Company

by Max Barry

  Last is what The Omega Management System officially calls Realignment but is privately referred to by Project Alpha agents as “Evacuation.” This is when all the employees who are unhappy with their new role polish their résumés and start trying to find a better job somewhere else. If they're successful, they leave; otherwise they stay, along with those who were close enough to Senior Management to be tossed a political scrap. In essence, the company is quickly reduced to the incompetent and the corrupt. But it will struggle forward, laboring for as long as possible under the illusion that it is suffering from mere teething issues and not a deep, systemic sodomy of the entire corporate structure, until that becomes impossible and Senior Management does the only thing it can: announce a reorganization.

  Alpha dreams of a future without reorganizations. Not that it has anything against them per se: on the contrary, it recognizes that business conditions change and businesses must react. Alpha's objection is that they don't change every fourteen months, which is the Fortune 500 average time between restructures. The typical reorganization, Alpha has found, costs three weeks of productivity, and 82 percent deliver no measurable benefit. That is, rather than reorganizing, a company could give every employee a couple of weeks' bonus vacation and still come out ahead. Or, more to the point, it could not give employees an extra vacation, and make more money.

  The chief problem, Alpha suspects, is that reorganizations are fun. For Senior Management, that is; obviously not for anybody else. Given the choice between investigating why half a percent of revenue is being lost to inefficient inventory control and sketching out a bold new vision of the company's future structure, Senior Management invariably plumps for the latter. If Senior Management captained a ship, it would take twice as long to reach its destination and have been completely rebuilt en route. Alpha has nothing against vision, but it wishes Senior Management would keep its hands on the helm and stop dicking around with the architecture.

  Until that day arrives, though, Alpha aims to find ways to make reorganizations less disruptive. It has tried a variety of techniques, up to and including the current “surprise” reorganization, which was Eve Jantiss's idea for eliminating the usual productivity loss involved in stage one. This appears to have been accomplished, for Zephyr has unequivocally skipped straight into the middle of stage two. Civil wars are brewing. Alliances are coalescing. Warlords, like Roger in Staff Services, are rising. On Wednesday at 8:50 A.M., the first sortie is launched. It comes from Infrastructure Control, in the form of a voice mail to all department heads. It regrets to announce that the costs charged to each department for floor space, cubicles, parking spaces, and phone lines must rise. The building is still the same size, Infrastructure Control points out, as is the parking lot, and there are just as many phone lines. But there are fewer employees to pick up the tab. Infrastructure Control has no option but to raise prices.

  New superdepartmental managers listen to this with their faces turning purple. Cubicle partitions to cost nine hundred dollars! Five hundred per month for a computer! Six thousand a year per window! The managers seethe in their leather office chairs, which are now three times as expensive. This is naked profiteering! The phone lines between departments (two hundred dollars per socket plus usage charges) run hot, as managers share their fury. Vows to involve Senior Management are made—although not carried out, not yet. Senior Management seems a little tetchy about the consolidation at the moment; has been ever since two hundred angry workers camped out in front of the building and started throwing things. Instead, a crisis meeting is called. In the lobby, Gretel watches in amazement as the elevators spit out manager after manager, each striding toward the meeting rooms with a firm tread and a dark brow.

  Soon all the managers are there, even Roger. The only exception is Human Resources (or rather, Human Resources and Asset Protection, as the merged department is now known), whom nobody called. Even managers find HR creepy. It is led by a short man with wet lips and slickly parted hair that curls up at the ends; knowing he has your complete personnel file at his fingertips is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies. So it's everyone but him, and when Infrastructure Control arrives, the room's atmosphere is thick with anger.

  The Infrastructure Control manager is a short, muscular man with a dark beard. He is an oddity in Zephyr Hold-ings: a person who started on the floor and was promoted through hard work. This makes other managers uncomfortable. The idea that you can get ahead through sheer competence, and not politicking, backstabbing, fleeing impending disasters, and clambering on board imminent successes, undermines everything they know. Infrastructure Control strides to the front of the room and folds his impressive forearms. “All right, what's the problem?”

