The fact that Mary wanted to consult with Don after hearing Susan’s story told me she thought someone needed to be punished for what had happened. In the idiom of the company’s corporatespeak, that meant someone was to be “placed on a course of progressive discipline”—a best practice strategy the company utilized to address violations of policy. In it, the offending employee was “placed on notice,” and faced a series of “elevating consequences” for continued misconduct, “up to and including termination.” It was all written up very clearly and with the appropriate legal flourishes in one of the policy binders Don kept on his bookshelf, but in practice it usually meant the employee was simply taken a short journey—a journey very much like the one mobsters take stoolies on in the old film noir classics—a journey, in other words, with a predetermined destination. First, Don gave them a tongue lashing; second, he wrote them up and put a black mark in their file; and third, he ended the whole affair by firing them and contesting their ability to collect unemployment insurance.
I’m sure we made an interesting sight, the three of us—Mary, me, and Susan—marching through the office in single file, but most people were smart enough not to look up until after we had passed by. Don lived with all of us office dwellers, his cell more like a cozy warren in the very center of that long windowless wall against the parking structure. His office had been specially configured with a footprint the size of three of our offices, and a door and outer wall made completely of glass. The better to see you with, my dear, was the running joke that explained Don’s Transparent Wall, and it was true. The wall gave Don a commanding view of all the worker bees as they did their little functions in their little workstations. But most of the time the wall wasn’t even necessary, because Don was typically not in his office. He much preferred standing in its doorframe, one shoulder braced against one of the steel supports and an extra large cup of coffee in his hand, looking out self-assuredly on all the pod people and the special habitat he had created for them. That morning was no exception.
“We need to talk,” Mary said bluntly upon our arrival, and Don, giving Susan and me the barest of cursory glances, simply nodded his head and backed into his office to allow the three of us to enter.
Don was a big man, thick more than fat, with a gigantic head and a prizefighter’s nose pushed flat and wide against his face. He wore his wide-collared dress shirts—white, and sometimes blue—with two open buttons at the neck, revealing more of his puffy, pink skin than anyone really wanted to see. There was always a wrinkled sport coat draped around the high-backed chair behind his desk as if it were his personal valet, but he never wore it, and his shirts were chronically untucking themselves as he went through the movements of his day. Indeed, as he moved towards the small conference table that was the centerpiece of his office, I saw that his shirttail had come loose again, a mottled love handle flashing its blotchy rosiness at me as he turned and heavily sat himself down.
“What’s going on?” Don asked.
Mary was taking her seat beside Don. I stepped aside and gave Susan access to a third chair and turned to close Don’s door. Through its glass I saw that all activity had stopped in Don’s amusement park outside. All of the pod people were silently watching us—some simply turned towards us in their chairs, but others standing and clustered together in the spaces between the pods—as if we were about to discuss all of their fates.
“It’s Amy and Caroline,” I heard Mary say. “They’ve really stepped over the line this time.”
Resisting the distraction, I forced myself to turn away from all those blank and frozen faces. Don, Mary, and Susan were huddled around Don’s circular conference table, a fourth chair waiting for me to claim it.
“Who?” Don asked.
“Amy Crawford and Caroline…uh, Caroline…” Mary looked to Susan for help.
“…Abernathy. Car—”
“Caroline Abernathy,” Mary added quickly. “They’re in the Education Department.”
Don seemed to think for a moment, his breath moving loudly in and out of his flat nose, and then perked up as if someone had stuck him with a pin. “Amy Crawford! Goddammit! What’s she done this time? I’ve about had it with her.”
“It’s not Amy—”
“She got drunk at a client meeting,” Mary said quickly, interrupting Susan again. “And she embarrassed the company in front of a hundred VIPs.”
“She did what!?” Don said, almost spilling his coffee as his big hands shot out in surprise. He wore one of those enormous class rings on his finger, and it clanged tellingly on the tabletop. “That’s the last straw! She’s already got the black mark in her file. Let’s fire her.”
Mary looked ready to pounce but this time Susan spoke first and wouldn’t be interrupted.
“Now just a minute, please,” she said. “There’s much more to the story than that. What about Wes Howard and his role in all of this?”
“What?” Don said, blinking his puffy eyes at Susan as if she had just materialized before him. “Who?”
Susan opened her mouth but Mary stopped her with a restraining grip on her wrist. “Wes Howard,” she said purposefully, as if regaining total control of the situation. “One of the VIPs. You remember, Don. You met him at the strategic planning retreat last year. Eleanor thinks we should be considering him for board service.”
“Oh, yeah,” Don said, thoughtfully. “Wes Howard. Nice guy. What’s he got to do with this?”
