Company - Max Barry [28]
Freddy goes to put back the handset, fumbles it, grabs it again, and slams it down. His hands tremble. His application was meant to disappear into the bureaucratic pit: to slip through the cracks and be processed without adequate review. Instead he's attracted HR's attention. He has fallen under the beast's scorching gaze. Pretending to be stupid suddenly seems like a very stupid idea.
For a second, Freddy thinks about ignoring the summons—maybe he can claim his voice mail didn't work! But this is madness. Nobody escapes Human Resources. He can only face his fate like a man.
He decides to leave his suit jacket on. He'd climb into a suit of armor if it was available. He scribbles on a Post-it note and sticks it to his monitor: GONE TO HUMAN RESOURCES.
This way, if anything happens to him, people will understand. Holly will know. Freddy forces himself to walk toward the elevators. He feels tears prick his eyes. Dead man walking! We've got a dead man walking here!
The elevator doors are closing by the time Jones gets there, and he has to lunge forward to stick his arm between them. The doors crash to a halt and reverse direction, revealing the tiny, imposing form of Sydney, standing with her arms folded. “In a hurry?”
He steps inside. “I'm sorry, I didn't know you were in here.” Which is a lie, of course, but Jones has realized that you don't get anywhere with Sydney by disrespecting her. In this way she is similar to Roger . . . and, now he thinks about it, pretty much every manager he has met so far. Does this mean that Roger is destined for management? Is it possible to predict who will rise up the corporate hierarchy simply by picking out the people most desperate for public recognition? This train of thought distracts him until Sydney pulls out her cell phone and begins pushing buttons. “Oh!” She looks up at him expectantly. “Sorry. The thing is, I've been wondering what it is that Zephyr does. I mean overall, as a primary source of revenue. I can't find that out from anywhere. Isn't that weird?” He laughs.
Sydney looks back at her phone. “That's the thing with cogs, Jones. They don't need to understand the whole machine. They just need to turn.”
“Right. I see what you're saying. But if one of those cogs wanted to understand the whole machine, and got so distracted about not knowing that it stopped turning properly—”
“That would be a very bad idea,” Sydney says. She still doesn't look at him.
The elevator doors slide apart. Sydney begins to cross the lobby, her heels clack-clacking rapidly across the Zephyr logo tiles, but Jones has a good ten inches on her in height and easily keeps pace. “It's not a secret, though, right? What the company does?” They pass the reception desk—Gretel, Eve, Eve's tower of flowers—and Jones begins to sweat. “Is it?”
“Of course not. Have you read the mission statement?”
“Yes, but—”
“You do realize we're a holding company?”
“Yes,” Jones says, getting frustrated, “but that tells me nothing. Look, if it's not a secret, why can't you just tell me what Zephyr does?”
Sydney stops walking so unexpectedly that Jones nearly collides with her. The lobby doors jump apart anyway. It's a warm day outside, and a taste of it blows into the lobby and over Jones's face. “Jones. You're not listening to me. It's not a secret. But asking that question betrays a lack of focus. Think about it: What happens to this company if every employee wants to understand our strategic direction? If they want to second-guess Senior Management decisions? We can't run a company with eight hundred CEOs. It's not your job, or my job, or the janitor's job”—here she gestures to a man with a mop in one hand, who is leaning over the reception desk to chat to Eve Jantiss—“to formulate corporate strategy. If you can't understand that, you can't be a team player.”
This accusation, Jones knows, is as vicious as it gets. He has seen the motivational posters.
“All right?” Her sharp green eyes flick between his.
“Fine,” he says, and before the word