesturing
toward his pay-stub.”
“And there
was nothing else in the envelope?”
Corporate
Man tipped the enveloped upside down, stuffed a few fingers inside, and flared
them wide. A sift of white paper-dust
drifted over his hand, but nothing of monetary value fell out. The bosslady held her practiced expression
and then shrugged.
“I’ll check
with payroll,” she said.
“No need to
bother. I was just having a little fun.”
“Oh? Oh!”
she feigned surprise, and the laugh that followed was not a comfortable
thing. The feeling that that sound
inspired in all those who heard it was something akin to placing a well
traveled quarter on one’s tongue. “Funny
stuff. Well then, back to work.”
Corporate
Man walked back to his desk. Apparently
efforts to employ humor as method to gain further information about the bonus
would not work with this one. He sat at
his desk, intending to fire off a couple of e-mails, but when he reached for
his mouse, a strange tingling sensation skittered down his fingers. He balled
his hand into a fist and the flexed his fingers. His whole hand when numb. He shook it.
Pins and needles raced up his forearm.
Corporate
Man gripped his elbow as if he could stop the sensation from making its way up
into his shoulder. Prickly pain flared
at the area of contact and Corporate Man sucked air through his teeth.
And then it
was gone.
He flexed
the fingers again. All seemed fine. So he took a couple of deep breaths, reached
for his mouse, but did not open up an e-mail window. There was a new icon on his desktop.
Managerial
Bonus Program.
His whole
body ignited. His pulse quickened. He licked his lips. And he clicked on the icon.
He read
through the document and scanned the attached spreadsheets. The hairs on his neck prickled. This was insane. There was no way this kind of bonus program
could be healthy for a company. It would
be far too easy for employees to fall victim to The Greed with incentives such
as these. He ran some numbers in his head
and calculated the increases that the elimination of Gladys’s hours would
yield. It was staggering.
Corporate
Man pulled up a spreadsheet listing the allotted hours for his department. Were there other positions he could dispense
with? He considered some methods that
could be employed. Things that might
urge an employee or two to transfer to another department.
He blinked,
a little shocked at the line of thinking.
It was so insensitive, so heartless.
It sickened him. But he felt
compelled to continue along this selfish path.
For research purposes only, of course.
He needed to discover the possible moves his opponents would make, and
to do that he’d need to think like them.
Also, there was this crazy competitive urge to dream up the most
effective plans, the most underhanded schemes.