Company

by Max Barry

  She supposes she must be an idiot. This is the kind of thing that Freddy would have seen coming a mile away. He probably did see it coming and that's why he was so hard on her. She can't bear to imagine Freddy's reaction. She doesn't want to see disappointment in his eyes.

  There's a knock at the door. “Busy!” she calls, her voice shrill. But the door clicks open. “Busy! Do you mind?”

  “It's me.”

  She freezes. “Freddy, I'm in the middle of something here.”

  “Sorry.” There's a pause.

  “So you heard.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, Holly. Roger's a dick.”

  “I'm actually meeting people.” She straightens her folder. “They'll be here any minute.”

  She hears him shift his feet. “Holly, Jones and I are doing something . . . I can't explain it here. But can you come outside for a second? It's important.”

  “Sure. Just let me finish my meeting. Okay?”

  There's silence. Then Freddy does something completely shocking, something she would never have expected and which could get him fired: he bends down and kisses her lightly on the cheek.

  At 4:10 P.M., one-page questionnaires appear throughout the Zephyr building. They are on Zephyr Holdings stationery, titled STAFF SATISFACTION SURVEY. Most people don't see where they come from. Others catch sight of one of three figures, flitting between the cubicles: a kid in a beautiful ash-gray suit, a short dark-haired man with glasses, and a young blond woman with incredibly toned calves. Nobody can put a name to them, but they're vaguely familiar, in the way that almost everyone in Zephyr Holdings is. The employees pick up their questionnaires and begin to read.

  Thank you for participating in the Zephyr Holdings company-wide Staff Satisfaction Survey. Your feedback will be used to measure how effectively the company is providing a productive and rewarding workplace, and to improve working conditions for all employees.

  Please do not write any identifying information on this questionnaire. Your responses are anonymous.

  This elicits a few derisive snorts. The employees are familiar with Zephyr's version of “anonymous” feedback. They've provided anonymous feedback before, only to be contacted by their managers for further clarification. They've had confidential discussions that ended up in their permanent record. They scour the questionnaires for tiny ID numbers and hidden watermarks.

  Q1: Do you feel that Zephyr Holdings is a good place to work?

  Cynical laughter pops and crackles through the building. “Check out question one,” they tell each other. The only thing more amazing than the catalog of brutal methods the company uses to demean its workers is that it thinks it's helping. Not that the employees are going to say this. Positive feedback is taken very seriously, often ending up in annual reports, but negative feedback leads to HR investigations into employee attitude problems. So the staff, or at least those who have been in the company more than five minutes, scribble down the expected responses, sprinkled with phrases such as “team-oriented environment” and “opportunities” and “productive.” When they see interns writing honest opinions, like “I have worked here six months and haven't seen anyone from Senior Management yet,” or “Nobody has explained what the consolidation was for yet or why,” or “This survey is the first hint I've seen that Zephyr Holdings is actually aware of such a thing as staff satisfaction,” they gently still their pens; they sit them down and educate them.

  Q2: What could be done, in your opinion, to improve the working conditions at Zephyr Holdings?

  This raises eyebrows. Men and women congregate in huddles. That's a trick question, right? Does the company really want them to say “Nothing?” That would be a bit much even for Zephyr Holdings. That would take obsequiousness to a new level. Debate rages. The old-timers, the hard nuts who entered survival mode a long time ago, say it is impossible to overestimate Senior Management's opinion of itself. They write “Nothing” in a firm, unwavering hand. The idealists—graduates, mainly—take the question at face value. There is a lot of space and they use it all, pouring out ideas. The remainder answer more cautiously. They start with “If I HAVE to suggest something,” or “This is probably too expensive, but . . .” then they too begin to dream. What if instead of being berated for leaving early and getting nothing for staying late, one could balance out the other? What if you didn't have to fill out time sheets in ten-minute increments, but were trusted to find the best way to make yourself productive? What if Zephyr acknowledged that you have a life outside the company, that you don't spring into existence when you turn up in the morning and vanish when you leave? These are wild, crazy thoughts, but they pour out, one after the other.

  Q3: Do you feel that you and your colleagues deserve these improved working conditions?

  Whoa! Whoa! Alarm registers on their faces. The huddles draw tighter. They know for a fact that Senior Management doesn't think they deserve better, because if it did, things would be better. But it has always at least pretended it does. During all-staff meetings, executives in well-pressed suits preach about how employees are the company's greatest asset—and while it's hard to reconcile this with the never-ending rounds of layoffs and outsourcing, it's nice to hear. This survey question suggests a line is being crossed: if Senior Management thinks its employees will answer “No,” it is no longer bothering to hide its contempt.

  Q4: Do you have confidence that Zephyr Holdings Senior Management will implement improved conditions as a result of this survey?

  Everyone falls silent. The answer is clearly “No”; you would have to be an idiot or an intern to believe otherwise. But that's why the company should never ask such a question. The point of a staff satisfaction survey, like a suggestion box, is to give employees the impression that the company cares without requiring it to actually care. So this question can mean only one of two things: either Senior Management has grown a heart, or the survey is not from Senior Management.