“Not much that I can see,” Mary said.
“Not much!” Susan suddenly exploded, yanking her arm out of Mary’s grasp and rising reflexively to her feet. Susan had a frenetic energy that could often not be contained, especially when she was worked up about something she felt was Inappropriate. “What are you talking about? He’s responsible for their behavior. They wouldn’t have done it without him providing them cover and egging them on!”
“Susan, please,” Mary said slyly, her voice like a snake moving through the long grass. “Sit down. We need to discuss this rationally.”
Susan turned deliberately towards Mary, her shoulders scrunching up and her elbows drawing back aggressively. I couldn’t see the expression on Susan’s face from my position near the door, but I saw Don’s reaction to it. His thoughts were plainly written on his jowly face and, like me, the split second impression that Susan was going to haul off and hit Mary flashed through his mind. Mary, still not shaken, looked up at Susan passively, like an ancient sea creature waiting for its smaller and swifter prey to swim within reach.
“Rationally?” Susan said bitterly. “How can we discuss this rationally when we’re not even willing to put the blame where it actually belongs?”
“Susan, please,” Mary said again, unperturbed by Susan’s icy tone. “Sit down. We can talk about an appropriate response for everyone involved in this incident. But we must be calm and rational about it. You’re still new to the company, but I know you’ve reviewed the personnel files of all the staff you inherited. This is not the first time Amy has acted inappropriately at a client meeting.”
Susan did not sit down. Instead, she literally threw her hands up and let out a loud harrumph. She turned to look at me with her arms folded tightly across her chest. Her eyes contained a simmering fire, but they also seemed to plead with me. Alan. Please. Do something!
I have to admit, I was torn. I had gotten as far as I had in the company by keeping my nose clean, by not crossing swords unnecessarily with Mary, but this time it did seem like our President was rushing to judgment. But more than that, as Susan stood there glaring at me I couldn’t help but think about the kind of person she was and the way she tried to deal with her staff. Although they had rebuffed her at just about every turn, Susan nobly continued to be their advocate, their champion, their supporter. Even now, knowing full well that Amy Crawford despised her, and had deliberately mocked and embarrassed her in front of a room full of people, Susan was trying to keep her from getting fired. It’s not just that Susan thought Wes was the real culprit to be dealt with. Susan defended Amy because Amy was one of her people, and that’s what a supervisor was supposed to do with the people she managed—at least with the ones she thought were worth keeping in the organization. I knew Susan well enough to know that this was where she was coming from. And by the look in her eyes, I could tell that she expected no less from me. It guilted me into action.
“Mary’s right, Susan,” I said, stepping forward, touching her gently on the elbow and encouraging her to sit back down as I finally took my own seat at the table. “This isn’t the first time Amy has acted inappropriately.” I looked sympathetically into Susan’s angry eyes as she hesitantly reseated herself. “But, Mary,” I said, turning to face her, “Susan’s right, too. Amy isn’t the only one who acted inappropriately here.”
“I know,” Mary said. “We’ll have to discuss an appropriate action against Caroline as well. She’s less experienced, but she should know better.”
“Caroline!” Susan shouted before I could placate her, her thoughts beginning to sputter out of her in incomplete sentences. “Caroline’s the one… She doesn’t deserve… If you had seen her eyes…”
“Mary,” I said as calmly as I could. “Don’t you think that someone should at least have a talk with Wes?”
“About what?”
There was no mistaking Mary’s tone. It was crisp, dismissive, and, worst of all, honest. In three cold syllables, Mary had effectively communicated that there would be no more discussion on this issue. She had taken in all the information Susan had given her, had made the necessary calculations befitting her role as company President, and had decided on a course of action. Case closed. And it wasn’t Amy or Caroline that Mary was worried about. Mary was looking out for her company, and her inexorable logic told her that punishing a couple members of the junior staff for acting inappropriately was by far safer than confronting a well-connected VIP on the circumstantial evidence she had been given.
Susan also heard the finality in Mary’s voice. This time she did not jump up, but rose deliberately from her chair. She turned and gave me a venomous look and then, without a word, unclipped her ID badge from her blouse, tossed it cavalierly on the table, and strode resolutely from the room, leaving the office door hanging open behind her.
Don blinked his eyes. “Did she just quit?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, in shock over what had just happened, my head turned towards the open door, and staring at the wild eyes on all the stunned faces of the pod people as they wordlessly tracked Susan’s progress as she moved away from Don’s office. “But, I think I should go find out.”
Without waiting for permission to leave, I got up and hurried after her.
+ + +
“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.
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