Termination Man

by Edward Trimnell

  “I sense a ‘but’ coming here.”

  “You got that right. One day Joe Mentzel has a stroke. He’s sixty-four years old and he has to retire, all of a sudden like. His only child is a married daughter who lives in another state. So he has to sell the company to this big conglomerate. At least that's what he ended up doing.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t tell Kevin that I knew all about the “big conglomerate” that had purchased the family-run business where he had worked for most of a decade.

  “And how are things going under the conglomerate?”

  Kevin took a deep hit on the joint, then laughed as he exhaled, coughing halfway through.

  “You alright, man?” I asked.

  He waved me away. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He righted himself and smoked some more Citral. “Things have totally changed under the conglomerate.”

  “How have they changed?”

  “Well, on the very first day that the new ownership became official, the new management called us into a meeting. They told us outright that the company that the Mentzels had run for sixty years was a thing of the past.”

  “They said that?”

  “In so many words. They said that now Great Lakes Fuel Systems was a part of a much larger company, one that was responsible to stockholders. So that meant that margins would have to improve.”

  “Wasn’t the company profitable under the Mentzels?”

  I knew the answer to this question, needless to say. GLFS had been a moderately profitable operation when it was a family-run concern. The company couldn’t have stayed in business since the Eisenhower years if it had been losing money, after all.

  But there is a difference between profitability at the family-run company level, and profitability at the publicly traded, Fortune 500 level. Under independent management, the company is the company. Under Fortune 500 management, the company is the balance sheet. Fortune 500 managers earn their six- and seven-figure salaries based on their abilities to maximize share prices and shareholder earnings. They have to measure profitability against every other company in their industries—including companies that pay workers a dollar an hour in Mexico or China. “Good enough” becomes no longer good enough. That is just the nature of global big business in the twenty-first century. Don’t like it? Then don’t work for a big company—or for a smaller company that has been acquired by one.

  “It wasn’t profitable enough for TP Automotive,” Kevin said.

  “Is that the name of the conglomerate that bought out your employer?”

  Kevin nodded and passed the joint to me. I held it without inhaling as I listened to him respond. I didn’t have to bother smoking it any further. Kevin wasn’t even looking at me: he was staring out into the steel-grey sky, in the direction of Lake Erie. We were only a few miles from the water, and its dampness permeated the air. Kevin shivered as he began to speak.

  “They brought in a team of what they called ‘efficiency experts,’” Kevin began. “People who had never even worked in a factory before. They were from one of the big consulting firms like—McKinney and Company—or something like that.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him that the correct name of the consulting firm was McKinsey & Company. Ben the Welder wouldn’t have that sort of knowledge at his mental fingertips.

  “And what did the efficiency experts do?” I asked, prompting him to continue.

  “They created a spreadsheet that told them how many workers should be at each station, and how much production should flow through each workstation in a shift. Then they proceeded to cut our manpower and increase our production quotas.”

  “And?”

  “And then we started having all sorts of quality problems. Some of us who had been around for a while complained to the new management team. We knew damn well that this would never have happened under Joe Mentzel. But they wouldn’t listen. One of the new suits asked me point-blank if I had an MBA. And I said of course I didn’t—would I be working on a production line if I had some fancy degree? But I also pointed out that the hot-shot MBA who recalculated our manpower and our production quotas had probably never spent a single hour working on a production line.”

  “Sounds like a productive conversation,” I said, smiling at my impromptu pun in spite of myself.

  Kevin looked at me. “You get the picture, right? I walked out of that office of theirs, seeing that they weren’t even remotely interested in listening to reason.”

  “What did you do then?”

  Kevin shrugged. “I went back to the production line. What else could I do?”

  “And you think they want to fire you just because of that?”

  “No,” he said. “Not just because to that. Things changed again, after Eileen Cosgrove—one of my coworkers—got hurt.”

