by Tim Michaels
“And if I don’t sign it, I don’t get the payment?” I asked.
“Correct-o,” Gordo said with relish, speaking through a bite of the chocolate donut.
We went through the document together. All along, I was trying to figure out where the extra 20% came from. And then we got to a paragraph on vacation pay. By agreeing to the severance, Gordo read off, I was forfeiting pay for unused vacation time.
Gordo looked at me, questioning. We both knew he had told me I was going to get paid for unused vacation time. We both also knew I had no bargaining position. I couldn’t prove what I had been told, and since I had already left the company I had no leverage at all. I was a supplicant in a “take it or leave it” situation.
And yet, the number, the number was 20% higher than I expected. The lack of vacation should have cut the number I expected by forty percent, not increased it by 20%. I racked my brain trying to figure out what was going on, all the while maintaining a poker face in front of Gordo.
Gordo, surprised by the lack of protest, kept reading legal mumbo jumbo. My mind raced every which way, and finally I had it. Yes, M & O was reneging on the vacation pay. That meant instead of paying me for ten weeks, they were paying me for six. But they weren’t paying me for six weeks as they intended. Instead someone – probably Gordo – had made a mistake. Rather than calculating out the payment owed for six weeks, the company had totaled up the amount I was normally paid during six bi-weekly pay periods.
I was careful not to let the warm glow I felt inside show. It was like having the nut flush and an unsuspecting fish about to bite. I waited for Gordo to finish reading the document. Then I skimmed through it a second time. It said nothing about how the payment was calculated.
Gordo asked if I had any questions. I said I had none. He told me I could take the document home and study it and that I should call him if and when I was ready to sign.
“That won’t be necessary,” I told him, “I am ready to sign now.”
Gordo was shocked. Here I was finding out the company was screwing me, and yet I seemed happy to go along with it. His mouth hung open for a few seconds. I couldn’t help myself – I looked inside. Chunks of the two donuts comingled, making their own kind of peace together before inevitably heading down his massive gullet.
Gordo composed himself and handed me a pen. I signed both copies of the agreement and handed Gordo back the pen. Then he signed both copies too. He handed one copy of the agreement to me and then put the other in his briefcase. Then he rummaged around in his briefcase until he found an envelope with my name neatly printed on it. He handed the envelope over, wordlessly. My check was inside.
Since it was standard protocol, Gordo extended his hand. It was an awkward moment. After that, Gordo escorted me to the lobby. In the lobby, I ran into Barney Talbot. Talbot blinked twice, then he shook my hand and wished me luck. After that I walked out the door.
On my way home, I stopped at the bank and deposited the check Gordo had given me.
Chapter 6. HR’s World
Once I got home, I called TR2 Nexis, the company that Gordo told me would handle the transfer of my 401-K and help me get into COBRA. TR2 Nexis told me was that they had nothing to do with rolling over 401-Ks into IRAs, and I had to call Bannerman, the company that administered M & O’s 401-K.
However, TR2 Nexis would be happy to help me move from the company’s health insurance to COBRA. COBRA was a legal mandate that allowed people covered by a company’s health insurance policy to stay on that health insurance policy for up to 18 months upon leaving the company. The catch, of course, was that the company no longer paid any part of the insurance costs. That meant insurance for the three of us would run about $1,100 a month, a tough nut to swallow given my new jobless status.
The benefit of COBRA is that you can’t be turned away. You pay the “group rates” that the company has negotiated with insurance providers. A family whose members are all healthy can expect to obtain a similar policy for less on the open market. Our problem was that H had a pre-existing condition: endometriosis. Endometriosis is a very painful condition in which uterine cells begin growing outside the uterus. It had come about as a result of the pregnancy which had been long and difficult, requiring six trips to the emergency room and culminating in 18 hours of labor interrupted by an emergency C-section. It hadn’t been easy on me, so I could only imagine what it felt like for H.
As painful as endometriosis was, whenever H talked about it, she made sure to say it was worth the pain, always glancing at Jeremy as she said it. H was a great mother. We had gotten married late – both of us were in our late thirties when we tied the knot. Getting married that late is difficult. We were both set in our ways, and we had the occasional argument as we learned to merge our individual behaviors and habits. But we were both pragmatic people and we loved each other very much. Marriage was the best thing that happened to me, and H told me it was the best thing that ever happened to her. Until Jeremy arrived, of course. Jeremy had been unexpected but welcome. And the day he was born was the happiest in our lives, even if it caused no end to H’s health problems.
Fortunately, there was something that could be done. A hysterectomy, or removal of the uterus eliminated endometriosis altogether. Not only would it end the pain, but it would also mean none of us had any pre-existing medical conditions any more.
H had been reluctant to take that step at first. Not that we planned on more children, given how difficult the pregnancy with Jeremy had been. I had a harder time imagining precisely how she felt about removing her uterus. The best I could come up with was the loss of a testicle, and that wasn’t exactly something I wanted to contemplate.
