Company - Max Barry [76]
The managers will take it up with Senior Management. They would like nothing better, because now that Infrastructure Control suggested it, they can blame him if Senior Management gets crabby about being disturbed. The managers cluster around a speakerphone.
Senior Management is apoplectic. What in the hell does Infrastructure Control think it's doing? The whole point of the consolidation is to reduce costs, not jack them up! It's people like Infrastructure Control, Senior Management realizes, who are ruining its beautiful plans. By the time he reaches his desk on level 15, a voice mail is waiting for him. He is required on level 2. Immediately.
It is Infrastructure Control's first visit to level 2, and he is pleasantly surprised. It is all wide open spaces and deep, rich oak; there are freshly cut flowers and expensive oil paintings. There is some nice infrastructure here, all right. He is shown to the boardroom, where the entirety of Senior Management waits. They point him to a seat at one end of an enormous table and, after a suitably intimidating pause, ask him to explain himself.
“Well, it's simple enough. Our fixed costs haven't changed, only now there aren't as many departments. So I have to bill them each more.”
Senior Management waits, but that appears to be it. They are stunned. Where are the PowerPoint slides? The bullet points? The references to shifting business paradigms and emerging market opportunities?
“But the departments are smaller,” a woman says. “They're using less of the infrastructure. If anything, they should pay less.”
“And who do I bill the empty floors to?”
“Why would you bill them to anybody?”
“Because they're still there.”
Senior Management doesn't like his tone. It doesn't like his implications, either. Glances are exchanged. Senior Management would prefer an alternative explanation: that Infrastructure Control is a greedy little price gouger.
“What, then,” Senior Management says, giving him one last chance, “can we do to keep departmental expenses the same as before?”
“Well, you could fill the floors. Hire more employees.”
There is a collective intake of breath. Hire more employees! This is barefaced heresy. Senior Management looks at one another, stunned. Infrastructure Control is dismissed from the boardroom.
For long moments, the room is silent except for the quiet ticking of the bar fridge. Then a woman leans forward. “This idea of billing departments for fixed resources . . . it's just an accounting trick, isn't it? The infrastructure is already there. It's not going anywhere if we stop billing departments for it. So we could fix this problem in a second by simply eliminating the department of Infrastructure Control.”
Slow smiles emerge around the board table. Finally, a solution! There is an appalled protest from a man whose main accomplishment in the consolidation was to gain responsibility for the department of Infrastructure Control, but he is quickly silenced. The announcement goes out; Human Resources is notified; by the time Infrastructure Control gets back to his desk, two Security guards are waiting for him.
Sydney, diminutive ex-manager of Training Sales, stands in an elevator, its doors open to the lobby, running her eyes up and down the panel of floor numbers. She has a dilemma: she doesn't know which button to press.
There's no way she's going to level 11. Working for Roger, until this week her subordinate, would be too humiliating to bear. Maybe some people would take a knife in the back and keep smiling; not Sydney. Since her ousting, she has gone from department to department, calling on old friends. Or people she thought were friends; apparently they were only acting sympathetic because she was a manager. That was a nasty surprise—but then, everyone has always been against Sydney; that's what she's been saying.
So here's her problem: she's out of alternatives. Of all the numbers on this button panel (and there aren't many), the only ones she hasn't tried are the