What happened next will probably go down in history as the worst firing ever executed. From the walled cocoon of my office I could only rely on my sense of hearing, but that was enough to know that there was shouting, slamming doors, and, at one point, what sounded suspiciously like the scuffle of a physical altercation.
The deed was probably done in Gerald’s office, three doors down from mine, and Gerald’s voice would occasionally penetrate the various layers of drywall and unblemished paint that separated us.
“He’s a fucking liar! Alan Larson is a goddamn fucking liar!”
That was the first outburst. Through the glass of my office door I could see a handful of junior staff in their workstations, their heads first coming up in curiosity, and then hunkering down in fear.
A few minutes later, we all heard, “Take your paper and shove it up your fat ass, Don!”
Now I saw Ruthie fluttering by my office door, gathering people up and out of their workstations, and taking them probably down to the break room so that they would be out of the line of fire when Gerald was perp-walked down to the elevators.
It deteriorated quickly, and although Gerald’s voice continued to bleat like a slaughtered pig, not once did I hear the words of either Don nor Mary that must have been sticking him. They were playing it cool, I knew, having seen both of them in action before. Don Bascom was a master at The Firing, exhibiting a kind of ruthless efficiency that seemed absent from all of his other responsibilities in the company. At no point would he raise his voice, break a sweat, or show any other form of agitation. A decision has been made, and he was simply here to tell you about it.
“Take your goddamn hands off me! You stupid fuck!”
This one was much louder. Clearly Gerald’s office door had been opened and that was when the scuffle occurred, the soft and subtle slaps and grunts of grown men wrestling with each other. I was self-consciously biting off one of my fingernails when the combatants walked by my office, Gerald first, with Don tightly on his tail but with neither of his goddamn hands on the doomed soul. As he passed, Gerald struck out and banged his fist hard against my glass, rattling the whole door in its frame and, as I would discover later, cracking the glass deeply enough that it would need to be replaced.
“You’re a dead man, Alan! You’re a fucking dead man!”
In another context, I’d like to think that I would have laughed at such melodrama. Indeed, I remember trying to console myself with an imaginary vision of Gerald twirling his villain’s mustache while tying my pregnant wife to the railroad tracks, but it didn’t work. Truth be told, I was shaken and full of doubt at what I had just done. Had I misjudged the situation? Did Gerald have some secret pull that I was unaware of, something that he could use to make my life even more miserable than it was? Or was he unhinged enough to actually make good on his otherwise ridiculous threat on my life? In that lonely crucible of my own doubts and insecurity, it seemed like anything was possible, like I was no longer in control of anything that would happen to me.
I tried to busy myself with the papers on my desk, with my fingers on the keyboard, with anything, something besides those four blank walls mocking me, closing in on me like a trash compactor, compressing and shaping me into the clueless loser they and everyone beyond them knew that I was.
It was dark stuff. I don’t know what depths I would’ve fallen to had Bethany not appeared in my doorway, tapping ever so lightly on the glass that Gerald had just broken. I waved her inside and she came in quiet as a whisper, roosting herself on the edge of my visitor chair, her hands folded protectively in her lap.
“Are you okay?”
Her first question surprised me, and made me realize that perhaps I had been crying and that perhaps she could see that I was.
“Yeah,” I said, absently wiping my eyes. “Sure. I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
“You tell me,” I said. “I’ve been stuck in this office for the last fifteen minutes.”
“They just walked Gerald out of here,” she said.
“That much seems clear,” I said. “And he made a lot of noise on the way out.”
“People are scared,” Bethany said, leaning in closer and perching her fingertips with their acrylic nail polish on the edge of my desk. “The whole office heard him shouting. We heard some of the things he said.”
That one made me pause. I knew what I had heard, but now realized that others may have heard other things, things said at a lower volume that were muffled coming into my isolation chamber but clearly audible in other parts of the office. Not knowing what else to do, I only nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
“Now? Nothing. I’m supposed to wait here until Mary comes and talks to me.”
And, as if summoned by dark magic, with the mention of her name, Mary appeared like a beige apparition in my doorway. Without knocking she opened the door and let herself in.
“Bethany,” she said, any surprise she might have felt at finding her in my office completely masked. “Could you give Alan and me a minute alone, please.”
Bethany seemed flustered, awkwardly getting to her feet and almost falling over with her sudden movement and change in elevation. She gave me a pained look, her lips openly silently but forming no words that I could discern. She turned to look at Mary, standing at my door with it held open to facilitate her exit. Straightening her blouse and smoothing out her skirt, she left my office without saying a word.
Mary shut the door and turned to me. “Is there something going on between the two of you?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“What?”
“You and Bethany. Is there something going on between the two of you?”
I looked at her incredulously. It was a difficult question to answer. There was definitely something going on between me and Bethany, something with many layers to it, some above, but most below the surface -- but none of them were of the nature that Mary was insinuating.
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
She looked at me suspiciously, and seemed to be waiting for me to add more to my testimony.
