Welcome To Us
By Craig K. Damrauer
Platitudes. What is a platitude? Well, I’m glad you asked. Passive attitudes. We all have them and they work against us. They eat at our souls. You want a burger, order a burger. You want onion rings with that, order them. You want new drapes, go out and get new drapes. You want to ask out some girl in the office, named Marlene, let her know this. Nine times out of ten, she wants to ask you out too.
You see, life is a set of decisions. One leads to the next and the next leads to the next. If you don’t make the right ones, you don’t go where you want to go. Or maybe it should be life is like a river. No, an assembly line. No, a boxing match.
.
“It was nice to work with you.” Earl is standing above, fake knocking on the invisible wall above the cubicle edge. “They let me go.”
“They let you what?”
“Yeah.”
Strange to see Earl with water coming out of his eyes. Hard to know what to say to a grown man in that stage so Marty rips the page out of his notebook and shoves it in Earl’s beefy hands.
“Is this more of the?” Earl says.
“It is,” Marty replies. “Chapter nineteen.”
“Okay, well, uh, you’re in the book aren’t you?”
“I am. Look me up sometime. We’ll have juice.”
“I don’t drink juice,” Earl says. “On account of the.”
“Oh yeah. Forgot.”
Notebook Fourteen sits next to Notebook Thirteen sits next to Notebook Twelve sits next to Notebook Eleven, etc. He runs a finger down the spirals, counting. Counting all the way down and then all the way up. Buzz buzz buzz kerchunk. Someone has just completed the purchase of a Mars Bar or a Milky Way from the snack machine. Marty looks up to note who it is and to try to catch a glimpse of which candy bar: Terrence Mann, Milky Way; 10:37am. Notebook Seven is opened and turned to page 59 where the information is recorded. This is Terrence Mann’s fifth Milky Way of the week but overall he still seems to favor the Twix.
Tiddle, tiddle, tiddle. Tracy Mullins X4309 is on the display. Tiddle, tid. “Hello?”
“Hi, Marty. Rough day, no?”
“Yeah.”
“They didn’t get you, did they?”
“Um.”
“Oh, of course, your extension wouldn’t have been working if they had. Never mind. Sad about Jake Nodruff.”
“Jake? For Real?”
“And Lane, and Marjorie Hennessey, and Thom, and Tom, and Earl Rawlings, and Madhavilata.”
“Oh Jesus,” Marty says, “what are we going to do when we need approvals?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t,” she says. “I guess we’ll find all that out at ten o’clock. Listen, can you tell me whether a job number has been put into the system or not. 6072052100aba.”
“Say that again?”
“6072052100aba.”
“Lemme check,” he says, pressing the on button on his computer, listening to the fans beginning to whir up to speed. “I’ll call you back in about ten.”
.
Rodd stands on the little riser at the front of the Auditorium wearing a headset. “We have a lot to cover but before we get started, there is a rumor going around that I took index cards with all of your names on them and put them up on the wall here and threw darts at them to determine who was laid off and who was not.”
“What?” someone says. “Why would you do something like that?”
“It was a rumor,” Rodd says. “Now, I want you to consider buying this book, Dealing With Layoffs for Dummies. They have a whole stack of them on the table when you walk in the Barnes and Nobel on Ridge Road. Some of you may be feeling guilty because you didn’t get laid off and others of you may be feeling elation. There is a chapter or a bullet point that pretty much covers the whole range of emotions.”
“Well why’d you get rid of H.T. from Sales and not Other People from Sales?” someone says.
“It came from New York. They said we had to shed a certain amount. We created a complex matrix using spreadsheets with personal as well as performance data and tried to sort through it as a core management team. Like I said, it wasn’t easy.”
“You never said that.”
“Well I meant it.”
“Will we get moved around now, you know, in the office? Like, get better seats and stuff.”
“That’s not in the budget,” Rodd says.
“But the bathroom smells pretty bad near my cube.”
“Like I said, I don’t make the rules.”
.
