The Voting Machine

The Purge

Gina was the only high-ranking employee to survive a purge when Chet took over the company. Chet was a famous investor with controlling positions in dozens of companies. He was one of those Wall Street geniuses who manage hedge funds, flying around the world and working around the clock in order to make the richest people in the world even richer.

Chet came from an elite, East Coast family. He looked like a typical silver spoon preppie, but he also had an adventuresome streak. He was known for his talent as a photographer, pilot, and an international explorer. He was also a pretty good card player who finished 25th in the World Series of Poker one year, donating his winnings to charity. Some of the security guys jokingly called him "Helicopter Chet" because he would fly to the roof of the Passion building rather than sit in LA traffic.

Chet was a long-time board member of Passion before he took the CEO position. In the aftermath of an FBI investigation in investor fraud, Chet successfully drove out the prior CEO Marcus Davis and gained complete control of the company. Marcus, the founder of Passion, was now serving time in a minimum-security federal prison for his role in misleading investors about the financial health of his company.

Within weeks of sending Gina to Bangalore, Chet began emptying out the Passion office in Torrance, firing legions of workers with no advance notice. It was pretty obvious what was happening. Gina was in India replacing us with call center agents who would work for a third of our salary.

The rounds of layoffs became a routine leading into the holiday season. My co-workers were periodically herded into a conference room like sheep to the slaughter. Then a manager from human resources would announce that their jobs had been eliminated and read them the terms of separation. They got a few minutes to pack their personal items into cardboard boxes under the supervision of security. They were not allowed to touch their computer or phone. The guard would then collect their employee badge and escort them to the parking garage to drive home from work for the very last time.

Even with Gina hiring rapidly in India, Chet knew he couldn't get rid of all of us at once. So the slow drip of attrition continued through the winter months until the Torrance call center staff shrank from a sea of people down to a few lonely islands of remaining survivors.

I wondered when my turn would come.

I tried to imagine my life after the inevitable layoff.

It was like staring off the edge of a cliff.

I had a baby daughter and a wife who was not working. It's true I had the reward money but that wouldn't last forever. It wouldn't be easy to find a way to replace the money I was making at Passion.

I knew things were bleak for most of the agents who had already been let go. They went for months without finding replacement jobs. Many had given up. They sat in their apartments, collecting unemployment and aimlessly surfing the Internet. Some were convinced they'd never work again.

I knew that once you lose your job, the chance of anything bad happening in your life increases dramatically, whether it's depression, divorce, illness, bankruptcy, addiction or something else.

Unemployment was like a virus that could eat away at everything that mattered.

This is what happened to many co-workers.

I knew it could happen to me too.

I went home to Suzy and Reina and tried to feel as a happy and thankful for them as I had only a few months earlier. But the gratitude I'd felt for my wife and daughter was now poisoned with fear.

My wife was having a hard time with her new life, forever housebound and taking care of a colicky infant.

"What's wrong with you?" she snapped one night when I forgot to pick up diapers on the way home.

"How come you're always talking about what's wrong with me? How come you never mention what's right with me?"

Suzy glared. "Something's changed in you, Temo. You never used to forget the important things. You're not on top of things like you used to be."

She was right.

It was during those winter months, as I waited for the axe to fall, that I started doing things I never used to do

On the way home from Passion, I'd stop at a bar on Carson Street near the Harbor Medical Center and down a beer and a few shots of tequila to calm my nerves. At first, it was only a few times a week. It quickly became a daily ritual. I never told my wife that I needed a nightly buzz to dull my panic over our future.

The handsome bartender, with jet-black hair and pure blue eyes, was named Davis. He seemed to be there to greet me every single time. I could only wonder what kind of monster shift he was working to pay the bills. Davis came to recognize me but I made sure he never learned my name.

I watched my dad waste so much of his life getting trashed in dives like this. I promised I'd never reach the point where a bartender knew me on a first name basis. This was missing the point of course. There were plenty of ways to waste my life, even if I didn't follow my dad's habits down to every last detail.