Termination Man: a novel (17 page)

Now I could really see the writing on the wall: TP Automotive planned to sacrifice Alan Ferguson and Lucy Browning so that Shawn Myers would have a chance to be “coached” and prove himself a capable manager. They were to become the corporate version of cannon fodder.

Not that this changed my determination to perform my job, mind you. Alan and Lucy weren’t the first corporate employees who had been forced by circumstances to work beneath a manager who was incompetent or vindictive, or both. They each had a choice: Make peace with the new regime, or get out of Dodge.

Had they chosen either of those alternatives, they would never have landed in my crosshairs. Alan and Lucy had become targets of Craig Walker Consulting because they had refused to either submit and play ball, or to vote with their feet. Instead, they had selected a third option, but this wasn’t really an option at all: Both of them had opted to stay put and engage in a petty war with their boss, who was admittedly a first-class asshole. But the Byzantine machinations of organizational politics had landed worse men and women in top positions, I was sure.

“You know, if Alan and Lucy really hate their jobs so much now that Shawn is their manager, they could always look elsewhere,” Beth said. She might have been reading my mind. “They would have lost those jobs anyway, had TP Automotive not bought out UP&S.”

“I’ll give you that,” I said. “But it may be hard to find a way to force these two out while simultaneously covering TP Automotive from a wrongful termination suit. I don’t see Alan Ferguson as a man with skeletons in his closet. I’m not going to convince him to smoke a joint with me after work. And Lucy seems squeaky clean, except for the fact that she despises Shawn Myers.”   

“Well, Craig, that’s why we pay you those hefty consulting fees, isn’t it? I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“It is,” I allowed. “And I will.”

But for a job like this, I would probably need Claire Turner’s help.

When Claire walked into UP&S for her first day “on the job”, I knew that I had identified Alan Ferguson’s vulnerability. And this Achilles’ heel frankly surprised me, given the purchasing agent’s outwardly nerdy demeanor.

Alan did a double take when Bill Prescott guided Claire to her new desk in the accounting department. Then he gulped and did another double take when the accounting manager took her around the office later that morning for introductions.

“Wow,” I said discreetly as Claire and her new “boss” departed. “This is the first time that I’ve seen you speechless, Alan. I wouldn’t have imagined that was possible.”

“Aw, stuff it,” Alan said, oddly resembling a thirteen year-old boy who is still self-conscious about acknowledging the fact that he notices women. “Don’t tell me that you didn’t see her, too.”

“Well of course I saw her, Alan. Her manager was taking her around for introductions.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did know what Alan meant. Claire looked stunning in her business attire.  I’ve seen her in lingerie, gym clothes, and even in a swimsuit. However, Claire looks best when she dresses to the nines. Today she was wearing a skirt and blouse that discreetly clung to her curves, and a pair of high-heeled shoes that accentuated her height. I suppose that Alan was a goner before she even stepped into the building.

“Claire Michaels,” Alan said, repeating the name of Claire Turner’s alias. I silently remarked that Alan did have a truly serious case of middle-aged lust, infatuation—or whatever you might call it.

The accounting manager finally returned Claire to her desk, where she began amiably chatting with one of her new colleagues.  As was the case with the fictional Craig Parker, Claire’s alias would be assigned just enough work to keep suspicions at bay, without placing her in a position to unwittingly damage UP&S’s operations. Claire, after all, would not be able to spend much time on the work of a staff accountant. Her job would be to work with me as necessary, while we nudged four problem employees out of UP&S.

And it was Claire who came up with the plan that we used to remove Alan Ferguson.

*    *    *

“Did you see the way he looked at me?” Claire asked. We were having dinner in the restaurant of the hotel where I was staying. We were reasonably safe here. It would have been bad for us to be seen together by any employees of UP&S. Strictly speaking, Claire Michaels and Craig Parker were supposed to be strangers—even if Claire Turner and Craig Walker were both professionally affiliated and occasional bedmates.

“The whole office was looking at you, Claire,” I said, taking a sip from my wineglass. “The men were all wondering what you would look like naked, and the women were all wondering what it would be like to scratch your eyes out.”

Although I had no direct evidence for this last assertion, it likely wasn't far from the truth. Pleasantly attractive women are not uncommon in factory environments like UP&S; but real stunners are rare. When a beautiful woman steps onto the scene in a place like UP&S, she upsets the entire balance, and makes many people of both genders uncomfortable.

“Okay,” she said. “I could be modest—”

“But that isn’t in your nature.”

“Jerk. What I’m getting at here is: think about how we can use this. That guy Alan Ferguson, his eyes were practically crawling all over my chest while he talked to me.”

“I didn’t notice him doing much talking,” I said. I recalled that Alan had been fairly tongue-tied while being introduced to Claire. “So what do you have in mind?”

She told me, and I paused for a moment to think about it. “I don’t know,” I said. “Isn’t that a little risky? It could make us liable for an entrapment charge. I mean, when I gave Kevin Lang the chance to flunk his next drug test, I presented that opportunity outside of the workplace. My alias had no affiliation with Great Lakes Fuel Systems. This is different. Claire Michaels is now an entity that is employed at UP&S. Her conduct could be liable to scrutiny as well.”

“Not if Alan does something stupid,” Claire said. “And that’s exactly what I’ll get him to do.”

Claire went to work on Alan the very next day.

“Excuse me, Alan,” she said. “I've been told that you're quite the expert with the inventory reports. I’ve got a problem here. I could really use some help.”

Alan looked up from his computer screen, saw Claire, and gulped. She had appeared before his desk without warning.

“Hello,” he said numbly. An actual response to what she had said seemed to be beyond him at the moment.