On Lunch, Marty drives to the Barnes and Noble to see if Rodd was lying. There is a stack of Dealing With Layoffs for Dummies on a table called Life Changes right when you walk in the door. Next to it is Eat Your Way Through the Global Food Crisis and on the other side, Arm Yourself!
A shelf full of fiction has been overturned and Marty has to off road it over the mini-mountain of books to get to the Self-Help section. He counts the titles: 4212. There are three new ones. A quick rescan of the shelves reveals them: Love Too Much: Heck Yes!, and Roll The Dice: Life Lessons From A Professional Poker Player, along with Live Like A Three Year Old: How My Son Derrick Taught Me To Live Again.
The Three Year Old book is your run of the mill anecdote-lesson-per-chapter book. Chapter Three is called Wet The Bed And Other Tales of Liberation.
.
Practice getting laid off. Your brain is like a muscle. If you don’t train for the Big Race, when Big Race Day comes you’ll have a heck of a time running. Same with your brain.
An empty conference room is an ideal place to practice. Imagine that there are three people sitting at the long table: your supervisor, the head of H.R. and someone who gives you boxes. Practice hearing the news. Nod a few times reverently as if the news is trickling like sand through your brain. Do not speak for a few seconds to a minute after they have finished. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Okay now. Be gracious but firm. This will be your last chance to tell them what you really think; don’t miss it.
Marty shoves his pen up the spiral into its resting space.
“Are you still working on Nine Steps to Happiness?” It’s Paul from Records on seven.
“Eighteen. No. It’s a new one. What are you doing down here?”
“Surveying the damage,” Paul says. “What’s this one about?”
“Layoffs. It’s called Get Laid Off Without Getting Ticked Off. It’s pretty fresh. I just started it after lunch.”
Paul scratches himself on the back of the neck. Big sweeping motions, like a dog. “You know there was a whole new round, right? Just after the lunch break.”
“What? Who?”
“Mainly from eight. Most of Communications and about half of Order Processing.”
“Marlene Thomas?”
“They have a list in the Conference Center. I’m sure they’ll pass out a copy at the one o’clock meeting.”
“Not another one.”
“Yeah, I think they just want to let us know personally.”
“How’s your sister doing?”
“Better, thanks.”
.
At one, instead of the auditorium, they meet in the Conference Center. There are about half as many people in attendance as there were this morning. Rodd is standing at the front near the big presentation screen. “We have a lot to cover,” he says, “please take your seats. Have a doughnut.”
Marty looks around the big table and into the back where people are sitting in folding chairs. Marlene is seated a few chairs over from the corner. She’s taking notes.
“There are a lot of rumors going around and so I thought it was important to have a meeting to dispel them. We had to have another round of layoffs at about noon. Corporate felt it was important to stop the bleeding.”
“Did you use a scalpel or a hatchet?” Rodd’s assistant asks, from the front.
“Scalpel,” Rodd replies.
On his way back to his cubicle, Marty stops to watch Hendrick and Luis loading computers onto a cart. An unlit cigarette dangles from Hendrick’s lips.
“Busy?” Marty says.
“My man,” Luis says.
“I suppose your jobs are safe,” Marty says.
“Guess so,” Hendrick says, the cigarette bobbing up and down. “Us and Rodd.”
“Do you think I could get a new mouse? Mine is sticky.”
“You need to call the Helpline for that,” Hendrick says, putting a mouse on the cart. “That’s a Work Order Request.”
“What if I just switched mine with one of these?”
“We’d know and then we’d have to fill out an Equipment Tracking Form. Please don’t do that to us,” Hendrick says.
Luis nods. “Yeah man, please don’t.”