Still, during my last week at M & O, her pain had become excruciating. H’s OB-GYN, Dr. Hirawi, told her the time for half measures was over, and it was time to consider the hysterectomy. H was starting to lean in that direction and she had scheduled an appointment with Dr. Hirawi for the Friday two weeks hence.
But in the meantime, COBRA was our best option. The nice lady on the phone from TR2 Nexis told me I couldn’t sign up for COBRA as they hadn’t yet been informed by M & O that I had been separated – that was the euphemism – from the company. That made me an employee as far as they were concerned, and legally an employee couldn’t go on COBRA. She said M & O typically didn’t inform TR2 Nexis of a “separation” until 4 weeks after it had happened and nothing could be done until then.
Once M & O did inform them of the separation, I had 60 days to join COBRA, at which point the insurance would be reinstated retroactively. In the meanwhile, we would have no health insurance.
So we would have to wait. After I hung up, I told H. She wasn’t very happy about the retroactivity, and truth to tell neither was I, but there wasn’t much we could do.
My next call was to Bannerman, the company that handled M & O’s 401-K program. I wanted my 401-K rolled over into an IRA I held at a discount brokerage firm. Bannerman also hadn’t been informed of my separation. That euphemism, apparently, was getting around.
After making those calls, I started looking for jobs. When you’re looking for a job, everyone tells you to network. There is, supposedly, a “hidden job market” where jobs aren’t actually posted but which accounts for the greater part of new hires. That may even be true, but if it is I never found it. And I wasn’t successful a networking either. In the month before my “separation” became effective, I had contacted almost everyone I could think of, even people I hadn’t heard from in years. H had contacted even more people on my behalf. I got a fair amount of commiseration, and some less-than-useful tips, but not one pointer in the direction of anything that might be a real, honest to goodness job.
I had also posted my resume on a number of job boards. That resulted in a lot of calls. Unfortunately, none of the calls I got were useful. In the month since I turned down the company’s offe
r for reassignment, I had gotten twelve calls from insurance companies who thought I would make a great candidate to sell insurance. Eight calls offered me the opportunity to sell financial advice. Three companies contacted me about open secretarial positions. Additionally, a fellow with a strong Indian accent had called three times in the past week to confirm that I had no experience drilling for natural gas. Each time I told him that I did not, in fact, have experience drilling for natural gas, and each time he assured me he would pass on the information to his manager for a job that they were supposedly trying to fill in Cleveland.
But the real time drain was the process of applying for jobs itself. The modern, second decade in the new millennium way to apply for jobs is through online “applicant tracking” software. While the software purportedly “helps” you by reading information off of your resume, my experience was that one could spend as long correcting the software’s errors as it would take to enter all the information manually. And of course, if one’s history included more than one job, more than one degree, more than one skill set and more than one language, it could take forty five minutes to an hour per form.
Worse, the software had a tendency to be buggy. I noticed that on about ten percent of the applications something went wrong. The software refused to accept a key piece of information, did not allow the user to submit the application, or simply froze up altogether. In the first month, I had applied – or rather, started filling out applications – for 106 jobs. Fourteen of them crashed before the end of the application, resulting in a complete loss of the information I had submitted. Worse, eleven of the fourteen crashes occurred literally on the last page of the application.
Of course, even when one filled out the forms in full, there was no guarantee that anyone would even look at one’s resume and cover letter. I had filled out two applications for positions literally straight out of my resume: a Master’s degree in electrical engineering, experience with both ATMs and telecom switches, fluency in Portuguese and Spanish, and in one case, they even asked for an MBA as well. All in all, the positions called for what I happened to know was a very rare combination of skills and experience, and one that I happened to have. So I was surprised that I didn’t get a call or even an e-mail. I was even more surprised to see the positions reposted a few weeks later. I applied for both a second time. A month later, both positions were reposted again. I would never get a response from either company about my application.
At the time, stories about the job market in the news tended to follow one of two memes. According to one of them, hundreds of people were applying to every open job. The other meme said that companies were having a tough time finding qualified candidates for open positions. I concluded both memes were probably true but that the news was missing a key part of the story, namely that companies, or their HR departments at least, were incapable of recognizing qualified applicants when such applicants came in the door, or through their web portals.
Some friends suggested one could bypass the whole system by getting a headhunter. But I wasn’t having much more luck with headhunters either. Headhunters, aka, executive recruiters, get paid by companies looking for employees, but in the end, they, too, bring the applicants back to HR. A few of them called me back after I submitted a resume to discuss my background, but the simple fact is that the job market was very slow. For jobs mid-way up the corporate chain of command and higher/above, which is where I was looking, companies often move slowly even in the best of times.
At the time, I had concluded part of the problem was that while some companies I had dealt with had very strong HR departments, other companies used their HR departments as a dumping ground for incompetent or dishonest people such as Greg Farmer at M & O. When people like him were in charge of the first screen of job seekers, not to mention doing background checks and advising harried hiring managers about the relative quality of potential candidates, bad hiring decisions and poor morale were inevitable. Over time, an entire organization could be poisoned.