  Q5: If you deserve improved working conditions but you don't believe Senior Management will implement them, do you agree that the only way to achieve a satisfactory work environment is to overthrow Senior Management and install new leadership, replacing the current regime of incompetence, greed, and corruption?

  Ding! On level 2, this is the sound of revolution. The elevator doors slide open and Jones, Freddy, and Holly step out. Around the floor, PA heads slowly rise.

  Level 2! What a place! It is offices, offices, as far as the eye can see, and not a cubicle in sight. Sunlight streams through huge, floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Interior foliage glows with health. The carpet! The carpet! It's thick enough to wrap yourself up in—there are no well-worn trails leading to the coffee machine and bathroom. Is that a waterfall? Oh. No. Just a watercooler. But a waterfall wouldn't seem out of place, not in this land of honey and clover. It is exactly what they expected: a luxurious Paradise in which the powerful relax and are fed grapes by their PAs—well, not grapes, but coffees—while workers below toil in barely conditioned drudgery. They have seen glimpses of this promised land in Zephyr Holdings annual reports, the background for many a picture of a smiling senior executive, but the reality is even more galling. Where are the cutbacks here? Where is the belt-tightening?

  “Excuse me?” a PA says. Freddy recognizes her as a girl who disappeared from Training Delivery about a year ago. He thought she'd been sacked. “How did you get up here?”

  The answer is Jones has special clearance, but Jones is not telling the PA that. He's not even telling Freddy and Holly; they think he got one of the network nerds to hack the system. “We're here to see Senior Management. All of them, please.”

  The PAs exchange glances. “You need an appointment. And even then, you're not supposed to come here. There are meeting rooms on level—”

  “Get them out here,” Jones says. “Right now.”

  The PAs look at each other again. They have apparently developed some kind of telepathic language, because once more they silently reach a decision. “I'll call Mr. Sm
ithson. Would you like to take a seat?”

  “No,” Holly says.

  Stanley Smithson, vice president of Staff Services, is piloting a leather chair in the cockpit of his level-2 office when his phone rings. VANESSA P, the screen says. Vanessa is Stanley's PA, and less than an hour ago Stanley told her in what he thought was a clear and direct manner that he was not to be disturbed. Stanley blows air through his teeth. He does not demand extraordinary efforts from Vanessa. She needs to bring him the occasional coffee. She needs to type up his Dictaphone tapes, on which he records his ideas, insights, and general outlines for memos (the actual text to be drafted by her, since she's the one with the degree in English). And, most important, she needs to make sure he is left alone when he needs time with his thoughts. It's not much of a challenge, is it? Is it too much for a vice president of a major corporation to ask? Apparently so, because here she is on the phone.

  He puts down his frequent-flier-miles brochure. It's essential for executives to stay mentally fresh, and that's why when Stanley feels the pressures of the corporate world closing in, he takes time out to meditate: he tells Vanessa to hold his calls, he pulls out the brochure, and browses through all the places he can fly for free. It's deeply soothing. Sometimes Stanley gets the gnawing sensation that he is faking his way through his career—that he has risen through the corporate ranks due mainly to obsequiousness and good luck, and it could just as easily be, say, Jim from Security (sorry, Human Resources and Asset Protection) up here deciding whether to form a Process Improvement task force while Stanley wanders around the parking lot, making sure nobody is walking off with a laser printer. But the brochure assures him otherwise, massaging away doubts and reinflating his confidence. Stanley must be unusually talented and insightful, because he can fly to Berlin for free while Jim (apparently) can't afford a car manufactured this century.

  He lets the phone ring a few more times—because Vanessa should know better—then punches for speakerphone. “Yes?”

  “I'm very sorry to disturb you, but there are some people here to see you.”

  “You didn't tell me I had an appointment.”

  “Ah, you don't. But . . . I think you should come out here.”

  Stanley's brows descend. This is highly irregular. He sighs, loud enough for the speakerphone to pick it up. “All right. I'm coming.”

  When Stanley emerges, he has a faint smile on his face. But this quickly fades at the sight of Jones, Freddy, and Holly, who are clearly not fellow executives or important investors or anyone else of consequence. His eyes flick between their ID tags. Stanley himself doesn't wear one; he considers it demeaning. “What do you want?”

  The young man says, “We're here on behalf of the employees of Zephyr Holdings. We have a set of demands.”

  Stanley starts to smile. But none of the three people facing him joins in, so he turns it into a frown. “You're joking.”

  “No, we're not. It's very important. We need to see the whole of Senior Management.”

  “Well, you can't. How did you get up here?”

  The other man, the short one, says, “We think the working conditions at Zephyr Holdings need to improve. And we want to talk to Senior Management about it.”

  “The company has a suggestion box,” Stanley bristles. He has no idea who these people are, but nobody in scuffed shoes tells Stanley Smithson what to do. You need much more expensive shoes than that to give Stanley orders. “I really don't see what you're trying to achieve, barging up here—”

  “You're not listening. These aren't suggestions.”