  I was going to prompt him to tell me about Eileen Cosgrove’s accident. This was another piece of background information that TP Automotive had given me. Eileen Cosgrove was a production worker who had suffered a crushed hand when her sleeve became caught in a press-fitting machine. There was more than a little bit of controversy regarding the root cause of her injury. TP Automotive had told me that Eileen Cosgrove was careless, and had been written up for poor safety practices even before the new lean and mean regimen had been implemented. I knew that Kevin Lang would have a different interpretation, of course.

  But I never got to hear Kevin’s side of it—not that day, at least. My cell phone began chirping in my pocket before Kevin could speak.

  I pulled my phone from my pocket.

  “Where the hell are you, honey?” Claire asked. If her voice carried to Kevin at all, he would have entirely missed the slight tinge of irony in her tone.

  “I’ll be home in about fifteen minutes,” I said, sounding like a henpecked husband who had once again lingered too long in the bar after work. “Bye.” I pushed the call termination button and returned the phone to my pocket.

  Kevin gave me an inquiring look. I shrugged.

  “The wife,” I said. “Got to get going.”

  “Okay,” he replied. He held the joint up. We—mostly he—had smoked it down to tiny fraction of its original length. “Not much left on this thing, anyway. You want to take the roach with you?”

  “You keep it,” I said. “I’m going to be lucky if my old lady doesn't get suspicious as it is.”

  “All right. Thanks, Ben.” He dug into his back pocket for his wallet. He removed a crisp ten-dollar bill and handed it over to me. “Take care,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  Kevin didn’t know how prophetic that statement was.

  Once back in my rented car, I sent a text message to Beth Fisk. Beth was the HR manager whom TP Automotive had placed at GLFS on a provisional basis. She was their traveling human resources rep, the one whom they usually dispatched to newly acquired companies.

  From what I had gathered, Beth had done time at a slew of acquired companies in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. This meant that she had to move every three to twelve months, depending on the duration of each assignment. It wasn’t much of a life, shifting from one sleepy rural town or rustbelt backwater to another. (Automotive components plants are seldom located in glamorous or picturesque places.) But I had immediately recognized Beth as a climber. I was sure that she had a long-term plan to make all of this sacrifice pay off.

  My communications with Beth were always efficient and to the point. Once or twice I had attempted to establish a rapport with her by cracking a few jokes, asking her how her weekend went—that sort of thing. I might as well have tried to establish a rapport with a KGB agent in the former Soviet Union. Beth probably had a personality buried somewhere underneath all that corporate protocol, but she wasn’t going to reveal it for my benefit. Typical HR at a big company.

  The text message that I sent to Beth Fisk was even shorter than most, not to mention cryptic. My consulting work seldom required me to step too far outside the law; but plenty of my activities—if revealed to the wrong pe
ople—would make my clients and me liable for civil actions. This realization necessitated an extra level of caution. I didn’t want to get caught with my pants down someday, holding on to a batch of incriminating emails or text messages.

  For the sake of plausible deniability in the event that our phone records were ever subpoenaed, I sent my message to Beth in code: “The market is up,” it read. If Kevin had failed to take the bait, I would have sent the message: “The market is down.” Simple. And idiotproof.

  Beth would now know to arrange a drug test for Kevin Lang first thing the following morning. His system would be full of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the chemical footprint of marijuana use. After passing the test two times, Kevin would fail the third one.

  What I had told Kevin had been correct: A third passing result would put him in a position for some sort of harassment lawsuit. At that point it would be easy for even a halfway competent attorney to build the case that Kevin’s employer was going out of its way to entrap an innocent man. But a positive test result would change everything. A positive test result would mean that he wasn’t an innocent man anymore.

  If all this sounds complicated, well—that’s because it is. But so are the politically correct, overly litigated times in which we live. Demand for my services exists because employment law has become such a minefield. Every year private-sector employers spend billions of dollars combating wrongful termination lawsuits. Despite the doctrine of employment-at-will in corporate America, a discharged employee can still create problems for his or her former employer.

