by Mark Sampson
So I was thrown for a loop when they gave us all laptops in the first ten minutes of orientation. The HR manager leading our pan-departmental training session handed the machines out as if they were bento boxes, while we, a cohort of about fifteen, sat in rows of tables in the classroom-style meeting room. I was parked between two young women hired as financial analysts — both of whom, I recall, having vaguely pornographic names: Tiina Cherry (spelt with two phallic i’s) and Regina Wetmore. The laptops we were assigned were the slickest I’d ever seen — putting to shame the dud I used for my work at U of T’s Philosophy department — but the girls barely blinked at the handout.
Orientation revealed that ODS was in Year Three of its latest corporate piatiletka: The ODS Way (2010–2014), the goal for which was to re-establish billion-dollar revenues by the end of “Fiscal 14.” The HR rep, using a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation full of Microsoft Visio diagrams, walked us through how this overarching mission statement was to control our behaviours in every interaction while on company time. This was more like it, I thought. A downright fascistic approach to human manipulation: the relentless sloganeering, the buzzword indoctrinations, the pressure not to use any independent judgment that wasn’t “laser-focused” on the company’s profitability. I raised several reflexively comic protests during this presentation, but my jokes fell flat. Yet despite these subversive queries, I did not achieve the pariah status I assumed I would. In fact, Tiina and Regina — who seemed to have become BFFs during the mid-morning coffee break — invited me to join them for lunch.
In the afternoon, I settled into my assigned cubicle, which was right outside the office of the communications manager who hired me. “Orientation go okay?” he asked, coming out when he spotted my arrival. He was a tall, breezy technocrat named Stuart, with thick curly hair and a meticulously trimmed soul patch, so unlike the red mass of fur that engulfed my face. He took me around to meet the rest of the team, an ensemble of marketing types and quondam journalists and social media specialists. Everyone knew who I was and why I was there — someone even claimed to have read my one confirmed bestseller, The Movable Apocalypse (Bibliophilia, 1998) — and everyone was friendly. But it was a friendliness singed by stress, by worries over looming deadlines and relentless project plans, by evening GO Train schedules forever present in the back of their minds.
Stuart and I reviewed the complex nondisclosure documents I had signed — outlining all of the proprietary elements of ODS’s business that I’d agreed would not make it into my new book — and then he set me upon the task for which I’d been hired. The company’s enormous, labyrinthine website had been written in a kind of business pidgin, and it was my job to rewrite a large section of it into lucid English. The firm was happy for the free labour, and this was exactly the kind of work I wanted during this operation, since it would put me in contact with multiple divisions of the company — its fund managers, its corporate advisors, its legal team, its various ancillary offshoots — and give me a view into their world. The job itself was a simple simulacrum of journalism: do a bit of research, go interview the relevant experts, cobble together the web copy, et cetera. Stuart even suggested I could do much of it from home, and I was tempted by the prospect: to be in my own book-lined office, a Bloody Joseph to sip, Grace beyond the closed door doing her thing with the kids. But no. My true subject matter was ODS’s corporate culture, and I needed to be in the thick of it.
And what to say of that culture? ODS believed in competition, believed it in its bloodstream. Saw it as the one agora that everyone was obligated to participate in. The next sale, the next business relationship, how one chaired a meeting or approved a business plan — it all became about beating somebody else. This created an air of antagonism that hummed like white noise throughout the organization. These men and women, caught up in a kind of radicalized individualism, battled one another not only for the pre-eminence of their effort and ideas, but for the chance to vanquish the effort and ideas of others. Everyone I spoke to seemed cast in a sarcophagus of anxiety. And where did this feeling spring from? One word summed it up: change. Change was the siren call of liberalized markets; it was the only constant these people could count on. A failure to adapt to this kind of mindless dynamism would spell their downfall, and it bred a particular strain of human fear that brought out the worst in these people’s natures. Their only relief came, it seemed, from ducking down to the Path beneath Bay Street, that enormous mazelike shopping mall, to partake in some retail therapy as a reminder of why they had signed up for this life in the first place. I myself went down there for lunch sometimes, and would even run into Tiina and Regina in one of the Path’s countless food courts. The girls were always kind to me — smiling sprites who welcomed me and my tray of tasteless pad Thai to their table. Yet some simple probing revealed that they were already overwhelmed by their workloads, as if they had been with the firm for years rather than just a few weeks. And as I looked around the food court, everyone seemed to be in the same boat, shackled by years of compounded stress that may have come on in just the last four hours. What kind of life was this? I thought. How could these people not form a pitchfork-wielding jacquerie to overthrow their taskmasters? But this was Bay Street’s monopoly on their reality. It was all they knew.
My “official” interviews with members of the C-suite provided some insight into the fons et origo of this so-called culture. I got twenty minutes with each of them, including the reclusive Viktor Grozni himself. I was frustrated (though impressed) by the way they were all able to stay unflaggingly on message, as if the firm’s business models and mission statements were as finely engineered as a Lamborghini. They all pleasantly dismissed any notion that their company was in trouble.
