That particular Monday, I had arrived at the roundup five minutes early so I could have my choice of seating. Our conference room is small, bland, and windowless, with a large Formica-covered table taking up virtually all the available space. I edged my way toward the head of the table: Bob’s unchallenged domain. Once there, I neatly arranged my files in front of his usual spot, placed a precisely ordered list of my current projects conspicuously on top of the stack of files, and slid into Bob’s chair. I sipped my coffee and smiled.
Through the door I could see my colleagues begin to wander out of their offices, stroll to the coffee machine, and congregate in small pre-meeting discussion groups. Nobody was in a hurry. Bob is always late.
Duncan was the first to drift in, and he gave me a sly smile as he noted my position in the room. Both Duncan and I have been labelled as resistant and unco-operative, with a big dose of bad attitude, in the face of our “renewal process.” That’s because we made the same error early on. During the staff input stage — the one-on-one consultations with management — we both provided candid and honest answers to the questions we were asked. Rather than tell management what they wanted to hear — that everything was fine and they were doing a great job and a little tinkering and some new jargon should basically do the trick — we told the truth. That fundamental change was needed, and change started at the top. Oops. We came out of those meetings pegged as employees with an unhealthy attitude who were afraid of change.
Since then, Bob had used the Monday meetings to load up his two most undesirable employees with impossible projects on ridiculous deadlines, believing that we’d soon become discouraged enough to seek employment elsewhere. He’d obviously missed the course on “Employee Evaluation: Harnessing the Hidden Power.” I had no intention of quitting. I was ready to fight.
I gave Duncan my most charming smile and patted the chair to my left. “Why don’t you sit here?” A common front could be useful as the meeting unravelled.
He took in the neatly arranged files, the detailed project list, and my charcoal grey pinstriped suit. “No thanks. I’d rather live through the meeting.”
Wimp. Oh well. Not everyone was up to constant battle and confrontation. I could understand that. Then I looked more closely. His hands were empty: no files, no notebook, not even a pencil. Something was going down.
“Duncan…?” But just then several of our junior colleagues arrived, and I didn’t want to ask too much.
Bob finally made his entrance at 9:17 A.M. I bent over my files, watching the movie unfold from the corner of my eye. Like a sleepwalker, he blundered toward the head of the table. Then he saw me and stopped abruptly, creating a mini tsunami that swept over the rim of his coffee cup and came close to producing third-degree burns on Conrad, one of our young engineers. Conrad lunged forward just in time. That seemed to wake Bob up, and he looked down at his hand, then at the floor, then up at me, trying to take it all in.
Bob looks surprisingly like a Cabbage Patch doll, and is often referred to as Mr. CP, or simply CP, by the secretaries and clerks. The effect was exaggerated this morning. His cheeks were rosy, and his wispy, fair hair stood out in tufts around his head. The fact that he was standing stock-still with a befuddled expression on his face didn’t help. One of his bulging files had become dislodged by the sudden stop and was sliding, in slow motion, to the floor. I looked up as if I’d just noticed his arrival and turned on my thousand-watt greeting smile.
“Hi, Bob. Have a good weekend?”
“I…” he stammered. “I…”
You could see the indecision do battle on his face. Should he ask me to move? It was the power position in the room, and he was the boss. On the other hand, the new management style was horizontal and non-hierarchical. Asking me to move might be interpreted as a lack of commitment to the new principles. His eyes darted around the room, looking for safe haven, and finally fixed on the empty chair at the other end of the table. I was hoping that one of my colleagues would have demonstrated their commitment to a non-hierarchical structure by taking the other end-chair, but everyone was afraid for their jobs. Conrad collected up the stray papers and handed the file folder, now damp with coffee, back to Bob. Bob glared at me, then edged his way to the chair at the other end of the table. Once settled, he struggled to recoup his authority.
“So,” he said heartily, “everyone have a good weekend?”
There was a murmur of affirmation around the table.
“Good. Great,” he said. “Well… umm…” he shuffled the papers in front of him. “I guess we can get on with it then. I went over a few files this weekend…” (that meant that he culled the files that had been sitting on his desk for at least a month and were now facing critical deadlines) “… and there are some interesting biotechnology grant requests that require background checks.” He glanced around the room. “Anyone up to that?”
“What’s the deadline?” That was Douglas. Young. Keen. And with chronic ulcers at the age of twenty-four.
“The deadline?” He spoke as if it was the first time he’d ever heard the word. “Oh. Let’s see…” He flipped open the file, making a show of running his finger down the margin of the first page. “Ahh… that would be Wednesday.” Then he snapped the file shut. “It’s a simple review really. Nothing complicated.”
I tried, really I did, not to roll my eyes. No science investigation is simple. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking at financial irregularities or outright research fraud, you still have to search the literature, sometimes you need to do site visits, and you often have to review the material with experts in that field. Not surprisingly, no one leapt forward to take on a boring project with an impossible deadline. In the silence, Bob’s face suddenly lit up, and his eyes rested on me.
“Morgan. Maybe you could handle this.”
But I was ready. “No problem. I’ll just add it to my current projects. However, as you can see,” I held up my carefully prepared list, “Wednesday is not a possibility. Unless you’d like it as my first priority. Then I could get it done by Friday, that’s if I can get a hold of reviewers. Of course, it will mean bumping the deadlines of all the other projects you assigned me last week.” I smiled sweetly. “But whatever you’d like, Bob.”
“Let me see that list.”
I passed it to Conrad, who shot it down the table. Bob looked it over, his lips moving as he passed from one item to the next. Then he nodded.
“I don’t see a problem here. We’ll reassign your current projects to junior officers. They need the experience anyway.” His smile was vanilla pudding. “And I have several other files of a similar nature, and with similar deadlines, that I’d like you to get started on right away.”
I had the sensation of reeling backward, gasping for air, as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus. So this was it. This was how he was going to get rid of me. Pass me projects one week, get me to do the leg-work on every single one, then pull them out from under me in the final stages, so that the report would be written by (and the investigation attributed to) either himself or one of his loyal lieutenants. Even though I hate the guy I had to admit it was a brilliant scheme. And effective. I was a senior investigator. My career would be ruined. I took a deep breath and forced myself to centre and focus. He was no different from an opponent in karate class, and I couldn’t afford to show him that he had scored a hit. I kept my voice light and friendly. “Well, you’re the boss, Bob. If that’s how you want to handle investigations —”
“It is.”
“Of course, it’s very inefficient. And we’re likely to really screw something up when the reports are being done by someone not involved in the investigation —”
“I think the level of competence among the rest of the staff,” he paused, then swept his hand dramatically around the room, “is at least as high as your own. Or wouldn’t you agree, Morgan?”
Duncan saved me from that one, bless him. “Is this change