Revenge of the Cube Dweller

by Joanne Fox Phillips

  Her business prospered for a while until she received some bad advice from Winston, of all people. Though Lucy had not liked what my ex-husband stood for environmentally, she had respected his Rice MBA and business acumen. Prior to his interference, Lucy had planned a season in advance, gotten contracts with her buyers, and grown to order. No risk. Winston advised her to speculate by planting crops and building an inventory so that the accelerated turnaround could be used to bring in buyers who did not want to wait a season or be exposed to crop failures or other delays. The advice made sense on paper but was a disaster once implemented. Poor Lucy got caught in a global cotton glut and had not been able to cover the cost of growing or storing her product.

  In exactly two years from the day she began to implement Winston’s strategy, her business had gone bankrupt, and she bought a little farm in Northern California with what little she had left. Now, she grows a little cotton on the side to sell to craftsmen and hand spinners, but any dreams she had of being a global presence in the world of agriculture and textiles are gone. Retired to her farm and without capital or the energy to restart her business, Lucy has poured herself into environmental causes, raising sheep and chickens, and volunteering at her organic co-op. To her credit, Lucy has never taken her aggravation out on me, although I could not help but feel somewhat responsible.

  “Looks like Winston screwed us both out of careers,” Lucy concludes, and I start to laugh. I can hear her chuckling on the other end.

  “Why don’t you come to Tulsa, Lucy? Come visit me,” I plead.

  “I really can’t leave the farm. It’s so hard to find anyone to take over. Besides, you’ll be just fine, Tanzie. Don’t you remember your babysitting empire? You’re so driven. Just give it some time.”

  “Oh God, Lucy. Yes, climbing a corporate ladder is exactly like cultivating babysitting clients.” The sarcasm makes Lucy pause at the other end and I can tell I’ve hurt her feelings a little.

  “You know what I mean, Tanzie,” Lucy resumes. As the youngest of the seven girls, I inherited a babysitting dynasty whose client list had been refined over the years to include the who’s who of San Francisco. For fifty cents an hour, an O’Leary girl would watch the children, feed, bathe, and put them to bed, plus clean the house. Lucy hated taking care of children. Money was not a motivator for her, but it had been for me, so I happily absorbed her client base, working just about every night, spending my evenings in the orderly and quiet homes of my wealthy clients. After I put the children to bed and cleaned up, I could have privacy, something that was impossible at my house. As a teenager, when I had envisioned my future, it was not sitting at a Formica table drinking coffee and listening to a distant relative snore on the couch.

  “Maybe I should go back to babysitting. It’s not too far from what I’m doing at Bishop. And it pays about the same.”

  “What do you do, exactly? Break into buildings?” Lucy is not a corporate person and her only exposure to auditors is via the IRS.

  “Well, in most public companies, Internal Audit is an independent group that reports directly to the board of directors. It’s charged with identifying unknown risks, processes that need improvement, and disconnects between what the board thinks is happening and what really is happening.”

  “Like the company fuzz? You must be popular.” Lucy laughs.

  “Yes, it is quite the social repellant. But it’s project based and we get to do a lot of different things. I think it’s interesting.”

  “Right.” Her sarcastic tone comes through loud and clear.

  I continue to describe my job in greater detail than Lucy wants to hear. I tell her that since Bishop is not a public company, the department is less independent than what I have been describing.

  “Hal reports to the Chief Compliance Officer, an attorney pretty far down in the organization. We look mainly at policy compliance: Have people fudged their expense reports or used their company credit cards for personal benefit? We also look at field operations for safety violations as well as construction contracts to make sure our contractors are billing us properly and have adequate insurance. We’re not necessarily encouraged to look very hard.”