“Mary,” I said, speaking out against my better judgment. “Honestly, no. There’s nothing going on between me and Bethany. She just wanted to know what I knew about what had happened to Gerald.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“Nothing. She was only her for a minute. You appeared before a conversation could even start.”
Mary relaxed her arms and moved to take a seat in my visitor chair. She studied me for a few moments in silence, but this time I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
“Well, we’ve got a real problem,” she said, her tone switching gears towards the business at hand.
“We do?” I asked, putting extra emphasis on the ‘we’. I had not even entertained the idea that I might be Mary’s second dismissal of the day until she was sitting across from me. For a sickening moment I was almost sure of it. She was here to fire me. But her use of the word ‘we’ gave me some hope and I clung to it.
“Yes,” Mary said. “Gerald said some very disturbing things in his separation interview.”
Separation interview. Only Mary could continue to use such corporate speak after the flying fuck fest that had just occurred.
“I heard some of it,” I said. “I know he called me a liar.”
“He called you much more than that.”
Mary then went on to describe all the things Gerald had said about me, evidently in-between the shouting and cursing I had heard. Evidently, he talked about me a lot, me and his low opinion of my leadership skills and my overall competency. I was in over my head, promoted beyond my ability, with poor judgment and a reluctance to act. He spent a long time talking about my handling of the situation with Wes Howard in Miami Beach, and about how it, above all else, had eroded the confidence that the rank and file had for me in the organization. No one trusted me. They knew I wasn’t up to any difficult task put before me and that, when push came to shove, I would throw anyone under the bus in order to preserve my own position and authority.
It was brutal. And coming so soon after my wrestling match with my own doubts and fears, it nearly unhinged me. Mary relayed the information in her own deadpan way -- just the facts, ma’am -- but still, there was judgment there. I suddenly remembered the conversation Mary and I had had in Miami, when she told me that Gerald wanted to be reassigned, that he no longer wanted to work under me, that he and others, including Eleanor Rumford, had lost confidence in my ability to lead. Mary didn’t mention that previous conversation, but when the memory of it flashed across my red face, she saw it, and she gave me a merciless look indicating that she knew I remembered it.
Eventually, she paused, and sat studying me, perhaps waiting to hear my side of the story, more likely waiting for me to step into the trap she had just laid.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mary,” I said, attempting an absolute Hail Mary. “Gerald was the one working behind your back to undermine the company. Not me.”
Mary slowly nodded. “I know that,” she said. “Still, the things he said about you, we know that they are not entirely untrue, don’t we?”
I had a few moments of disorientation as I tried to work out her double negative in my distracted mind, but I quickly realized that she was looking for me to confess. That’s what was going on. She wanted me to admit that I was the loser Gerald said I was, and probably ask her for absolution. Was that going to be necessary for us to move forward? Could I even do that? What would that mean for my self-respect, for my ability to hold my head up and I continued to move from thankless task to thankless task in this broken organization?
“I will admit,” I said eventually, “that things have been challenging for me. I’m still carrying three workloads: mine, Michael’s and Susan’s.”
As she often did, Mary visibly winced at the mention of Susan’s name, but she quickly pivoted in a new direction. “And now you will have Gerald’s workload as well. You’re going to need to apply yourself more effectively, Alan. Remember, we have that leadership meeting coming up in a few weeks.”
I knew the meeting she was talking about it, but the idea that I would have to take on Gerald’s workload in addition to the burden I was already carrying was overwhelming in its implications.
“Mary!” I cried aloud. “You can’t expect me to do the work of four full-time positions. Can’t someone be reassigned to start helping out?”
Mary smiled, satisfied, I think, that I had allowed my exasperation to show through. “We’re working on it, Alan. I’ve got a pile of resumes on my desk a foot high. We’re looking for the right people to come in, but it takes time.”
It was a figure of speech, I knew, but I also knew it was a lie. There were no resumes on Mary’s desk. I had been watching the want ads and I knew that the company had not yet even advertised Susan’s or Michael’s positions.
“I know,” I found myself saying, accepting the lie for the sake of the more direct point I was trying to make. “But what about someone already in the company? Isn’t there someone on another client that can be temporarily reassigned? I’ll keep doing what I’m doing, but having someone else take on Gerald’s responsibilities, that would be a tremendous help.”
Mary’s slippery smile only widened. “I’m sorry, Alan. You’re just going to have to figure this one out on your own. I know you don’t want to admit it, but you’ve brought most of this down upon yourself. If you get us through the leadership meeting in one piece, we may be able to shuffle some chairs, but until then, there is very little that I can do. You’re going to have to find a way.”
I looked at Mary icily. I knew what she was doing. She was doing to me what she did to everyone that had become more trouble than they were worth to her. I would not be fired. No, not unless I did something horrendous or illegal, I would never be fired. Worse than that, I was going to be worked until I collapsed and could take no more. Until I was dead. She was going to suck me dry, and then she was going to throw away my lifeless husk. She was a vampire, and I, now, had become her prey.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
Image Source
No comments:
Post a Comment