Only Grozni, that acne-scarred oligarch, got openly hostile with me. “You’re not wearing a tie,” he smiled as he extended his hand over his desk when I entered his surprisingly spare office. “Most men wear a tie when they come see me.”
“Oh, Viktor, what is a tie anyway?” I smiled back, accepting his hand. “It’s just an arrow that points to your penis.” The interview went downhill from there. I questioned him — politely at first, then more sternly — about the cutthroat nature of ODS’s business culture, and he retorted with buzz phrases like “excellence” and “competition” and “high-performing environment.” When I suggested that his brand of competition forced employees to engage in some rather predatory practices, he welcomed me to name the regulations they were violating. When I suggested the federal government had created the very landscape that made such behaviour possible, he said, “Yes, isn’t it great that Canada finally has a government interested in growing the economy after so many decades of suffocating socialism?” And when I suggested that he had a moral obligation to good corporate governance — considering how many Canadians had their pensions wrapped up in this racket — Grozni looked at me as if I had spoken Martian. As our exchange grew more heated, I began to see him as the embodiment of that great Greek term pleonexia, which John Stuart Mill — enlightened man that he was — had written so eloquently about. Grozni’s was not your garden-variety greed, but rather “the desire to engross more than one’s share of advantages … the pride which derives gratification from the abasement of others; the ego which thinks self and its concerns more important than everything else …” The impression Grozni left me with was that my viewpoints were outdated at best and dangerous at worst. He even said to me, near the end of the interview, “The Canada you knew, Mr. Sharpe, is long gone.” “It’s Dr. Sharpe,” I corrected him, “and I think you’re wrong.” He just chuckled once, as if to say I can’t fathom a world where someone like you could prove someone like me wrong.
Back in the CBC studio during the commercial break, I was tremulous. As a stagehand came by to re-powder my brow — I was tacky with sweat by this point — my imagination began to corkscrew out of control over how my gaffe might be reverberating around the country. My heart raced as I look
ed over at Sal and Cheryl, who sat cool as breezes at the other end of the desk. Their poppies hovered over their breasts like beacons of respectability, while mine was probably fluttering somewhere among the eaves or gutters of Parliament Street.
I gestured to Sal to lean back in his chair with me, and spoke to him sotto voce when he did, even though Cheryl was sitting right between us. “Look, when we come back, can I have a chance to clarify what I just said?”
“Sorry, buddy,” he replied, “but that segment went way over. We only have about five minutes left, and I have several other points I want to cover.”
He sat back up and I reluctantly followed. The three of us waited in silence for the commercial break to run its course. Cheryl’s face held a patina of diplomacy, but I knew what she was thinking: that she had bested me, that by hijacking Sal’s role as interviewer she was able to cast me as the extremist and herself as the voice of moderation. With less than five minutes left, I would need all of my intellectual heft to turn things around. In the seconds before we came back, I looked up once more at Raj standing in the booth. His head was now bowed over his phone, his brow furrowed. Oh God — he was probably on Facebook or Twitter right then, watching the obloquy and snark over my blunder flood in. Was Grace there, too, gingerly defending my moment of indiscretion? Or was she still steaming over my fecklessness as a father (Philip, your daughter scalded herself), my bedroom shortcomings (I’m getting pretty used to your inability to satisfy me), or, worst of all, my complete ineptitude at keeping track of our social calendar? Oh Jesus, why couldn’t I remember what we’re doing on Sunday?
A countdown proceeded, and then the electric guitars and synthesized trumpets returned. “And we’re back,” Sal said when they stopped. “We’re talking about Friday’s collapse of ODS Financial Group with Cheryl Sneed and Philip Sharpe. Now Cheryl, you’ve taken some heat over your coverage of ODS. Even in the last few weeks, as the company entered its death spiral, you’ve remained ultimately optimistic. Can you explain why?”
“Well, of course the foreclosure of the firm is by no means good news. I know this has put undo stress on both individuals and the market. But I just don’t buy that this is some kind of apocalypse brought on by corporate malice. The truth is, ODS made some big gambles that didn’t pay off. But the Canadian economy is strong; it’s resilient. And so, too, are the people who worked for the firm. The good ones will find a way; they always do. I mean, just anecdotally, I heard from several of my sources who said that people were on their cellphones Friday afternoon, reaching out to contacts and finding other work. Some had secured new jobs before they left the building.”
“And you’re also convinced,” Sal went on, “that the pension funds that the company managed are still secure? That this hasn’t left a big gaping hole in —”
“So you feel the company has no obligation whatsoever,” I said to Cheryl, cutting Sal off, “that this is a morally neutral situation as far as the business is concerned. You don’t see what ODS did as categorically wrong.”
“You’re not exactly in a position to talk about right and wrong, Philip,” she replied without looking at me, “considering you just argued that ODS’s executive team should be arrested for crimes that don’t yet exist.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It is what you said.”