When he returns to his cubicle, Marty dials the extension of the Helpline. There is a recorded voice at the end of the line. “You’ve reached the Helpline for Invecto Systems. Please listen carefully as our options have changed. Really changed. This is the last outgoing message I will be recording for the only company I have worked at since I got out of college. I can’t say it’s been the best job a guy could have, some of my friends have pretty cool ones, like game design and whatnot, but I can’t say it’s been the worst thing either. I’ve grown quite close to a lot of you and I’ll miss you. It feels a little bit like I’m walking around without my pants ever since I got the news just after lunch. If your call is regarding software or a system issue, turn your computer off and then on again. Nine times out of ten this will resolve it. If your call has something to do with hardware, you’re on your own. Kenneth Mansfield was laid off this morning. In fact, his computer’s up for grabs. It was a real beast, too, two terabyte hard drive, dual processor, half a terabyte of RAM. Fucker could really go.” There is a click and then there is a beep.
Marty hangs up the phone and looks around. The refrigeration unit for the snack machine kicks in, whirring quietly. He can almost hear the dust being blown out the fan in the back against the wall. There are footsteps on the floor above along with a rolling cart. Funny, he thinks, I’ve always thought the floors were, like, two feet of concrete.
He feels the urge to call Marlene. The urge sits there in the pit of his stomach getting hotter and hotter, then it travels to his throat and begins to radiate out into his arms. It turns into a tingling, a light feeling, then it tickles. He dials the phone, feeling apprehensive until the first ring kicks in.
“Marlene Thomas Manning,” she says.
“Uh, hi, this is Martin Benedict, uh, from Systems. I need to check on an order, if you don’t mind. Are you the right person to call?”
“I guess. It’s a little chaotic here right now. Not sure who’s fielding what at the moment.”
“It can wait, I, uh, yeah.”
“Can it?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. I suppose so. Are you alright up there? I mean with the layoffs and all?”
“Who the hell knows. It’s a mess. I don’t know where half of the files are.”
Take a memento on your way out. Nothing big, because that would be stealing, but you’re going to want something to remember with.
.
At three fifty-five in the afternoon a meeting request chime goes off and Marty clicks the question mark button to find out that it’s an all-company meeting in the conference room at four. Mandatory. He looks around a little bit, noticing for the first time that there is a big chip in the front edge of his desk off to the right. The woodgrain is sheared violently open, exposing particles that look a lot like cardboard suspended in milky clear plastic. Why didn’t I notice that before, he says to himself.
Always take an inventory of your immediate surroundings. Where are you? You are here. Be here. Know where you are. (Chapter 2 of Eighteen Steps to Happiness.)
In the distance, toward the other side of the building where Customer Service sits, Marty can see Jane Barnes standing up in her cube. She appears to be throwing her tape dispenser into a missing panel in the false ceiling.
Marty is the only one waiting for the elevator and then the only one standing in the elevator as it smoothly chugs its way to nine.
In Rodd’s Conference Room, Rodd paces uneasily near the white board, nodding with emptiness at Marty when he walks in. Wow, I’m the first here, Marty says to himself, taking a seat toward the middle of the table and fixing his eyes on the door. A security guard stands outside with a stack of papers in a manila folder.
Staring toward the back of the room, Rodd clears his throat. “Let’s get started, we have a lot to cover.”
Marty looks around at all the empty seats. He looks back toward the door at the security guard, who shuffles from foot to foot.
“There are a lot of rumors flying around and I thought it was important to get everyone together so that we could all get on the same page with regard to these rumors. Yes, we had another round of layoffs at around three forty-five this afternoon. Customer Service, Maintenance, Management, Security and a few other departments. We are hopeful, no we assume, no we are positive that this will put the company back on track. Are there any questions?” He blinks a few times toward the back of the room.
Marty straightens himself a little.
“Now, some of you might be having a hard time with this and I can’t recommend enough this book, Dealing With Layoffs for Dummies, there’s a whole chapter in here about what to say to your friends. My point, though, is that none of these decisions were easy or arbitrary. Or easy. And as for the rumor about me, it is, I’m sorry to say, not a rumor. I will miss you all very much. Invecto is like a family to me and I think we’ve done some great work together. But it looks like my time has come. You’ll do great and I look forward.” He chokes a little, looks down and then does a quick, furtive wave toward Marty and exits the room where the security guard hands him the manila folder filled with all the papers.
