Evie's Job

Epilogue 2: Evie

Rachel tapped on the glass wall of Evie’s office, then, when Evie glanced up, she turned deliberately and looked out into the central part of their floor, towards the open cubicles where the paralegals and assistants worked. Evie looked as well. It was Rachel’s way of discreetly drawing Evie’s attention to something she might want to know about, someone walking their way she might want to avoid, or something gossipy and exciting like an office romance melting down in front of everyone.

Today it wasn’t gossip. Today it was definitely something Evie didn’t want to see.

There were uniformed security guards there, outside security guards who Evie hadn’t seen before, not the usual ones from the lobby. There were other people with them too, people in normal office clothes carrying folders and lists. Evie thought she recognised someone from human resources.

Worst of all, there were cardboard cartons.

Evie knew what cardboard cartons meant. Everyone knew what cartons meant, even people, like Evie, who had never been through corporate layoffs before. The carton was to put your things in, so you could leave right away, because once you’d been fired you had to go as soon as possible, so you didn’t have any chances to steal files or in some other way harm the firm. Evie knew how it worked. Everyone knew how this worked. She knew, but it was still horrible to realize it was about to happen here.

Evie stood up, and went to her office door, and opened it. There were a lot of security people out there, and a lot of cartons. The whole floor was in chaos. People were upset, some were angry. Somewhere, someone was crying. As Evie opened the door she heard someone else say, “What the fuck, not me.” She didn’t recognise the voice, and wasn’t sure who had spoken.

Rachel came over and stood beside Evie, in the office doorway.

“How many is it?” Evie said quietly. “Have you heard?”

“Half,” Rachel said. She glanced at another assistant further down the row of offices, who’d probably just heard it from someone else.

“Half?” Evie said. “Are you sure?”

“Apparently.”

“Oh fuck.”

Other office doors were open, other people were watching. This must be costing the firm a fortune in lost productivity, Evie thought. There was something a little unpleasant about everyone standing there watching, morbidly fascinated, like staring at a car accident. Evie knew it was terrible, but couldn’t help herself. She watched anyway.

The human resources people were out in the middle of the floor, with the paralegals and assistants, speaking to some people, and ignoring others. Evie watched, feeling a little detached, feeling untouched by what was happening in front of her. She was sympathetic, but not actually scared for herself, still assuming this was only happening to other people. She didn’t seem to be the only one making that assumption. Other partner-track associates, from the windowed offices around the outside walls, were obviously presuming the same thing. They were watching, resenting the loss of their support staff, but not actually worried for themselves. Nearby, two other first-year associates were complaining to one another that they wouldn’t be able to meet court dates with only half their staff. Then the human resources people came over and handed one of them an envelope, and a security guard appeared with cartons, and slowly the floor went quiet.

Partner-track staff were being laid off as well.

Phones rang and went unanswered. A photocopier was running somewhere, clattering away on a job that the person who’d started it might never come back for. The whole floor was still.

Evie stood there, horrified. She couldn’t believe things were this bad. She felt sick. She felt afraid, like she was waiting to be sentenced in court, or for a jury’s verdict. She bit her lip and clenched her fists, and made herself stand there, watching. She made herself not flinch or look away or go back into her office and hide, like she desperately wanted to do.

It was going to be a while. The human resources people were working clockwise from the elevator. They were being fairly quick with each person, but the whole process was inherently slow. Evie had most of three sides of the building before they got to her, and she wasn’t she could wait that long.

She made herself wait. She had no choice. She stood there, and waited, and breathed.

After one wall had been done, it was clear that not everyone was being laid off. It seemed to be about half the people on the floor, as Rachel had said. Half of all the staff, regardless of position. Evie watched, trying to decide the criteria for being fired, trying to work out if she was safe. It would be based on billed hours, she thought, but with twists here and there to keep it nicely vague. They would be aiming to keep the top billers, and anyone with some useful edge, those who spoke Chinese, or who had important families, or contacts in the state government. They would be sacrificing anyone else, anyone who didn’t quite match up, anyone who wasn’t working that extra little bit. Those people would go.

Evie watched, trying to see an obvious pattern in who was being fired, but to her disappointment, there wasn’t one. It didn’t surprise her at all. There had to be no obvious pattern, and she knew that perfectly well. There had to be no pattern, because this was a building full of suddenly-desperate lawyers. If there was anything that looked like a pattern, wrongful dismissal lawsuits would follow. She knew how this worked, because she’d vetted lists like this for clients several times over the past year. More often recently, as the recession had got worse. Making sure they could keep who they liked, and fire everyone else, and doing it in a way that got no-one got unexpectedly sued. She had vetted such lists, checking performance reviews and productivity metrics and other measures of usefulness, making spreadsheets to search for patterns to blind-check that no particular group, like recent parents, had been accidently singled-out. She’d done that in the abstract, about people she didn’t know, and now, suddenly it was happening to her too. Some other firm would have been brought in to check, the same way Evie had done. It was a little odd to think that she’d been screened, and never known.

She hoped the decision-making was sound. She wouldn’t want to be fired by mistake, a kind of sacrificial slipping through the gaps that presumably happened sometimes. She hoped she would be all right, but she didn’t actually know. She had fewer billable hours than some people because she had to plus-one Natalie at work events. Natalie had always said that counted as work and not to worry, and Evie suddenly hoped that Natalie was right. She hoped Natalie had explained it to whoever was making these decisions. It would be awful to be fired for such a simple mistake.

It was odd, Evie thought suddenly. A week ago she would have been angry at that thought, angry if someone had dared suggest that Natalie help her at all. Now, scared, she actually hoped that Natalie had. She wanted to keep her job. She wanted to keep it desperately.

She watched, silently, making herself breathe. She didn’t know what else to do.