Company (30 page)

In the lobby, Gretel has a migraine from the flashing switchboard lights. She shouldn't even be here: this morning she called in sick, but a woman in Human Resources and Asset Protection sucked air through her teeth and said, “Oh, dear . . .”

“What?” said Gretel, but suddenly she was listening to a traffic report on the state of I-5. She closed her eyes, sitting on the edge of her bed in her pajamas. Her boyfriend slumbered beside her, one hand on her thigh. Then the voice came back. “Gretel, I'm going to transfer you. Okay?”

“I—” Gretel said, but then she was back to the radio station. She waited.

“Gretel?” A man's voice, loud and painfully cheerful. “Jim Davidson. What's this about you being under the weather?”

Jim was HR's personnel manager. “Yes, sorry, Jim. I'm feeling terrible.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” he said, but his tone didn't change at all: he made it sound as if this was a joke they were sharing. “Unfortunately, that puts us in a bit of a pickle.”

Gretel squeezed the phone. “I'm sure Eve won't mind covering me for one day.” This was a lie: she was sure Eve
would
mind. However, it would not
kill
Eve, and after the horrors of Monday, when Gretel was under siege and Eve was nowhere to be seen, it might even be what Eve
deserves.

“Yes, I'm sure—if Eve hadn't called in sick ten minutes ago.”

Now Gretel is stabbing buttons on the switchboard while her head pounds and dampness collects under her arms. Exactly why Human Resources is unable to hire a temp is unclear to her, as is why this is
her
problem. Jim did explain; he spoke at length in that cheery, teeth-cracking voice about the upheaval following the consolidation and how difficult it would be to deal with a new crisis especially since all the people who might have been able to step into her role for the day had just been sacked. After two minutes of this, Gretel agreed to come in so he would stop talking.

She should have held out. As it was yesterday, and the day before that, the switchboard is completely swamped, because half the company has just changed jobs and nobody knows anyone's new number. Human Resources and Asset Protection has promised to issue a new directory, but not for two to three weeks—which, Gretel knows, means it'll be a month and a half, contain numerous key errors, and there won't be enough copies. On top of this, there is no IT department to update the phones, so everyone's caller ID is wrong. You need to dial an additional number to reach employees outside your own department, so Gretel can't connect anybody until she knows where they're calling from. The employees don't understand this, so this morning Gretel has had two hundred conversations like this:

“Good morning, reception.”

“Hi, can you give me Kevin Dawson's new number? He was in Corporate Marketing . . . I'm not sure what that's called now.”

“Can I have your name and department, please?”

“Um . . . Kevin Dawson? In Corporate Marketing?”

“No, not the name of the person you're trying to reach. Your name.”

“Oh! It's Geoff Silvio.”

“In . . . ?”

“Well, I guess it's called Treasury now.”

“Just a moment, Geoff.”

During all this, the switchboard flashes a solid bank of yellow lights at her, informing her that there are twelve more identical conversations lined up and ready to go. At eleven o'clock she is so desperate for the bathroom that she literally runs across the lobby floor, and when she emerges, a man from Senior Management is walking past the reception desk, looking at all the flashing lights, and he frowns at her.

Gretel realizes around twelve thirty that once again she has no hope of lunch: the inflow of calls isn't slackening at all. She enters a numb, robotic state where her mouth and fingers move first and her brain catches up a second later. Over and over, she punches
TRANSFER
to end one call and activate the next. “Good afternoon, reception.”

“It's me.”

“Yes, hello,” she snaps. “I need to know who you are and where you're calling from before I can connect you.”

There's a surprised pause. “Gretel, it's Sam.”

Sam is her boyfriend. Her mouth drops open. She covers her face with her hands and starts to cry.

Is Roger a bad person? It's a difficult question. Right now it is occupying center stage in Elizabeth's mind. He is petty, yes. He's scheming. He's arrogant
and
insecure, a terrible combination. He has never shown her any affection bar the physical, and that was brief and impersonal. Sometimes when she looks at him, she wants to tear out his neat brown hair and stuff it in his mouth.

She's heard of women craving odd foods while pregnant, repulsive combinations like ice cream and gherkins. Well, Elizabeth craves Roger. She aches for him to wrap her in his arms. Just thinking about it brings a whimper to her lips. Elizabeth has been in love more times than she can count, but until now she never felt desire as a physical force. Right now, if Roger asked, Elizabeth would strip naked and make love to him on the orange-and-black carpet.

Sitting at her desk with her hands clenched into fists, she tries to talk her body around. There are many logical reasons why she should not desire Roger, and she silently argues each one of them. But none of them stick; all are washed away by the rich, red hormonal tide within her. The rational part of her, the part that sold training packages, bobs helplessly adrift on an emotional sea.
What do you know about anything?
the ocean says.
Look at your job. Look at your priorities. Thanks for the input, but I'll take it from here.

She has to admit that her body makes a good point. But
Roger
! Why, why, why Roger? Does her body see hidden depths to him? She can't. She pleads with it to change her mind.