“Anyway, Alan: You remember me, don’t you? I’m the new person over in accounting.” She held out a sheaf of papers. “It’s these blasted inventory reports. My job is to pick out the work-in-process line items, but its like Chinese to me.”

“Oh,” Alan said. The joking Alan who had referred to me as an FNG, and had traded quips with Helen Dufresne and Roy Jones, was indisposed now. In his place was a man who had trouble putting a coherent sentence together.

Luckily, Claire had picked up on his tongue-tied disorientation.

“So I was thinking,” she said. “Maybe the two of us could find an empty meeting room and you could show me how to pick out the WIP items.”

“You and me?” Alan asked, bug-eyed.

“Well,” Claire laughed. “Unless you can think of another way to teach me. I’d really appreciate it, you know. That is, if you’re not too busy.”

“No, no,” Alan said. “I’m not too busy.”

I actually had to restrain a smirk as this exchange unfolded. I would have felt guilty for taking amusement in watching Alan sow the seeds of his own demise. The better thing was watching Claire play the role of the humble, slightly ditzy blonde. She wasn’t humble, and while she was mistaken about some things, she was anything but ditzy. I had never taken her for such a skilled actress.

“Hey, Lucy,” Claire said, while she waited for Alan to both compose himself and assemble the materials needed to explain the inventory reports. “I’d love to get some insights into how things work around here. I was wondering if you might be free for lunch sometime. We could chat, and you could give me the lay of the land.”

“Me?” Lucy asked, as if there were a half dozen other people named Lucy huddled around us.

“If you’re not too busy, that is.”

Lucy visibly brightened; and I could see that Claire meant something to her, too. It didn’t require much insight to peg Lucy as the wallflower, the shy, plodding girl who had never been invited to the right parties in high school, who had spent all of her life on the social fringes. Always waiting to become a full member of whatever circle she happened to have attached herself to. And now the most attractive, most glamorous woman in the office was befriending her. Befriending
her
.

For Lucy, this must have held the promise of redemption, of finally coming into her own at the age of thirty-four.

“Today’s fine,” Lucy said. “I’m free today. That is—if today is good for you.”

“Today is perfect,” said Claire, beaming.

Throughout this three-way discussion, Claire pointedly ignored me. Any visible sign of friendship between Claire Michaels and Craig Parker would only invite suspicions of collusion. We were also attuned to the fact that Craig Parker was supposed to be a single guy—and one who was younger and far better looking than Alan Ferguson. We didn’t want Alan to ever get the idea that he was in competition with me for the attentions of Claire Michaels. That would probably make him withdraw, thereby making Claire’s task all the more difficult. 

Alan finally emerged from behind his desk, carrying an armful of file folders and a single large binder.

“Come on,” Claire said. She headed in the direction of one of the unoccupied meeting rooms, Alan following eagerly behind her.

“How did it go with Lucy today?” I asked.

Claire and I were in bed again, both of us staring up at the ceiling as we talked. She had come to my hotel for an evening strategy session, and one thing had sort of led to another. We were both physically spent, and now our thoughts had turned to the job at UP&S.

“Lucy wouldn’t shut up about how much she detests Shawn Myers, and how much she resents the fact that he’s her boss,” Claire said. “What I’m planning to do, it won’t be hard.”

Once more we discussed the details of how we would handle Lucy Browning. What we had in mind as more than a little underhanded—far more underhanded than my proffering the joint to Kevin Lang.

Ironically, Lucy’s very innocence required us to expand the ethical boundary lines that we were willing to cross. That was a somewhat discomforting, but inexorable reality of my business model: The more squeaky-clean the target, the more underhanded the means necessary to entrap them.

“Okay,” I said. “If it we can swing it like you describe, then we should be able to convince both of them to resign and sign the contract. We’ll pitch your ideas to Beth, Kurt, and Bernie tomorrow.”

“You think they’ll go for it?”

“They’ll go for it,” I said. “As long as they’re assured that Alan and Lucy will walk away quietly. None of the TP Automotive folks wants to risk a protracted battle with a long-term employee.”

We would place Lucy and Alan in positions where they would feel compelled to resign with modest severance packages. That meant that we would have to maneuver each one of them into a corner. Even if people hate their jobs, they don’t relinquish them easily.  

That was why TP Automotive had hired the Termination Man. As always, the key was to avoid an outright firing. A firing would expose our client to a range of undesirable consequences: a hit on their unemployment insurance at the very least—a costly wrongful termination suit in the worst case. So in a way, my nickname was actually a misnomer of sorts. But Resignation Man simply didn’t have a similar ring to it, I suppose.

“And then there’s Alan,” I said.

Claire giggled. “I think that I could get Alan to take a swan dive from the roof of the UP&S building if I wanted to,” she said.

“Alan is sure taken with you,” I admitted. “But you don’t need to take things quite that far. I think that his resignation will suffice.”

Claire was not exaggerating by much, though. Alan had come back from the meeting with her with a dumbstruck, euphoric look on his face. He hadn’t said anything to me about it yet; but I could tell that his hour of discussing work-in-process rules with Claire had been a semi-spiritual, semi-carnal experience for him.

“He wasn’t the only one ‘taken with me’ as you put it,” she said. “Shawn Myers kept ogling me today, every time he walked by my desk.”

Shawn Myers.
That was a name I could have done without hearing.

“According to his father, Shawn has had a bit of a maturity problem,” I said.

“I’ll say,” she said. “He strikes me as an overgrown teenaged boy.”

“Something like that.”

Shawn Myers struck me as a son-of-a-bitch, plain and simple. No point in letting Claire know that, though. It would be better to keep the observation to myself.