“Then you should’ve been here at six-thirty sharp.”
Matt searched Doug Bradley’s face for the tell-tale sign of mirth but saw none. Doug had been acting weird lately anyway. He’d always been somewhat of a hard-ass, but Matt had always gotten along with him. Whatever administrative task Doug asked him to do Matt did it; that was in his job description. After all, he was an Administrative Assistant. And while Doug was normally an all-business-all-the time type of guy, he had been known to drop his guard and joke around with the rest of the office staff from time to time. He hadn’t done that lately in… well, in months. Matt decided to parry back. “Yeah, and maybe I should just move in here,” he said, grinning. “I’ll just sleep under my desk every night.”
Doug smiled in approval. “That’s what I want to hear! Make sure you gather whatever toiletries you need on your lunch break, though.”
“Sure. I’ll just charge it to my expense account.”
Doug frowned again. “This is no joking matter, Matthew.”
Matthew. Whenever Doug called him by his full name, Matt knew he was serious. Doug still had that serious, bland look on his face. There was no sign his boss was joking. He was deadly serious. “You’re kidding, right? You want me to start sleeping here?”
“Everybody else did.” Doug indicated the rest of the department with a wave of his hand and Matt looked over at Monica’s cubical next to his. She was sitting at her desk, staring raptly at her computer screen. Matt caught the faintest hint of a rolled up sleeping bag and a pillow tucked beneath her desk against a filing cabinet.
Matt turned back to Doug. “April Fool’s Day was three weeks ago, Doug.”
“This isn’t a joke,” Doug said in that same tone. “In order for McSweeny’s to be competitive we need our employees to remain at the office ready to work when they’re needed. That includes during the time that used to be referred to as ‘off the clock’.”
Matt stared at Doug, trying to read the man’s face. This had to be a joke. Doug could be a real pain in the ass, but this was going too far.
“Had you not departed forty minutes early on Friday, you would have gotten the same message the rest of the staff received,” Doug Bradley said. “You would have known that starting today, McSweeny’s new initiative was rolling forth and that all employees were required to assemble at their stations Sunday afternoon in order to prepare for it. We are a twenty-four seven shop, Mr. Wagner. That means we need all available resources all the time. That means you.”
“I worked through my lunch last Friday and had a meeting in the second floor conference room at three,” Matt said, his mind tracing back to last Friday. “I told you I was leaving for home right after the meeting.”
“Needless to say,” Doug Bradley continued, ignoring Matt. “I trust this won’t happen again. Procure what toiletries you need for the evening, perhaps secure a bedroll and pillow if you need to, and remain at your desk come five o’clock.” After delivering this order, Doug Bradley turned and walked back to his office. Matt watched his retreating back with a sense of dumbfoundment.
He turned to Monica’s cube. The computer graphic designer was working on something, her attention riveted on her work. He confirmed that, yes, she did have a sleeping bag and pillow under her desk, then he strode down a row of cubicles and began checking to see what the hell was going on.
One of the marketing administrators, Clara Reed, was preening herself in a little compact mirror at her desk. She caught his gaze in the mirror. Matt saw a small cot folded up beneath her desk. “What’s that cot doing under your desk?” he asked.
Clara frowned and turned to him. “Personal things unrelated to work belong under our desks. Don’t you know that?”
“Yes, I know that, but what the hell is a goddamn cot doing at the office!” Matt couldn’t help it. He was growing angrier the more this bullshit was played out.
“It’s more comfortable sleeping on a cot than on the floor,” Clara said. For the first time it hit Matt; she sounded just like Doug Bradley—flat, emotionless, drab. It was like she was rehearsing lines from a script and she didn’t care about the emotional impact of her delivery.
“You slept here last night?”
“Yes.” She cocked her head at him. “Why weren’t you here?”
And with that Matt Wagner tore down the aisle of cubicles, trying desperately to find one co-worker who hadn’t succumbed to whatever bullshit joke this was, but as he threaded his way through his department and the Art Department and finally to Accounting, he saw that everybody had a cot or a rollaway bed or a sleeping bag tucked beneath their desk. Some people were still preening in mirrors; one Account Executive was still getting dressed in his cubicle. Heart racing madly, Matt Wagner tore back down toward his work station past co-workers who were busy working, some with their cots still laid out and nightgowns lying on the floor, a few even still asleep. And as Matt dove into his chair and scooped out his cell phone to call Deena, the phone on his desk rang and Doug Bradley approached him from behind and asked him to type up some important documents in a tone of voice that suggested everything was normal, everything was right, and Matt Wagner began to go crazy.
…Corporate Financial’s CEO Frank Marstein outlined the new project “Reign” as an exciting initiative that will benefit all of their clients and secure the future for business leaders worldwide. The first step, which is being undertaken today throughout the company and all their client companies, is only the first of several initiatives designed to make companies work more cohesively in the years to come. “Employee turnout and participation is expected to be high,” Marstein said in a prepared statement Saturday from Corporate Financial Headquarters in Calistoga, CA. “Management will be available for support and I anticipate Phase Two beginning at the end of the week.”
Phase Two, according to Marstein, will be a new marketing campaign designed to obtain business from companies that aren’t already Corporate Financial clients. “By Phase Four we expect the low prices we are offering in this marketing campaign to attract new business, most of it small businesses and independent proprietors, which will be beneficial to us and to them. Companies can save forty percent of their operating costs by working with Corporate Financial Consultants, and this translates to higher earnings and profits for all of us.”
Free State Insurance, one of Corporate Financial Consultant’s largest clients, is one of the companies expected to participate in the initiative despite losing most of its executive and management staff in a tragic incident last Friday when Victor Adams— (continued page 12).
LYNN MCMURPHY WAS sitting in her favorite chair at home reading a romance novel when there was a knock on her front door.
She put the volume down on the end table by her chair and glanced at the clock. It was ten minutes after ten. Today was the first day of a weeklong vacation she was taking from work; she worked as a storekeeper for Acme Warehouse, a large distribution center outside Sedalia, Missouri. She’d been with the company for well over twenty years and had five weeks of vacation built up. She’d put in for this time back in January, filling out the vacation spots she planned to take on her boss’s calendar with a red sharpie pen. All the people in her department did that. Her boss would then plug those vacation days into the computer and note them on his calendar so he could plan ahead to provide for coverage. This had been the standard operating procedure since her employment with Acme began.