  The consensus is that Bishop has miserable controls. The brothers pride themselves on being low-cost providers to the industry, and that means no unnecessary administrative personnel. Accounting departments are thinly staffed and capable of performing only the most critical functions. Engineering staff, responsible for reviewing bills charged to capital construction projects, work late nights just making sure the pipelines are being laid or the plants are getting built on schedule. Cost analysis takes a backseat and is cursory at best. Bishop is making plenty of money, so there’s no perceived need to burn up resources chasing problems that don’t exist.

  “Hey, do you remember what tomorrow is?” I guess Lucy must have had enough of my lecture.

  “April 6th? Oh, Mama’s birthday.”

  “She’d have been ninety-two. I’ve been so sad today. I still miss her.”

  “Oh Lucy, all I’ve done is talk about me this whole time.” I’d forgotten all about our mother. Once again I am reminded of my selfishness. Not that I was unloved, but Lucy was our mother’s clear favorite. Lucy is beautiful and kind while I am aggressive, cunning, and selfish. “You’re going to have a hard time finding a man to put up with you, Tanzie!” my mother would often chide.

  I remember when I was in the fifth grade St. Geronimo’s had a contest to see which student could sell the most raffle tickets for the spring carnival. The winner would get first pick at a prize table full of things our family could never afford. The clear choice, in my view, was a beanbag chair in red vinyl. Seating space was at a premium in our house, and having your own personal chair would be huge. Plus it was portable, so I would be guaranteed a seat in any room. Lucy and I got busy selling tickets, as did a few of my other sisters still at St. Geronimo’s. The competition was fierce and there were many fights and tears leading up to the contest deadline. Lucy and I were neck and neck and each kept our final tallies secret from the other. We were standing outside at assembly when Sister Mary Eucharist read the results.

  “First place goes to Lucy O’Leary, grade six.”

  I was shocked. Then mad. Lucy was going to get my chair. The jealousy made me cry as I watched my older sister survey the prize table. To my amazement, she selected a huge bottle of perfume. The girl who came to school in a wrinkled uniform picks the perfume? It made no sense.

  “Second place goes to Tanzie O’Leary, grade five.” I wiped my eyes and made a beeline for the chair. I got what I wanted and was elated.

  “Why did you pick the perfume, Lucy?” I asked when we began to walk home that afternoon.

  “Mama’s birthday is tomorrow. She told me once that she loved perfume, but I know we never have enough money to splurge on it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A lovely part of the aging process—besides weight gain, stiffness, and memory lapses—is its effect on your sleep habits. Sometimes I awake in a pool of sweat and feel as though it is a perpetual Houston August in my bed. This morning, I step out to my balcony to cool off and then go to my tiny kitchen for some ice water. It is just past 4:00 a.m., and I am flipping through the channels on the flat screen, waiting for my temperature to reboot, when my interest is snagged by CNN showing a massive fire in a residential area of Houston. I cover my mouth in horror and turn up the sound.

  I walk closer to the screen to see if I can pick out any landmarks. It is still dark outside except for the enormous flames, but I can see the seventy-story Williams Tower and the Southwest Freeway/Loop 610 intersection. The fire looks like it is within a half mile of the Galleria shopping mall. Oh my God! I think, I know people who live near there!

  On TV, the anchor is interviewing a resident of the area.

  “I heard an explosion,” the man says. “It shook my whole house and I could smell smoke. I grabbed my dog and ran outside. My roof was on fire, but the big stuff was
down the block from me, where those fancy new townhouses and condos are. I tell you what—I have never seen anything like that before in my life, and I’m a Vietnam vet. There were injured people running down the street with third-degree burns.”

  The CNN news team spends the next thirty minutes or so speculating about causes—pipeline explosion or terrorism or possibly a plane crash—and casualty figures—massive, given the high-density housing that has sprung up in that area recently and the fact that the tragedy occurred in the middle of the night when families were home in bed. Hospitals are reporting in about the terrible injuries and are asking for blood donations.

