Kelly Govoni was the payroll administrator. She had been with the company longer than any of the others. Tim Lovett was the AP manager. There wasn’t a person in the company either of them hadn’t spoken to at some point, though often not under the best circumstances. So, as hard as Chris and Lisa liked to believe that they had it there were others who had pretty lousy jobs that they were stuck in. While Kelly and Tim were certainly very loyal to those in finance, if you crossed them they could be brutal and had a semblance of power to back it up.
There’s a point where those who are injured watch their slow recovery and the mind asks if things will ever be the same. Like many of their colleagues at PW, these four were teetering on resigning themselves to the fact that the workplace they had and bragged about to jealous peers was irreparable. This group was one stitch in the hem of the American economy silently ripping at every new step. Sadly, for as much adversity as Kelly, Lisa, Chris and Tim might have faced in their individual lives outside of work, they couldn’t always apply lessons learned through struggle to fix the inherent problems at PW. Work just isn’t the same as life, though management doesn’t always help make that distinction for its workforce.
# # #
“So Timmy, who are you going fantasize about tonight, Jenna Jameson, Ashley Allan, another porn star to be named later?”
Chris didn’t want to know what this conversation could possibly be about.
“She is a virgin, that’s what she told me and I respect that.”
“I don’t think you can be a virgin if you have a graduate degree in sucking cock,” Lisa deadpanned.
Chris slid into the bench seat. “I don’t want to know….no.”
Lisa cradled the Killians in her right hand and took a strong swig. The 99 was about three quarters full, typical for a Thursday. Customers were trained on the various televisions hanging in each corner of the room. There were guys checking out the scores scrolling across the screens, knowing the consequences of the Yankees being up by two in the third. They would refresh their eyes rolling to the side of the room to meet a coed waitress bouncing back fast enough to see that A-Rod hit another one.
“You know why they don’t have 99s in Maine?” The table stared blankly, expecting that they would soon get down to business.
“Because the people can’t count past seven.” Lisa snorted at her own joke.
“How much crack were you able to buy when you pawned your Ms. Dorchester 1988 crown?” Tim offered.
Lisa ignored the comment and blustered into a monologue somewhere between Police Academy 2 and Revenge of the Nerds in its dramatics.
“This latest crap from Ogre is killing me. The reality is that he and his cronies have a strong hold of our team – it’s not legitimate. We know how to do our jobs. It’s one thing to do what they ask of you and get no recognition. I’m an accountant, nobody loves me. I accepted that a long time ago. When they’re in meetings eating danish and bitching about how the company would only give them an Audi to use while their Beamer was in the shop they don’t say ‘When we put together a spinoff the first people I need are the accountants.’ We’re last and we’re losers.”
“That’s old news, though. I think we’re all used to being ignored,” Chris interrupted, “I don’t get your point.” As he finished his last syllable his Coors Light bottle tipped back and Lisa explained,
“I don’t want to be told what to do by someone who has no background to do my job and I certainly won’t stand for being made the scapegoat when there are problems. That’s what’s happening and obviously now it’s left the boardroom and is slowly congealing in the minds of the non-finance people. Do you want a reputation of being a fuck-up?” Beyond her skills as an accountant, Lisa was a master administrator. When things got done in the office it was because of her assertiveness.
She clarified: “So the solution is that we take it to this guy.”
“You mean we’re going to tell him off?” Kelly was bemused.
“Nah, he’s already got the rest of the company poised to attack us. Talking to him or about him is like holding your own grenade.” Somewhere between her lashes and eyeliner, her eyes had a faded intensity, as if she knew there was no plan that would be perfect retribution. It didn’t stop her from making a call.
“Look, he’s got a bonus payment coming from HQ next week, $50,000.”
“Wait a minute, na-uh, there’s a bonus freeze on.”
“How does it feel to be left out in the cold, Chris? Yeah, what they neglected to tell you is that your balls make a very pleasing sound when they squeeze them. Don’t be naïve, man – they break the rules left and right and leave us to figure out how to account for it because there’s no Fucking Around expense on the P&L.” She paused to let the crowd soak it in. “I’ve got an idea, though: We take the payment and give it to him same as usual net of taxes, but instead of paying all of those taxes in maybe they ‘accidentally’ get spread across the whole company in a little bonus payment to the employees. Merry Christmas, Love, Accounting. Ogre won’t notice until he goes to do his taxes at the end of the year and owes money. By that point it’s completely covered over and if they somehow find that you didn’t withhold on this one you just say ‘sorry, I missed that one’ – case closed. We do have to figure out how to get the CFO to sign off on the payroll run, though.”
“But ya talkin’ fraud!” Kelly’s Worcester accent would come out when she got excited.
“Mmm let’s see: opportunity – check, rationalization – check, oh intent to deceive – ever so much, check, actual completion of the transaction, well that’s yet to be determined. I really liked you better when you were dumb, but yes, there is an element of misconduct involved. If you spread it across enough layers, though, no one’s going to be the wiser and it just simply looks like a mistake when you’re talking about 600 people getting ten extra bucks one week in their pay.” She noticed a fuzzy white lint ball on her shoulder which she aimed to pull off while Chris did his usual party-pooping.
“I just don’t understand why you would go to the trouble of risking your job to try and pull something like this off, when it doesn’t send a direct message to anyone. It’s just a freakin trick or treat game.” This concern snapped Lisa back.
“Stop it.” Lisa paused to bring all eyes upon her. “I’ve been working my butt off for years to get to this place and now someone’s going to question me or my team – not fair, not fair, NOT fair. We had a real system and a real team when we were Sound Tech. It’s slipping away. I make noise because nobody else will. Let me ask you this: how does HQ, who is all the way over in England know what doctor you should be seeing or what phone service you should use? They don’t, but they change the freakin’ benefits to whatever seems right. We make noise and suddenly the kitchen door is closed on us or maybe it’s a round of layoffs coming around the corner.”
They had been here before to rail about working conditions, but never to this level of urgency. No one would argue the company was completely mismanaged. There was a trail of success that, while fading, was still evident. A company that lets its staff make all of the decisions is a happy drunk in a cycle of ineptitude. It wasn’t lack of management that roiled the employees there. The frustration at PW was the bureaucracy. An example had recently been established. Worldwide HR had ordered local HR to have its employees brainstorm on ways to improve the workplace. There was some silly acronym attached to the whole process, but local HR diligently passed along the message. While eating tuna fish in her office (because even tuna in the kitchen would catch hell with Lisa’s extraordinary sense of smell) on Valentine’s Day of the previous year, Kelly came up with an idea for a ‘Suggestion Box’ which could be placed in the mailroom where people could put anonymous suggestions for local improvements. Somehow her sincere idea had to be vetted through global auditing and others. In the end it was a suggestion email address that was settled on somewhere in the October time frame. Kelly was not given credit