Company - Max Barry [40]
Jones realizes he's been insulted. He looks down at his suit, which is two months old and cost four hundred dollars.
“Oh, fuck off, Blake,” Eve says amiably. Blake laughs. Eve takes a seat and gets to work on her croissant. “Jones,” she says, through a mouthful. “Come sit.”
Jones obeys. The chair surprises him, giving in some places and supporting in others. This, he realizes, is an expensive chair. He experiments, moving his butt and arching his back. It gets better. Jones had no idea that chairs could do this. To think, all his life he has accepted that chairs provide a certain standard level of comfort, while society's elite were enjoying this.
“Ignore Blake.” Eve doesn't deliberately aim this at Blake, but she doesn't lower her voice, either. “He's just threatened.”
“Why?”
She looks at him. “You don't know? Wow. You are cute.”
Jones feels thrown. What do you say to that? He settles for a mixture of smiling and looking doubtful.
“What a beautiful morning!” Daniel Klausman exclaims, striding into the room. From the general reaction, Jones gets the impression that this is a standard greeting. He's wearing his overalls, which is going to take Jones some getting used to, and he drops into an enormous leather chair at the head of the table. The agents take this as a signal to get organized, but Jones notices they are not exactly rushing, in the way they would if, say, this was Training Sales and Sydney's meeting. So Klausman is fairly relaxed about protocol.
Klausman leans to his right and peers at a pastry on a napkin in front of a young woman wearing delicate glasses. “What is that, Mona? Cake?”
“Mille-feuille,” Mona says, covering her mouth daintily. She swallows. “It's a French pastry. Custard, filo, and, if I'm not mistaken, a hint of almonds.”
“Nice?”
“Very nice.”
“Good. The company's prices are outrageous, but they promise quality.”
“They deliver,” Eve says. “I had a pastry last week that was positively orgasmic.”
“Well,” Klausman says. “They are exceeding expectations, then.” He looks around the table. “Shall we begin?”
“Project 3811,” Blake says. “Training Delivery. We're experimenting with endurance limits in floating-deadline environments. Basically we've recruited four volunteers for what we've told them is a task of critical importance, put them in a meeting room, and every few hours we change the task's goals in minor but significant ways that require them to keep working.”
“Hmm,” Klausman says. “You're getting them food and water?”
“Oh yes. They order in pizza, and so forth. It's very interesting. They've been in there for twenty-eight hours and no one's left. The dynamic seems to be that no one wants to let the others down, even though they all want to go home. I don't need to point out the potential here. But there are some side effects: shouting, increased aggressiveness, declining conformity to company dress code, that sort of thing.”
“I bet you can't keep them in there for more than two days,” Eve says.
Blake raises his eyebrows. “I'll take that bet.”
“Bottle of Dom Pérignon?
“I believe you still owe me a bottle from our last bet.”
“So you'll have two.”
“If I don't have one now,” Blake says, “why should I believe you'll deliver two later?”
“Touché,” Eve says.
“Children,” Klausman chides. “Take this off-line, if you please. Tom, how are you going with the depersonalization project?”
“Well, mixed results. Although . . .” He clears his throat, glancing at Jones.
“Ah,” Klausman says. “Of course. Mr. Jones, you are unwittingly part of this project. We're experimenting with eliminating first names, encouraging employees to refer to each other by surname only. That's why your ID tag doesn't have your first name on it.”
“Oh,” Jones says. “I was wondering about that.”
“My theory is it encourages focus on job function rather than personality,” Tom explains.