  I think about friends of mine—Beth and Grant and Ken and Alice—and wonder whether they are okay. I think about where they live in Houston, relative to the fire. Even given the scale of this thing, it doesn’t seem as if any of them are in any immediate danger. I force myself not to worry about it right now. Surely they are safe. Still, there is no going back to bed, and I’m an early riser anyway, so I make a pot of coffee and wait for the sun to come up. I sit glued to the television but get frustrated because there’s no real information, just speculative chatter between newscasters. I decide to take a shower and get ready for work, but with the sour feeling in my stomach, I elect not to eat breakfast or indulge in my morning cigarette. Those poor people in Houston. Maybe I could give blood up here in Tulsa, if only as a gesture.

  The ten-story Bishop garage is located directly across the street from the main building. An underground tunnel connects it to the main building in case of bad weather. Generally, though, I prefer to take the aboveground route. I pull into the garage around 6:30 and drive up the inclines to the fifth floor so that I can park right by the elevator. Even though there are plenty of spots on the lower floors, I find that unless I park in the same spot every day, I have serious trouble remembering where I left my car. Aging is so much fun. By going to the fifth floor, I am guaranteed the same spot, even when I’m running late.

  As I get out of my car, a sporty red Mercedes convertible drives by—unusual that an executive would get here this early and park this high in the garage, I think. But when the car stops, the woman getting out does not fit an executive profile. She is about my age, and she wears an outfit that combines pants with a sort of coordinated top—Garanimals for adults, as I heard someone call the style once. Her hair looks home-dyed with that out-of-the-box color and is not professionally styled. I push the ground button on the elevator and extend my hand to the woman.

  “Hi, I am Tanzie Lewis; I don’t think we’ve met. I’m fairly new here.”

  “Mazie Caldwell, Accounts Payable. I’ve been here going on five years.”

  “Oh my. Nice car you got there. Do you park up here so it won’t get dinged by all those huge pickup trucks?”

  She looks a little uncomfortable for a moment and then recovers. “That was my midlife crisis present to myself,” she explains. “I was left some money when my uncle in New Orleans died, God rest his soul.”

  “Pretty nice. That’ll take the edge off a hot flash.”

  “Ha, yes it does. Thank you very much. You have a nice car, too, Tanzie. Is that your Lexus?”

  “Rich ex-husband who, sadly, is still alive.”

  The garage elevator doors open and I can see news crews crowding the front of our building getting ready for a morning broadcast. Each of the three major networks, along with affiliates for CNN and FOX, appears to have a reporter standing by.

  “What’s that all about?” I ask Mazie.

  “I surely don’t know.”

  We cross the street, and I stop a cameraman on his way to a van.

  “What’s going on?” I ask as he opens the back gate and pulls out an extension cord and a plastic utility box of some sort.

  “Bishop pipeline exploded in Houston this morning.”

  “That was ours?!” I look at Mazie but she doesn’t seem to have a clue. “Are you sure?” I ask, almost shouting at the cameraman, but he just ignores me and walks over to his reporter, who is adjusting her earpiece.

  We enter the Bishop lobby, flashing our key cards past the security gate leading to the elevators. I fill Mazie in on what I had learned that morning while we walk over to the elevator bank.

  “This can’t be good for us. Hope we don’t lose our jobs,” she says.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. But I guess you’re right.”

  “We’ll just have to say a prayer to Jesus that the Bishops can help us through this and that we all come out okay.”

  You might want to include something about the folks in Houston who have more to worry about than a job, I think to myself, hoping Mazie cannot detect my amazement at her Christian selfishness from the look on my face.

  “By the way, Tanzie,” she continues, “since you’re new here and all, I would like to invite you to join me for services at the Broken Arrow Church of Redemption some Sunday. We have this new young pastor from Dallas, and he is simply wonderful, and our congregation is great. The Easter service this year was unbelievable. Would you like to join me next Sunday?”

  “That is so nice, but I am attending services with my new neighbor at the South Tulsa Pentecostal church. I will let you know if I feel like venturing out.”