“It’s not what I meant. Look. I think what you’re doing is obfuscating the bigger issue here. The reality is, last Friday represents the culmination of what Canada has become after nearly ten years of Stephen Harper: this kind of neo-Thatcherism; this normalization of greed and dog-eat-dogism; this complete disregard for the community at large. What we’ve witnessed is our country giving neo-liberal economics a monopoly on all things moral.”
“Oh my God,” Cheryl said, rolling her eyes. “Again with the melodrama.”
“It’s not melodrama.”
“It is. Why don’t you just admit what this is really about for you, Philip? You didn’t like ODS’s C-suite as people. You found them smug; you found them indifferent to your abstract ideas about duty; and you found them ruthless when it came to the tough decisions needed to keep the business afloat. And now you just wish someone would come along and arrest them.”
“That is not true.” I nodded toward the camera in front of us. “Canadians need to understand what is really going on here. Friday represented a failure of the social contract we’re supposed to have with our leaders. And not just with our corporate leaders, whom we’ve given the right — apparently — to make as much money as they want. But our civic leaders, our government, whom we’ve given the right to protect the general will, to have a bird’s-eye view on how the actions of a few can harm the lives of many.”
“Wow,” Cheryl said, her voice sodden with sarcasm. “Straight from the pen of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”
“Okay, we only have a couple minutes left,” Sal interjected. “Let’s talk about severance packages. We know the senior leadership walked off with huge payouts, but as for the average employee —”
“In the end, Cheryl, what I’m talking about here is magnanimity. About graciousness.” The two of them just stared at me, as if they weren’t sure where I was going with this. Truth be told, I wasn’t so sure myself. “We’ve watched as freedom of the markets has trumped all other freedoms — not the least of which being our moral freedoms. We’ve all but abandoned civic virtue and good governance in favour of a rigid ideology — the ideology of economic liberty, of wealth as an end in itself. And when that ideology crashes and burns so spectacularly, as it did on Friday, the system itself should be magnanimous enough to punish those responsible. To allow us to punish them. That’s what I meant earlier.”
“Okay, guys, let’s get back on track with —”
“I assure you, Philip,” Cheryl sneered, “that I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m beginning to think that you don’t either.”
“You don’t see how it’s all connected?” I asked. From the corner of my eye I could see Lori giving Sal a desperate signal to wrap things up. “This monopoly of market thinking?” I pushed on. “This fetishizing of the self? This abandoning of duty to the mentality of acquisition, to this belief that economic value is the only value? This is nothing more than a bastardization of the liberal traditions this country was founded on.”
“I just don’t see it that way,” Cheryl said. “I think you’re taking a bunch of vague notions and just extending them onto a situation that, while dire, is relatively straightforward. I think you’re saying these things to grind a political axe against the business community.”
“That’s because you’re cynical,” I said. “I mean, Sal called you ‘ultimately optimistic’ earlier, but the exact opposite is true. I think you’re deeply pessimistic about how human beings can exist with one another. If you thought about these concepts for half a second, you’d know just how harmful Friday’s events are to the fabric of what Canada is supposed to stand for.”
“Well, Philip,” Cheryl said, “I don’t believe these ideas are as penetrating as you think they are.”
“Well, Cheryl, I would love nothing more than to penetrate you with these ideas,” I retorted, “but I worry you wouldn’t enjoy it enough.”
There was a collective gasp in the studio, which I confess I didn’t hear at the time. Cheryl’s face puckered and Sal sort of gaped at me.
“Okay, we gotta go,” he said, turning back to his audience. “The foreign affairs minister is up next. When we come back.”
“And we’re out!” Lori yelled over the cameras.
Within a second, a duo of stagehands climbed onto the riser and began helping Cheryl out of her microphone. As soon as they finished, she was up and out of her chair, fuming off toward the green room without even saying goodbye to us. Neither of these handmaidens turned to assist me then, but just clomped back off the stage without acknowledging my existence
. So I unclipped my own microphone, leaned forward to dig its battery out of my pants, then set the whole tangled mess on the desk. Lori came by quickly to collect it. I tried to make eye contact with her before she, too, departed, but her face was just one inscrutable scowl.
I looked at Sal and he looked at me.
“That could have gone better,” he said.
I threw my hands up, as if to indicate: This is the world we live in now. I got out of the chair and left the stage myself. By the time I reached the corridor beyond the studio wall baffles, Raj was standing there waiting for me.
“What the hell was that?” he asked.
“I know, I fucked up big time.” We began to make our way down the corridor as I searched for something to wipe the makeup off my face. “Can you believe I said that — on national TV?”
“A lot of people are gonna be pissed at you.”
“Tell me about it. You don’t just undermine centuries of judicial principle like that and expect to get away with it.”
“Dude, what?” Raj said. “No, no, I meant —”
But then I spotted it — a men’s room. I rushed over and pushed through its swinging door, heading for the paper towels and sinks while Raj waited for me in the hall.