  Infrastructure Control is buffeted by a gale of invective and airborne spittle, as the managers let him know exactly what. But he doesn't step backward. His expression doesn't change. When the well of their anger runs dry, he shrugs. “Nothing I can do about it.”

  Whoa! A new gale howls through the room. Since Infrastructure Control has not reacted well to fury, the second assault is tinged with plaintiveness. Surely, the managers plead, he will not rob them to stuff his own coffers. Surely he can see the position they're in. He must understand they can't operate under these outrageous cost increases.

  Infrastructure Control shrugs again. “All I know is what our total costs are and how many people we've got to split them across.”

  Goddamn it! The third gale is the most violent yet. They are not getting anywhere, the managers realize, so they just vent. The attacks get personal, referring to Infrastructure Control's blue-collar career and lack of formal education. Infrastructure Control meets every narrowed eye. Finally, this gale blows itself out, too. “If you want Zephyr to lower its total fixed expenses,” he says, “why don't you take it up with Senior Management?” He walks out.

  The managers will take it up with Senior Management. They would like nothing better, because now that Infrastructure Control suggested it, they can blame him if Senior Management gets crabby about being disturbed. The managers cluster around a speakerphone.

  Senior Management is apoplectic. What in the hell does Infrastructure Control think it's doing? The whole point of the consolidation is to reduce costs, not jack them up! It's people like Infrastructure Control, Senior Management realizes, who are ruining its beautiful plans. By the time he reaches his desk on level 15, a voice mail is waiting for him. He is required on level 2. Immediately.

  It is Infrastructure Control's first visit to level 2, and he is pleasantly surprised. It is all wide open spaces and deep, rich oak; there are freshly cut flowers and expensive oil paintings. There is some nice infrastructure here, all right. He is shown to the boardroom, where the entirety of Senior Management waits. They point him to a seat at one end of an enormous table and, after a suitably intimidating pause, ask him to explain himself.

  “Well, it's simple enough. Our fixed costs haven't changed, only now there aren't as many departments. So I have to bill them each more.”

  Senior Management waits, but that appears to be it. They are stunned. Where are the PowerPoint slides? The bullet points? The references to shifting business paradigms and emerging market opportunities?

  “But the departments are smaller,” a woman says. “They're using less of the infrastructure. If anything, they should pay less.”

  “And who do I bill the empty floors to?”

  “Why would you bill them to anybody?”

  “Because they're still there.”

  Senior Management doesn't like his tone. It doesn't like his implications, either. Glances are exchanged. Senior Management would prefer an alternative explanation: that Infrastructure Control is a greedy little price gouger.

  “What, then,” Senior Management says, giving him one last chance, “can we do to keep departmental expenses the same as before?”

  “Well, you could fill the floors. Hire more employees.”

  There is a collective intake of bre
ath. Hire more employees! This is barefaced heresy. Senior Management looks at one another, stunned. Infrastructure Control is dismissed from the boardroom.

  For long moments, the room is silent except for the quiet ticking of the bar fridge. Then a woman leans forward. “This idea of billing departments for fixed resources . . . it's just an accounting trick, isn't it? The infrastructure is already there. It's not going anywhere if we stop billing departments for it. So we could fix this problem in a second by simply eliminating the department of Infrastructure Control.”

  Slow smiles emerge around the board table. Finally, a solution! There is an appalled protest from a man whose main accomplishment in the consolidation was to gain responsibility for the department of Infrastructure Control, but he is quickly silenced. The announcement goes out; Human Resources is notified; by the time Infrastructure Control gets back to his desk, two Security guards are waiting for him.

  Sydney, diminutive ex-manager of Training Sales, stands in an elevator, its doors open to the lobby, running her eyes up and down the panel of floor numbers. She has a dilemma: she doesn't know which button to press.

