Company - Max Barry [4]
A sigh from the phone. Elizabeth's heart leaps. “Okay, okay. We'll keep it at two hundred hours. But it's really more than I need, Liz.”
“I appreciate that, Bob. You're a wonder.”
“Well, you've always been good to me . . .” Elizabeth feels herself tuning out. Bob is under control. Bob is becoming less interesting by the second. Her thoughts drift to the man she saw in the meeting room. He was short and overweight; from the look of his shirt's armpits, he has some kind of sweat problem. She bites her lip, dreaming. She wonders if he is interested in some training.
Training Sales has eight staff: three sales reps, three assistants, a manager, and a personal assistant. Each rep has a sales assistant. Elizabeth has Holly, who is a young, athletic blonde renowned throughout several floors for her obsession with the company gym and lack of any detectable sense of humor. Roger has, or is about to get, Jones. The third rep is Wendell, a large man who drives the rest of the department crazy by clearing his throat before he says anything, plus when they least expect it.
Like every other department in Zephyr, Training Sales has an open floor plan, which means everyone works in a sprawling cubicle farm except the manager, who has an office with a glass internal wall, across which blinds are permanently drawn. Open-plan seating, it has been explained in company-wide memos, increases teamwork and boosts productivity. Except in managers, that is, whose productivity tends to be boosted by—and the memos don't say this, but the conclusion is inescapable—corner offices with excellent views.
The Training Sales cubicle farm is bisected by an eight-foot-high divider with sales reps on one side and sales assistants on the other. To the untrained eye the two halves are identical, but to those in the know, the rep side has a subtle, fluorescent glow. That glow is status. The residents of the rep side possess much better numbers: they have six-figure salaries, seven-figure quotas, and single-digit golf handicaps.
During the last office relocation, a plan was mooted to seat each rep beside his or her assistant, in the interests of efficiency. Fierce lobbying led by Elizabeth and Wendell dismantled this proposal within a day. So the assistants get a lot of exercise. They call the cubicle divider the Berlin Partition.
Wendell stops at Roger's desk, folds his arms, and lets out the little barking cough that signifies he is about to speak. “Roger. It pains me to raise this, but you've parked in my space again.”
Roger holds up a finger. He is on the phone to Catering, waiting for a transfer to the Snacks and Desserts division. But it would be unwise to let Wendell, a fellow sales rep, know this, so Roger tells the phone, “I recommend the complete package, which gives you all the benefits at lower total cost of ownership. Yes . . . of course. Excellent. I'll put that through immediately.” He hangs up. Wendell towers above him, blocking out the fluorescent lighting. “What?”
“Your car. Despite our previous conversations, it is yet again occupying my space.”
Roger pinches the bridge of his nose. “Wendell, there is no allocated car parking on the second subfloor. It's first in, best dressed. You don't have an allocated car space. None of us do.”
Wendell reaches into his jacket pocket. “Hak-kah.” This is Wendell clearing his throat. “So you said last time. I have, however, taken the liberty of contacting Infrastructure Management for a parking plan. If I may direct your attention to this particular space here, the one your vehicle is currently occupying, you'll see it's marked TRAINING SALES DEPARTMENT—SR 2. That, Roger, is me. You have the next space along.” He stabs the paper, at a space five feet farther from the elevator.
Roger waves the plan away. He has been a sales rep just six weeks; previously he was a customer. But he is terrifically talented, which makes Wendell nervous. Roger is too confident, his dark brown eyes too piercing. His hair is obviously