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By Root 346 0

business principle that everyone rises to his or her level of incompetence, because employees who are good at their jobs are given promotions until they reach a role they're bad at, and then they stay there. The Phoenix is an exception: he has been incompetent at every job he's ever held, yet keeps getting promoted. When his job was to carry boxes from one part of the company to another, they would sit in reception for hours until, several reminder calls later, he ambled in to collect them. Then, via means that nobody ever quite worked out, they would vanish for up to two days before arriving at their destination, a few floors away. Also, employees soon realized they couldn't pass the Phoenix in a corridor without getting caught in a conversation. There was no escape: if you liked sports, you were in for a thirty-minute lecture about player wages, but if you didn't, he would try to educate you. If you were foolish enough to express a differing opinion, the Phoenix's voice would grow louder and more insistent as his thick eyebrows descended. If you still failed to concede, he would start poking his finger at you. People began feigning hearing problems, or waiting until some other poor soul had become ensnared before hurrying past, head down, breath held.

Then one day the warehouse was outsourced. There was quiet rejoicing: at last, workers could move between floors without a sermon on the declining skills of elite ballplayers! But, to everyone's horror and amazement, the Phoenix survived, being transferred to Inventory Control. Two years later, facing sky-rocketing employee turnover, that department was merged into Logistics. Twelve members of staff were laid off, but not the Phoenix. A decade and uncountable disasters later, he was assigned to head a Sigma Six task force, which was mission-critical for ten months, then crashed and burned and nobody ever mentioned it again. All task force members were let go or farmed out to distant fringes of the company, except for the Phoenix, who over the years had accumulated so much leave that he had become too expensive to fire. Human Resources forced him back into Logistics, despite that department's objections, until the vice president became so frustrated that he laid down a him-or-me ultimatum. This was unfortunately timed, as internal jockeying in Senior Management had left him on the outer edge of a new group of power brokers, who saw this as an excellent opportunity to replace him with someone more likely to share their views. The Phoenix thus became the new Logistics vice president. It is clear to the Zephyr workers that he is immortal.

Freddy and Jones exchange nervous glances at the Phoenix's approach. Holly's eyes fix on the bulge of muscle where his arms disappear into his shirtsleeves. “What the hell do you think you're doing?” the Phoenix bawls. He comes at them like a bad-tempered bear. “This is Senior Management, not the goddamn cafeteria. Get the hell out.”

Holly says, “We have a set of demands—”

“I don't care if you've got a gold medal.” The Phoenix is always coming out with lines like this, which sound as if they should be witty but when you think about them make no sense. “Get your asses out of level 2.”

The three shrink before his advance. Then, from behind, they hear it. Ding!

An elevator-load of Zephyr employees spills onto level 2. They have taken a while to arrive because there was an argument about the elevator's load-bearing capacity; a little metal sign declared a weight limit and an uncomfortable discussion ensued, with people eyeing one another's waistlines and buttocks. Also, to convince the elevator to go to level 2 they had to swipe Jones's ID card and toss it out to the others before the doors closed, and on the first attempt a woman who used to be in Business Card Design—so deft with a mouse, surprisingly deficient in gross motor skills—failed to clear the doors and they had to all jump out on level 5 and try again.

But now they're here! They number more than two dozen: clerks, gnomes, elves, accountants, engineers—a Zephyr mixed bag. They