  “Well, we’re having our Spring Fun Day a week from next Saturday, and I’m the fundraising chair. You need to come by. Donna Douglas—she played Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies—she’ll be there to sign autographs.”

  “Wish I could, but I have plans. Maybe next time.”

  “Okay, then, it was nice to meet you. Have a blessed day,” she says as I exit the elevator on six.

  “You too, Mazie,” I reply, looking back with a forced smile.

  Almost no one is in yet, which I don’t mind. I like getting to the office before the others, anyway. The extra time allows me to linger over a cup of coffee, read the Wall Street Journal, and review my agenda for the day. Today, though, feels more urgent, and I dash to my desk to get on the Internet.

  Google News doesn’t have too much new information about the Houston explosion, other than a statement that it was in fact a gas pipeline operated by Bishop that caused the explosion. There is an e-mail from Bishop’s corporate communications reminding us that company policy precludes employees from discussing company events with the media and that all questions should be directed to the public relations group. There is another company communication from Bennet Bishop reemphasizing the company’s commitment to safety and his deep personal sorrow for what has happened in Houston.

  But there is something funny about the e-mail. According to my inbox, it shows a received date of June 2, 2007, at 4:00 a.m. rather than today’s date, April 6, 2010. After a moment and a couple more sips of coffee, I remember having fooled around with my date function in Windows. Could that affect the date of an e-mail? I check my send box and notice that the e-mail requesting Hal’s data from yesterday also has the wrong date. I go into the settings mode and change the date and clock back to the correct time. The sent and received e-mails retain their incorrect dates. How weird.

  I call Cindy, the file clerk I had e-mailed about the contracts. I know she generally gets in early, and when I ask her about the e-mail, she indicates that she has just seen it this morning and will get me the information as soon as she can.

  “Great, but what is the date on the e-mail?” I ask.

  “Yesterday,” she says, annoyed that I am pestering her.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Just let me know when you have the files ready; I’ll be happy to stop by and pick them up.”

  I have never read anywhere that the desktop clock of the person who sends an e-mail regulates the date on the correspondence itself. I spend the next hour changing the clock back and forth and sending myself e-mails from my company e-mail to my Gmail account, testing out how the process works. As an auditor, I always thought that the date on an e-mail was factual evidence documenting when a communication has occurred. I guess I never realized i
t could be manipulated so easily.

  Most companies have adopted a policy of purging all e-mail every ninety days to save storage space on servers, so a retained e-mail from one side of the correspondence might be considered adequate evidence by some investigators.

  Soon everyone has filed into work, and the office staff is buzzing about the explosion in Houston—how awful it is and what it will do to the company. Like Mazie, most of the employees are focused on their own lives rather than the out-of-towners. They are right to worry, though, since Bishop is a major employer in Tulsa, and something like this could certainly result in cutbacks and layoffs. While a pipeline explosion is always bad news, one with significant loss of human life trumps environmental destruction any day. Plus, these were not just any humans; they were rich Texans with enough resources to go after the damned Okies that had caused this disaster. It is too early to know what actually caused the explosion. It could have been any number of things: a construction crew negligently digging, terrorism, or a break due to corrosion. One thing is certain: Every lawyer from LA to New York will be trying to get a piece of the action, and every insurance company from London to Hartford will be trying to find a way to contain the losses.

  I decide to call some of my Houston friends at lunch and get the lowdown from them. Personal calls are discouraged during work hours, and cube life makes such infractions noticeable and reportable by anyone hoping to out the auditor who’s breaking company policy.

  Frank arrives around eight thirty and calls me to his office.

  “Did you hear about the explosion?” he asks as he hangs his jacket up and sits down at his desk.

  “Yes, I have friends who live in that area, but so far I haven’t heard anything. I may make some calls at lunch, if that’s all right.”

  “Make sure you don’t say anything inappropriate, Tanzie. The press is all over this.”