  And in the Internet Age, a lawsuit might be only the beginning. Sometimes disgruntled ex-employees also take to the Internet, telling their tales of real or imagined mistreatment to anyone who will listen. This not only encourages add-on and class action lawsuits, it can also cost a company millions in lost revenues from sympathetic consumers.

  Thanks to that joint we smoked in the woods, TP Automotive would be able to eliminate a real threat to its operations. Kevin would survive and land on his feet, I told myself. We all do what we have to do.

  Chapter 3

  When I walked into Great Lakes Fuel Systems around ten o’clock the next morning, the trappings of Ben the Welder were gone. I had shaved, showered, and combed my hair. My jeans and denim jacket were gone. I was clad in a Giorgio Armani suit, $1,200 off the peg. I grew up poor; and I still experienced a mild sense of disorientation when I dropped that kind of green for a pair of pants and a blazer. But image counts for a lot in the consulting field. My clients literally entrusted me with the fate of their operations. They knew me as the Termination Man, the guy who could get them the results they needed. I had to look the part.

  I entered the GLFS facility through the rear entrance, using a temporary keycard that Beth Fisk had issued to me. TP Automotive didn’t want my name in the visitor’s log. They didn’t want my image showing up on the lobby cameras. I saw this as a bit of overkill on their part; but it was their dime. If they wanted me to creep in through the back door, that was fine by me.

  Kevin didn’t even notice me as I walked by him on my way through the plant. To begin with, an automotive components plant is a noisy place. Everyone wears hearing protection, with the constant whirring, chugging, and pounding of all the machinery. I heard my wingtips clicking on the cement floor of the plant; but practically no one else did. Nor did my expensive suit draw undue attention. Since TP Automotive had acquired GLFS, the place had been crawling with suits. A few workers glanced briefly at me, then turned their attention back to their machinery. As far as they knew, I was just another TP Automotive manager or a hired efficiency expert.

  I saw Kevin operating his press-fitting machine. It was a big device—about the size of a compact car. Kevin placed one half of a fuel pump housing into the machine’s lower jaw, inserted some additional components, and then pressed the red cycle-start button. The machine’s upper jaw descended, mating the bottom half of the housing with a top half that had been loaded into the machine from above.

  I could tell that Kevin was distracted. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know: He had already been called for the drug test. He knew that it would show a positive result for marijuana use. He was waiting for the hammer to fall.

  At the far edge of the factory area, I passed through a metal door, once again using the temporary keycard. I ascended a concrete staircase: This was a back entrance to the plant’s executive office space.

  They were already gathered in the boardroom, seated around a big mahogany table in a semicircle. Beth Fisk from HR, Bernie Chapman from legal, and Chuck Gaskins—the new CEO installed by TP Automotive. Kurt and Shawn Myers were also present at the table. As usual, Kurt dominated the room, both because of his position, and also because of the man he was. Are Fortune 500 executive types born or made? In Kurt’s case, I would have argued for the former: He probably came out of the womb in formal attire, clutching a handful of business cards.

  Kurt Myers had thick silver hair, broad shoulders, and a flat stomach that is extremely unusual on a man past sixty. In the early nineteen-seventies he had been a college football player of some renown—or so I’d been told. Kurt happened to be seated; but I knew that the man towered to a height of nearly six-feet-four. One thing they won’t teach you in business school is that there is a measured correlation between height and the rate at which people move up the corporate ladder. All things being equal, the tall man or woman will always be promoted over his or her shorter counterparts. This is not exactly logical—and not exactly ethical—but that’s the way it works. Group dynamics favor the tall and the physically imposing.

  Kurt’s ne’er-do-well son, Shawn Myers, slouched back against his chair. He seemed to be bored and mildly amused by the proceedings. How old was Shawn? In his early to mid-thirties, I guessed. Around my age. He wouldn’t have been in this room if not for his father, and everyone present knew it—though no one would have dared to voice this realization.