Getting the network back turns out to be easier than Jones expects. He starts by thinking about which department should logically control Information Technology, and decides it's his: Staff Services. So he knocks on Roger's door and pitches the idea. Roger listens in silence, then turns his chair to face the window for a while. Jones doesn't know whether Roger is thinking deeply or simply striking a pose, but he doesn't mind waiting. After a minute, Roger swivels back. “You're asking for a significant capital investment on the part of this department.”

“I guess.”

“You know I'm trying to make individual employees
more
accountable for expenses. This runs contrary to that paradigm.” He presses his fingers together. “I'd need to basically loan you the money.”

Jones blinks. “How would I pay that back? What, you mean I personally would bill other departments for network usage?”

Roger smiles. “Let's not get carried away. I'm externalizing expenses, not revenue.”

“Then—”

“What I am prepared to do is pay you a royalty on network billings, up to a certain ceiling.”

“So . . . I'm responsible for all the costs, but only get a percentage of the revenue?”

“We can negotiate the exact numbers,” Roger says. “But frankly, if you don't like it, I have a department full of staff who would kill for a job like this.”

“Hey,” Jones says, bristling. “Setting up the network is
my
idea.”

“That's why I'm giving you first bite at it.”

Jones opens his mouth to argue, then realizes he's not here to earn a salary from Roger. He's here because Alpha wants a network. “Okay, okay.”

“You'll need help. A big job like this. You should subcontract to other Staff Services employees.”

“I will.” Jones has no intention of fooling around with wires and computers.

“Don't just give the work to your friends,” Roger warns. “You'll get better value by making them bid for it. Just a word of advice.”

“Thanks, Roger,” Jones says.

He gives Freddy the task of scouring Staff Services for anyone who knows anything about computers, and settles down at his desk to phone IT consultancy houses. After each call, he puts a line through their name if they tried to sell him something he didn't ask for or used the word “solutions” more than three times. An hour later he finds a guy called Alex Domini who, he suspects, heads a one-man shop, and makes an appointment to see him the next day.

His voice-mail light is blinking, so he dials in to find a message from Sydney. “Ah, Jones? Can you
—yes, I will get to you in one minute. Just—just stay there, all right?
Jones, come down to reception, there's a package for you.
Now look—”
The phone clicks.

Jones puts down the phone. Surely Sydney isn't working the phones in reception? But one elevator ride later, he discovers she is: almost lost behind the great orange desk, she is fending off half a dozen waiting employees and snarling into the headset. This is such a sight that Jones stops to gape at it.

“Gretel left,” says a voice. He turns to see Klausman, standing there with a mop in one hand. Jones blinks. He has to give it to Klausman: in that janitor disguise, he is practically invisible. It's a psychological thing: you see the gray overalls in your peripheral vision and don't bother looking any closer. “She just walked out. Human Resources had to send down someone to fill in.”

“Gretel
quit
?”

Klausman shrugs. “She didn't say. Not impressed, though, Jones. Not impressed. We're trying to run an efficient operation here. We don't have room for unreliable employees. It throws the whole system off.”

Jones glances back at Sydney. It doesn't look as if he'll be getting near that reception desk in a hurry. “I guess that's what happens when there's no slack in the system.”

Klausman considers. “Maybe so. Hmm. That would be worth measuring. It would certainly be ironic if after all this time it turned out that hyperefficiency was counterproductive.”

“Indeed,” Jones says.

Klausman watches Sydney struggle with the phones. “Breaks my heart to see the system fail like this. It actually hurts. You know the goal of any company, Jones? To externalize. An efficient company should be like a healthy human body: extracting nutrients from the environment and excreting waste into it. Sources of income are our nutrients, and sources of costs are our wastes.”

“So . . .” Jones says, “Zephyr eats money and shits costs?”

Klausman laughs. “You're probably too young to remember, Jones, but there was a time when a man filled your gas tank for you. A boy carried your groceries to your car. There was a time when you hardly ever stood in line, not outside of a government office. But labor is a source of cost, so companies externalized it. They, as you say, shat it out. And those costs landed exactly where they belonged: on their customers.”

“And on their remaining staff.”

“Quite so. Quite so. Hence: ‘Doing more with less.' You know, Jones, I wish I had more employees like you. Actually, I wish I had fewer employees
not
like you. You know what I mean. You're an exception: graduates are generally idiots. Enthusiastic idiots, yes, but that's no compensation. In fact, if anything, that exacerbates the problem.” He scratches his nose. “I'm thinking of cutting the graduate program. People say it brings in new ideas, but they're mainly
stupid
ideas. A man's brain is no good to a company until he's at least forty, in my opinion. Or a woman's. Can't be sexist, now. Of course, the problem then is when they do have good ideas, they can't be bothered to do anything about them.” Klausman falls silent, musing. “Anyway, my point is that you have a future here, Jones. I can see you running this place one day. Not soon.” He winks. “But one day.”