Marty sits there for a second, noticing that his chair has a little squeak when he leans back. He turns and looks around the room. The chairs all face in different directions as if conferring with each other in some confused manner. Marty stands and his chair gives a thump as it goes back to resting position. The AV system purrs in the corner.
At the doorway to the conference room, Marty can see across the entire floor all the way to the elevator bank. The security guard and Rodd stand side by side in front of the silver doors. Rodd is carrying a banker’s box with no lid. The elevator makes a ding that echoes across the building floor and the security guard and Rodd both get on. Marty watches the doors close. The air system kicks in somewhere in the building with a dull whirr. Marty can then hear the creak and expansion of the ducts overhead and the air pouring out the little vents at the base of the ceiling.
He walks down the hallway, past the Men’s and Women’s, past the kitchen and the break room, to Team N. The lights are on behind the giant company logo on the wall, though he can see that a bulb in the big S of Systems is not quite pulling its weight. Air pours in through the little vents above for a few moments and then it gently subsides. There is the slight crackle of a cubicle wall settling.
On eight, Marty consults the wall chart near the elevator to locate Order Processing. Their lunch room, he notes, is much more festive than the one on Six, with a poster that says Fiesta across the top and shows a big plate of nachos. A crepe paper ribbon is draped from corner to corner in the room, just below the light. On the Choking poster, someone has given the hero man, the one who knows how to save a victim, a handlebar mustache. The victim has Pippi Longstocking style braids, though he is a man.
He finds the cubicle with the nameplate that says Marlene Thomas Manning. A light chime emanates from her computer: a meeting notice that has been ignored. It says, “H.R.” On the page below this is an email that she was midway through with details about a shipment that had gone out on Monday that ends with “Is there a” and then a blinking cursor. Marty gently finds the button and switches her computer off.
On his floor there is a pile of shredded paper near the shredder and a packet of paper spilled out onto the floor by the copy machines. One of the fax machines is finishing spitting out a fax that says across the top, Refinance At Below Market Rates! and then at the bottom it says, NO REFUSALS. The cart that Luis and Hendrick were filling with computers is in the middle of a row over in Team N. Marty locates a mouse and pulls it off the cart.
His inbox has two emails. The first tells him that timesheets are due on Friday. The second tells him that the coat drive will be ending next week and now is your last chance to help people less fortunate.
Marty’s to-do list has five job numbers. He dials Ann Marie about the first job number, but his call is redirected to Reception. The phone rings and rings and rings and finally Marty hangs up. Raphael’s line does the same thing, as does Timothy McCall’s.
He remembers that first day when the sheer size of the place seemed bewildering and exciting. The orientation movies, the paperwork, the fingerprinting, the IT workshop. It all felt so extremely well thought out. Especially the moment, after IT was done, where he was met at the door by his supervisor’s assistant, Ray, and led to his cubicle, this cubicle, and shown where the bathrooms were, the snack machine (conveniently close) the break room and the kitchen. “You are a member of Team N,” Ray said, “Welcome. Welcome to us.” It was a weird turn of phrase, that’s for sure, and echoed around Marty’s head for a little bit.
Earl was the first to say hello. He was older and had a putty handshake and worked right there. He pointed to his cubicle, which Marty now stands over. Earl’s plant, Henry Louis Hatfield Johnson Harding, brightly stands at attention just inside the cube’s opening. There is a fine sheen of gloss across Earl’s desk and a lighter spot where his computer used to be. The papers are stacked in orderly piles off to the left.
Just outside Lanetta McMaster’s cube he follows a trail of papers down toward Team E to a box filled with financials stamped ‘confidential’ that has been overturned in a corner. Not far from there, in another cubicle he notices a color copied photograph taped to the wall. A little girl with chubby cheeks and fresh black eyes stares out toward him with a big fluffy cat in her arms. In another cubicle, a cup of coffee sits next to a slight spill, the light brown liquid slowly seeping into a stack of forms piled off to the left.
Marty looks at his watch. 5:27. He then begins to clean.