  There's no way she's going to level 11. Working for Roger, until this week her subordinate, would be too humiliating to bear. Maybe some people would take a knife in the back and keep smiling; not Sydney. Since her ousting, she has gone from department to department, calling on old friends. Or people she thought were friends; apparently they were only acting sympathetic because she was a manager. That was a nasty surprise—but then, everyone has always been against Sydney; that's what she's been saying.

  So here's her problem: she's out of alternatives. Of all the numbers on this button panel (and there aren't many), the only ones she hasn't tried are the upper echelon: Human Resources and Senior Management.

  The idea is seductive. Sydney doesn't belong in the lower departments; she should be up top. Where else is there for a person with her sweeping, hostile vision, her passionate dislike of people, her willingness to make other people make sacrifices? Senior Management, Senior Management, Senior Management!

  Only you don't just walk into a Senior Management position. You grease your path over a dozen well-catered dinner parties and games of golf. Sydney hasn't done that. And even in this desperate situation, she couldn't bear to start. She is too good for that.

  A girl with large freckles arrives. “Going up?” she says brightly. Sydney stares at her until she retreats.

  Senior Management, alas, is out. And that only leaves one number: 3. Human Resources.

  Sydney feels an affinity with Human Resources. She likes the name, with its not-so-hidden implication that employees are an exploitable resource, like stock or real estate. And not a particularly valuable one, despite that old chestnut about employees being the company's most important asset. Sydney knows the truth: give the company cash resources, give it strategic partnerships, give it inventory; give it anything but prickly, unreliable, idiosyncratic humans. People are the worst: you can't stack them, or (easily) relocate them, and you can't even just leave them alone to accumulate value. That's why the company requires HR: a department to transform humans into resources.

  Sydney stretches onto her toes to push 3. The doors close. As the elevator rises, she hums a little tune to herself. She is nervous, but optimistic. She thinks she will fit right in.

  Freddy enters the level-11 cubicle farm and stops at the coat stand. The jacket that took his hook on Monday is two hooks down today. Freddy smiles. He hangs his jacket in its rightful place and heads off to his own cubicle with a light heart and an energetic tread.

  He's getting to know the other Staff Services workers. The people from Business Card Design are tall, pale, and elfin. Ex–Relocation Services employees are small, stocky, and humorless; they also have the best square-footage-to-employee ratio. Anyone large, boisterous, and fit-looking is from Gymnasium Management. Social Club employees have bright, darting eyes and strain toward you, seeking conversation. Then there is Training Sales. They, Freddy decides, are the rogues of the bunch. The sharply dressed assassins. Everyone is a little wary of Training Sales. So that's the all-new Staff Services department: a loose conglomeration of elves, giants, peacocks, gnomes, and organized criminals.

  Freddy reaches his cubicle and sits. What the department doesn't include, he abruptly realizes, is Training Delivery. He goes cold. Was Training Delivery lost in the consolidation? And if so, what is Training Sales meant to sell?

  Possibly there is a reasonable answer. Possibly Senior Management decided to leverage Training Sales' skills into a higher-value sector, one that doesn't involve training. But Freddy has worked at Zephyr for a long time. He's pretty confident it's a screwup.

  Holly arrives at her desk to find a voice mail from Roger, summoning her to his (new) office at her earliest convenience. The voice-mail woman says, “Received . . . today! . . . at . . . five . . . fifty! . . . four,” so clearly Roger's earliest convenience occurs long before hers. She finds the idea that Roger has been at work for almost three hours a little creepy. On the one hand, she can't imagine how Roger could be any worse a boss than Sydney. On the other, she fears he might demonstrate.

  Halfway to Roger's office, she finds herself staring at a TV monitor. It's bolted to the ceiling, but so large that it hangs down over the cubicle aisle, forcing taller employees to duck as they pass. Its screen is blank. Next to it is a steel anti-vandalism cage with a large bulb inside. Neither the light nor the screen serve any apparent purpose. A few employees stand below, looking up nervously, but Holly just squeezes past. She doesn't waste her time wondering about inexplicable things in Zephyr Holdings anymore.