  “Craig, Craig,” Kurt Myers said. He was the first to rise and shake my hand. “You’ve done an excellent job,” he declared with an ear-to-hear smile.

  “Thank you,” I said, submitting to Kurt’s viselike handshake. As if on cue, the other members of the TP Automotive management team rose in unison, and I began shaking their hands as well.

  “The test came up positive,” Beth Fisk informed me. Of course it had.

  “More than positive, actually,” she went on. “Kevin Lang’s THC reading was unequivocal. Off the charts, you might say.”

  This was the sort of thing a person might say when gloating; but Beth did not permit herself the slightest hint of a smile. I knew from our earlier consultations that Beth had arranged to have the test results completed within an hour. For a routine, run-of-the-mill drug test, two to five business days is the norm. But most labs can have the tests complete within an hour—if you pay an additional surcharge and arrange to have the blood, urine, and hair samples transported to the lab via courier. This keeps the advantages of time on the company’s side. It prevents an employee who knows that he’s going to come up positive from lawyering up or contacting his local civil rights organization.

  A printout of the lab results—probably emailed to Beth in PDF format—was placed face-up on the surface of the table. There was manila file folder as well. I knew that TP Automotive had even nastier—and more personal—surprises in store for Kevin if he decided to put up a fight.

  “The case against Kevin Lang is absolutely airtight,” Bernie Chapman added, referring to the printout from the lab. “He has absolutely no leg to stand on.” The corporate lawyer was a weak-chinned man with a beard that looked incongruous in a TP Automotive setting, where clean-cut male faces were the unofficial rule.

  Chuck Gaskins merely nodded at all of this. He was a figurehead at Great Lakes Fuel Systems and everyone knew it. Chuck was past his prime and would retire within five years, as soon as the market recovered and TP Automotive shares regained their pre-2008 value
s. Two thousand-eight was the year that the automotive industry—along with housing, banking and almost everything else—had gone to hell.

  They sat back down, and Bernie gestured to one of the empty chairs to his left.

  “Craig,” Bernie said. “We would like you to remain, but only as an observer.”

  This was the polite corporate way of telling me that I should shut up and let my client do the talking. This was fine with me, in fact. It wasn’t my job to speak in a meeting like this. My sole purpose in this meeting was to assess Kevin Lang as a future security risk. There was no way to do that without sitting here in the meeting and actually observing him. I would estimate the likelihood that Kevin would do something stupid in the wake of his firing. In a worst-case scenario, that would mean violence—the sort of incident that dominates the news for weeks afterward, and produces a lot of handwringing about the dangers of the modern American workplace. Some men live one step away from the edge of their mental breaking points; and the loss of their jobs can be the trigger that sends them over that edge.

  Fortunately, few workers actually go that far. But not all troublemakers become fatalistic, mass-murdering shooters. Kevin might show up in the GLFS parking lot some afternoon after a few too many beers at the Backstop Bar & Grill, and simply try to make trouble.

  The last part of this job would be a post-firing surveillance of Kevin. I would subcontract this out to someone else, probably a freelance private investigator. I would only do this part of the job myself if I had reason to believe that Kevin constituted an imminent threat. Then my work at GLFS—and my involvement with Kevin Lang—would be complete.

  I had no real qualms about remaining in the room during the actual firing. I didn’t think that Kevin would recognize me as long as I didn’t speak. I would be one of seven people in the room; and the last person Kevin would expect to see in this meeting would be Ben the Welder, his pot-smoking buddy and fellow patron of the Backstop Bar & Grill. Moreover, I was sitting at the far end of the table, placing me at an angle where it would be difficult for Kevin to catch a full view of my face. You’ve no doubt heard the expression “hiding in plain sight.” If someone isn’t actively looking for you, it can be easier than you might imagine.