Company - Max Barry [77]
The idea is seductive. Sydney doesn't belong in the lower departments; she should be up top. Where else is there for a person with her sweeping, hostile vision, her passionate dislike of people, her willingness to make other people make sacrifices? Senior Management, Senior Management, Senior Management!
Only you don't just walk into a Senior Management position. You grease your path over a dozen well-catered dinner parties and games of golf. Sydney hasn't done that. And even in this desperate situation, she couldn't bear to start. She is too good for that.
A girl with large freckles arrives. “Going up?” she says brightly. Sydney stares at her until she retreats.
Senior Management, alas, is out. And that only leaves one number: 3. Human Resources.
Sydney feels an affinity with Human Resources. She likes the name, with its not-so-hidden implication that employees are an exploitable resource, like stock or real estate. And not a particularly valuable one, despite that old chestnut about employees being the company's most important asset. Sydney knows the truth: give the company cash resources, give it strategic partnerships, give it inventory; give it anything but prickly, unreliable, idiosyncratic humans. People are the worst: you can't stack them, or (easily) relocate them, and you can't even just leave them alone to accumulate value. That's why the company requires HR: a department to transform humans into resources.
Sydney stretches onto her toes to push 3. The doors close. As the elevator rises, she hums a little tune to herself. She is nervous, but optimistic. She thinks she will fit right in.
Freddy enters the level-11 cubicle farm and stops at the coat stand. The jacket that took his hook on Monday is two hooks down today. Freddy smiles. He hangs his jacket in its rightful place and heads off to his own cubicle with a light heart and an energetic tread.
He's getting to know the other Staff Services workers. The people from Business Card Design are tall, pale, and elfin. Ex–Relocation Services employees are small, stocky, and humorless; they also have the best square-footage-to-employee ratio. Anyone large, boisterous, and fit-looking is from Gymnasium Management. Social Club employees have bright, darting eyes and strain toward you, seeking conversation. Then there is Training Sales. They, Freddy decides, are the rogues of the bunch. The sharply dressed assassins. Everyone is a little wary of Training Sales. So that's the all-new Staff Services department: a loose conglomeration of elves, giants, peacocks, gnomes, and organized criminals.
Freddy reaches his cubicle and sits. What the department doesn't include, he abruptly realizes, is Training Delivery. He goes cold. Was Training Delivery lost in the consolidation? And if so, what is Training Sales meant to sell?
Possibly there is a reasonable answer. Possibly Senior Management decided to leverage Training Sales' skills into a higher-value sector, one that doesn't involve training. But Freddy has worked at Zephyr for a long time. He's pretty confident it's a screwup.
Holly arrives at her desk to find a voice mail from Roger, summoning her to his (new) office at her earliest convenience. The voice-mail woman says, “Received . . . today! . . . at . . . five . . . fifty! . . . four,” so clearly Roger's earliest convenience occurs long before hers. She finds the idea that Roger has been at work for almost three hours a little creepy. On the one hand, she can't imagine how Roger could be any worse a boss than Sydney. On the other, she fears he might demonstrate.
Halfway to Roger's office, she finds herself staring at a TV monitor. It's bolted to the ceiling, but so large that it hangs down over the cubicle aisle, forcing taller employees to duck as they pass. Its screen is blank. Next to it is a steel anti-vandalism cage with a large bulb inside. Neither the light nor the screen serve any apparent purpose. A few employees stand below, looking up nervously, but Holly just squeezes past. She doesn't waste