I wondered how much of an advantage start-ups had over established companies relative to the poor hiring practices at the HR department of larger companies. Part of me went so far as to wonder whether this might have anything to do with the United States’ loss of prominence over the last few decades.
But that was idle speculation. No matter what was happening with HR, I had to crack the code and find a job. And sooner was clearly better than later. I went back to filling out applications.
Chapter 7. Passing Time
A week later I called TR2 Nexis again. I was still an M & O employee according to their records, which meant that I still couldn’t sign up for health insurance. A call to Bannerman produced the same result: their records also indicated I was still working at M & O. Both companies were expecting M & O to update my status in about three weeks, and that no changes could be made until then.
A week later, I called again. There was no change in my status during that time.
I didn’t think much of it for a few days until H had the appointment with the surgeon about endometriosis. I went with her. At first everything was routine. The receptionist took our insurance card. I explained our COBRA situation. The receptionist said it would probably be OK, but that we should be prepared to cover the cost of the visit ourselves at least until COBRA kicked in, retroactively.
Then we saw the doctor. At the end of the session, we had agreed that H should have surgery three weeks later. We all felt that by then the insurance situation should be cleared up. The surgeon said he would have preferred to do the surgery sooner, but he had dealt with COBRA purgatory before. Six months earlier, he had done surgery on a patient in the same transition period, and the insurance company was still insisting they weren’t going to pay.
Two weeks later, I called Bannerman and was told that yes, they had been notified that I was no longer an employee. Thus, I was free to close out my M & O 401-K and roll my money into an IRA which I did.
Then I called TR2 Nexis to see about transferring my family into COBRA. They too had been informed that I was no longer an employee. However, according to the records M & O had provided them, I had not availed myself of the company’s health insurance and thus was ineligible for COBRA. When I insisted the information was incorrect, TR2 Nexis “opened up a ticket” and told me they’d call M & O to clear things up.
A few days later, I got a call from TR2 Nexis. They had gotten confirmation from the benefits department of M & O that I had, indeed, been an employee and had, indeed, availed myself of health insurance. But the records M & O had provided indicated that I had no dependents, and thus, my wife and son weren’t eligible for COBRA. I called, and two days later the issue was cleared up, except that according to information that M & O had provided them, neither of my dependents had availed themselves of health insurance which made them ineligible for COBRA. The back and forth went on for two weeks. Every time one error was corrected, another surfaced, and each time it was enough to prevent me from insuring my family. Sometimes the mistake was just bizarre: in one case, M & O claimed I had two spouses and no son.
Meanwhile, H’s surgery had to be postponed, first for a week, and then again as the insurance wasn’t available. By then, H was in terrible pain, but she was doing her best to keep a brave face. Still, every so often I could see her shaking.
The pain eventually proved to be too much and H decided to do something about the insurance situation herself. She just didn’t tell me about it. So that morning, as I was applying for jobs, H walked into the room holding Jeremy and said, “I have a couple errands to run. Why don’t we have the leftover lasagna when I get back?”
I responded, “In restaurants they call it twice baked. They charge extra for it like that.” I grinned, thinking of Jeremy’s tendency to end up with strings of tomato sauce-covered cheese hanging from his chin.
H put Jeremy down, and they walk toward the door. For a
n instant, before they walked out, both of them turned around and smiled at me. Jeremy said, “Bye-bye, Daddy.”
I smiled back, and say “Bye-bye, Jeremy. Bye-bye, H.”
That was it. The last time I saw them alive. Later that day, after the policeman came and asked me to identify their bodies at the morgue, I learned H had gone to M & O to insist they clear up matters once and for all. The letter, the first one telling me telling me I had to remit half of the severance payment, came later that day, though I wouldn’t see it for about a week.
Between M & O’s security personnel, a UPS driver who happened to be delivering packages at the time, Gordo’s own confession, and M & O’s internal surveillance tapes, the police easily pieced together what happened. It was the sort of thing dreamed up by a Hollywood scriptwriter, just one step removed from a character walking into an empty elevator shaft. But in the real world, every so often someone does step into an empty elevator shaft, and in the real world, my wife and son died a clichéd death.
Somehow – perhaps because the guards manning the front desk recognized her, perhaps because she just looked like she knew where she was going, or perhaps because she was carrying a child and looked determined, she was able to walk right past security and up the elevator to Gordo’s office on the third floor. When she introduced herself, apparently intending to get the COBRA issue straightened out, Gordo laid into her, calling her a thief and demanding we return the company’s money.
There was no common ground, no room for discussion. H had no idea what Gordo was talking about and Gordo, well, Gordo was desperate. As he later told the cops, this wasn’t the first time, or the second, that he’d made the same mistake and his boss had made it clear that Gordo’s job was on the line if a he didn’t “fix” the problem.