The Voting Machine

Meeting at the Top

The waves of gloomy layoffs continued through February. I was sure that my time had finally come. I came into work the Monday after Valentine's Day to find Sampson, the sandy-haired security guard, waiting at my workstation.

Sampson was one of the last familiar faces that remained from the heyday of Passion. A former surfer and armored-truck driver, Sampson used to work for Charlie Park, the Director of Risk Management at Passion. Charlie was killed last year in a gunfight with Flytrap, a local drug dealer I'd known since childhood.

Sampson and I had never been particularly close, but we both admired his former boss. After Charlie died and we saw so many of our co-workers lose their jobs, Sampson and I developed a cautious friendliness and respect for one another. We bonded as two of the last survivors of all the changes at Passion. If it was my turn to get escorted out of the building like all the other lay-offs, Sampson was as good a person to do it as any.

But Sampson wasn't there to walk me out to the parking lot. Sampson had a surprise in store for me.

"Chet wants to see you," he said.

"Come again?"

"He's here today. And he wants you in his office."

"You're kidding, right?" I said. It seemed like some kind of joke.

"I wouldn't do that, dude." His eyes looked so dreamy and mournful.

I was trying to figure out why Chet would want to meet with little old me. After all, he was the CEO. And this was only one firm out of a huge portfolio of companies that he ran. He was one of the richest men in the world.

I only met Chet once in a hotel in Laguna Niguel the year before. That time he didn't even acknowledge me. Chet's predecessor Marcus liked to rub elbows with his common employees, he tried to be a man of the people. But Chet never did that. He didn't pretend to care about any of us. There were never any company meetings. No walking through the aisle of the lower floors or listening to agent calls with customers like Marcus used to do.

Chet lived in Connecticut and we hardly even knew when he was in town. The only hint we had was if we heard a helicopter buzzing overhead. We knew that might be Chet and one of his bodyguards landing on the helipad above the executive offices on the top floor. I heard that Chet got a helicopter's license after buying his first company in LA. The idea was to make travel more efficient. Sitting in traffic was a waste of time and Chet valued time more than anything else.

So why in the world was a billionaire, a man who treasured his time more than his employees, bothering to meet with me?

There was only one reason I could think of.

I was, after all, the winner of the Employee of the Year award, the last Passion employee to win that coveted prize that had become a company institution. On top of that, I'd been a hero in the local news for a few days after I was found innocent in a celebrated murder investigation.

I figured Chet was worried that letting me go would be bad publicity. Any business leader had to be concerned with the reputation and image of his company. He could probably envision the story on the evening news: Temo McCarthy, Passion Employee of the Year, dumped unceremoniously out on the streets by a heartless corporate raider.

Somebody might remember my name and face and then it would become a news story. That's the way it works with the media. Audiences respond to people that they know about.

It's a tragedy when somebody you know loses their job. When it happens to a million people you don't know, then it's just a statistic and you couldn't care less.

I wondered what angle Chet was going to play. I knew that companies handled layoffs differently for employees they were worried about. I figured he was going to try to sweeten the terms of my separation with some kind of "termination agreement," the kind they gave to the executives who might have a friend or relative who was a lawyer.

Everybody knew that some of the middle-management types would walk away with one or two year's salary while call center agents were lucky to get a few weeks of severance money. Getting fired was hardly a fair process.

Sampson and I took the elevator to see Chet on the top floor. He and I were old timers so we knew all the little quirks and secrets of the Passion Headquarters building. We knew about the unmarked button that set the lift into express mode, ignoring requests to stop at all floors unless they came directly from the executive suite.