  There's a PA at a desk just outside Roger's door, just like Sydney had Megan on level 14. Roger's PA is a slim young man with rakish glasses and a tie with big yellow happy faces that Holly finds a little too confronting at nine in the morning. “Hi. I'm here to see Roger.”

  “You're Holly Vale?”

  “Yes.”

  “He's expecting you, I'll take you right in.”

  The PA trots to Roger's door, opens it, and beckons for Holly to enter. But Holly just stands there, shocked. If you have an office, you close the door and make people knock on it before they come in; isn't that the whole point? When managers say they have an open-door policy, that means you can ask to see them without an appointment, it doesn't mean the door is actually open. It doesn't mean you don't knock.

  She realizes that the PA is looking at her and jolts into motion. She can deal with a job that performs no identifiable function and a work environment prone to producing mystery TV screens; she supposes she can get used to a manager with a literal open door, too.

  Roger's office is drenched with morning sunshine; outside the window it's a solid slab of blue. Roger sits at his broad, gleaming desk with his hands folded in front of him. “Hello, Holly. Have a seat.”

  The office is already well furnished. She sinks into a wingback chair and carefully places her arms on the rests. Then there's a pause, during which Roger continues to smile. Holly's own smile begins to feel fractured. She shifts in the chair and smooths down her skirt.

  Roger says, “I have some good news.”

  “Oh!” Holly says, mostly out of relief at the commencement of dialogue.

  “I've been doing some thinking about how to get this department up and running. I want Staff Services to be the most efficient, productive, and profitable department in Zephyr.” He pauses. Holly nods encouragingly. “And I've decided that means redefining many job roles. In fact . . . everyone's role.”

  Silence. This time Holly can't wait it out. “I just saw Freddy, and he said there's no one here from Training Delivery. Are they in another department, or—”

  “Gone. Didn't make it through the consolidation.”

  “Oh.” She waits, but Roger seems disinclined to fill in the obvious blank. “So . . . what are we meant to do?”

  “That's a good question. But not one that you, Holly, need consider. L
ike I said, I'm redefining job roles. Yours is now the gym. Someone needs to get that place in order. That's you.”

  Holly's fingers dig into the armrests. She feels as if she has just staggered off the treadmill. The endorphins! The endorphins!

  “Happy?”

  “Oh, Roger!” For an insane moment, Holly is on the verge of throwing herself across the desk and hugging him. “Thank you! Thank you so much. I'll do a great job, I promise. The gym has always been good, but there are things we could do, simple things, to expand its reach and get more people using it, like classes for—”

  “Great,” Roger says. “That sounds great.” He smiles. There's another pause.

  “Thank you so much,” Holly says again.

  “I thought this would suit you.”

  “I really appreciate it.”

  “Because if it doesn't work out, it's easy enough to reassign you.”

  “It'll work out. I promise. Definitely.”

  “Good. Good.” Roger leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk. “While we're chatting . . . I want to ask you something.”

  Holly feels it coming before he even opens his mouth.

  “Holly,” he says, “who took my donut?”

  Jones threads his way through the crowded cubicle farm of Staff Services, chewing his lip. It has been an unsettling morning for Jones. First, Eve wasn't at this morning's Alpha meeting. At first he thought she was late, then very late, then Klausman sat down and said, “Eve's off with a virus today, apparently,” and Mona went awww and Blake blew air through his nose as if this was somehow amusing. Jones thought, She'd better get a doctor's certificate, but the idea of an Eve-less day was surprisingly shocking, disappointing, and that was bad: Jones shouldn't be feeling things like that about a person he wants to professionally destroy. Eve is like gambling, he realized: he knows that she's addictive, that she's bad for him, and that unless he gives her up there are going to be consequences, but still, he wants more. Maybe Jones should call someone. Maybe there's a support group he can join: Evaholics Anonymous. Maybe all this will end up with Jones in a bar somewhere with Blake Seddon, knocking glasses of beer together as they reminisce in alternately fond and bitter tones about Eve Jantiss, the bitch who screwed and scarred them both and ruined all their plans.