  “That's enough. You three are leaving, right now.” Stanley starts forward, planning to physically bundle Jones, Freddy, and Holly into the elevator. But he has forgotten that people usually do what he tells them because they are paid to, not because he is a dynamo of hot, charismatic masculinity. None of the three budges, and when Stanley realizes they're not going to, he pulls up. He feels his face redden. “I'm calling Human Resources and Asset Protection. You only have yourselves to blame. I hope you realize that.”

  He strides to the closest PA's desk and picks up the phone. His hand is trembling. The last time Stanley was involved in such a physical confrontation, he was seventeen. Then the handset clicks in his ear. Stanley turns. The young woman has followed him to the desk and pulled out the phone cord. Stanley stares at her in disbelief.

  “Nobody's calling HR,” she says.

  Daniel Klausman is wandering through Treasury, emptying trash baskets while keeping an eye on an interesting political tussle between three accountants, when his pocket starts shaking. It's his cell phone. He has it on vibrate because the idea of a janitor with a cell phone might alarm the Zephyr workers, might get them thinking about their own careers and the ratio of the work they put in to the rewards they get out. This is an idea Klausman has tried to impart to other Alpha agents, mostly successfully. The exception is Eve Jantiss, who parks a blue sports car in front of the building. Eve's argument is that Blake gets to drive a sports car to work so why shouldn't she, and the fact that Blake is in Senior Management while she answers phones hasn't swayed her. Klausman has a great deal of respect and admiration for Eve, but he is aware that she is driven by something like pure greed. For a long time now he has had the niggling feeling that one day Eve will, at least in a political sense, knock him down and clamber over his limp body.

  He walks to a service closet, leaving behind the Treasury cubicle farm and its emerging political dynamic. As well as being out of the sight of curious Zephyr employees, the closets have the advantage of being one of very few places in the building that are not under electronic surveillance. This was not always the case, but Klausman once had an embarrassing incident wherein he said uncomplimentary things about an Alpha agent while that person was standing in the monitoring room. Also they kept catching employees having sex in the closets, and while everybody quite enjoyed getting those tapes out for the Alpha Christmas party, he worried that if the terrible day ever arrived where Zephyr's secret was blown, this would look very bad. It's one thing to simulate an entire company in order to secretly study its employees—if that ever becomes public knowledge, Klausman will still hold his head high in any gentleman's club in the nation—but another to build a collection of hidden-camera sex tapes. That could give people the wrong idea.

  He closes the closet door and fishes his cell phone from his overalls. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Klausman.” It's Mona. But her voice is oddly tight. “May I ask—has Jones been assigned some kind of project with Senior Management?”

  “No, of course not. That's Blake's area.”

  “Then I think you should come to 13. Right away.”

  “What's happening?”

  “Um . . .” she says. “I don't know.”

  Stanley Smithson retreats, but only to gather reinforcements. He returns with the Phoenix. Freddy and Holly's eyes widen in recognition. To most Zephyr workers, Senior Management is a jury box of anonymous faces, but everyone knows the Phoenix. He's a thick-necked man with a red face, blue shirt, and graying hair. Currently his sleeves are rolled all the way up to his biceps, which, while not quite the gasp-inducing specimens they were when he was a storeman, are still highly impressive compared to the atrophied muscles of his fellow executives.

  There is a well-known business principle that everyone rises to his or her level of incompetence, because employees who are good at their jobs are given promotions until they reach a role they're bad at, and then they stay there. The Phoenix is an exception: he has been incompetent at every job he's ever held, yet keeps getting promoted. When his job was to carry boxes from one part of the company to another, they would sit in reception for hours until, several reminder calls later, he ambled in to collect them. Then, via means that nobody ever quite worked out, they would vanish for up to two days before arriving at their destination, a few floors away. Also, employees soon realized they couldn't pass the Phoenix in a corridor without getting caught in a conversation. There
was no escape: if you liked sports, you were in for a thirty-minute lecture about player wages, but if you didn't, he would try to educate you. If you were foolish enough to express a differing opinion, the Phoenix's voice would grow louder and more insistent as his thick eyebrows descended. If you still failed to concede, he would start poking his finger at you. People began feigning hearing problems, or waiting until some other poor soul had become ensnared before hurrying past, head down, breath held.

  Then one day the warehouse was outsourced. There was quiet rejoicing: at last, workers could move between floors without a sermon on the declining skills of elite ballplayers! But, to everyone's horror and amazement, the Phoenix survived, being transferred to Inventory Control. Two years later, facing sky-rocketing employee turnover, that department was merged into Logistics. Twelve members of staff were laid off, but not the Phoenix. A decade and uncountable disasters later, he was assigned to head a Sigma Six task force, which was mission-critical for ten months, then crashed and burned and nobody ever mentioned it again. All task force members were let go or farmed out to distant fringes of the company, except for the Phoenix, who over the years had accumulated so much leave that he had become too expensive to fire. Human Resources forced him back into Logistics, despite that department's objections, until the vice president became so frustrated that he laid down a him-or-me ultimatum. This was unfortunately timed, as internal jockeying in Senior Management had left him on the outer edge of a new group of power brokers, who saw this as an excellent opportunity to replace him with someone more likely to share their views. The Phoenix thus became the new Logistics vice president. It is clear to the Zephyr workers that he is immortal.