Company - Max Barry [88]
Chapter 12 of The Omega Management System (“Meetings: The Good, the Bad, and the Unnecessary”) devotes several pages to the advantages of breakfast meetings. The earlier the better! is the executive summary, because people are at their most mentally alert first thing in the morning. It is a particularly good time to tackle seemingly insurmountable problems: you will be amazed, the book says, at how frequently a morning meeting will deliver breakthrough solutions. Jones was skeptical on first reading, but now he realizes Omega is right. Because it's 5:30 A.M. and it has just occurred to him how to beat Alpha.
Q4/3: DECEMBER
PENNY COLLAPSES into the café chair and peers at him. “What are you doing?”
“What?” Jones says. “Nothing.”
“You're smiling.”
“Am I?”
“Did you bring down Alpha?”
“No. Well, I had an idea. But I haven't done anything yet.”
“Oh. So you went the other way.”
“What other way?” he says, but now even he can feel the smile.
“Pathetic,” Penny says. “I'm disappointed in you, Stephen.”
“And yet,” Jones says, “I don't care.” He laughs.
At ten o'clock on Tuesday an odd smell wafts through Staff Services. A warm, doughy scent, laced with sugar. People stand up in their cubicles and peer around. There, coming through the door—a trolley! And—they rub their eyes—it is piled high with steaming donuts.
Workers break from their cubicles. For a moment it looks like there might be carnage: torn pastry and cubicle dividers spattered with hot jam. But Roger is there with his PA plus two Staff Services employees—tender winners—and they stand firm. “Wait in your cubicles!” the PA orders. “Do not approach the donuts. The donuts will come to you.”
The employees hurry back to their desks. They sit with growling stomachs and ears pricked for the trolley's squeaky-wheeled approach.
Freddy, Jones, Holly, and Elizabeth sit in their cubicle without speaking. They know what's coming. They listen to the growing sounds of chewing and sucking, until the trolley squeaks up to their cubicle entrance and nudges inside. Roger has a donut in his hand. His lips are speckled with sugar. The PA and the two employees are each finishing one off. On the trolley are three donuts.
“Last cubicle!” Roger says. “Go on, tuck in. Freddy, Jones.”
They reach out and cautiously take a donut. Neither is brave enough to bite into it.
“Holly.”
“That's okay. I don't want one.”
“Of course you do. Go on.”
“Really, I'm not hungry. And if there aren't enough to go around—”
“Take the donut.”
Holly reluctantly reaches for it. She holds it in her lap and ducks her head so that her hair hangs over her face in a blond sheet.
“Hmm,” Roger says. “You know what, Holly, you're right. We're one short.”
Elizabeth shrugs. “Fine. I don't mind.”
“I could have sworn we had the right number.” Roger puts his hands on his hips. “I'm sure we had exactly one for each employee.”
Elizabeth abruptly stands up. Her thin gray coat, which these days she never takes off, billows down to the floor. She stares at the ceiling and begins breathing fast.
“I can only suppose,” Roger says, “that someone must have taken two.” He shakes his head, bewildered. “But who would do that? What sort of person would take an extra donut, knowing they'd be stealing from a co-worker?” He looks at his PA.
“I don't know, Roger.”
“Jones? Freddy? Holly? Any ideas? No? No thoughts? What about you, Elizabeth?”
Her head snaps down. Her face is flushed a deep, angry red. “I took your donut. Is that what you want to hear? There. I took your donut. I was hungry, I ate it. My God! You are so petty! So petty!”
Roger folds his arms. “So you took my donut.”
“Yes!”
“Wendell,” he says, “was fired for that donut. Do you realize that?”
Elizabeth puts her hands to her face. “Oh my God.”
“On the one hand, Elizabeth, I appreciate that you've finally confessed. But you need to understand the gravity of the situation. This isn't just about a donut. This is about teamwork. It's about respecting your co-workers. What is a person meant to think when