Page 77 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Overtime

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It would have fallen on me, anyway, as director of human
resources, to handle any personnel issues arising from the death of an
employee on company property; as luck would have it, however, I
was also the one who discovered the body and called the police. I had
concluded on the spot that an older worker had simply suffered a
stroke or heart attack while alone in the building after hours, but I
knew trying to gloss it over by sending for an ambulance and
behaving as if it were a workman’s compensation case would not
look good for me or for TimeWarper Toys.
Yes, I had been tempted to try hushing it up, but secrets generate
rumors, and rumors destroy morale. I had to be concerned about the
impact on the MIS department when they showed up Monday
morning and found out through the distortions of the grapevine that
one of their coworkers had died in the office over the weekend.
Maybe the individual in question wasn’t all that well-liked, but
everyone had seen enough televised scenes of mass anguish at high-
school massacres and Balkan bombings to develop by “videosmosis”
a modern ritual of grief involving endless rounds of hugging,
inarticulate encomia to the unexpectedly departed and construction
of heart-wrenching shrines from the detritus of trivia now
transformed to memorabilia. All of which would reduce job
performance for several days, putting the Y2K project even further
behind schedule.
Is that harsh and cynical? It’s not my fault that HR is in fact the
enforcer for management—within legal limits, of course!—while
presenting the face of an ombudsman to labor. I had to walk a
narrow line, one I struggled constantly to widen for my own support.
This is the business world, after all, and the law of the jungle applies
to all equally. Perhaps I have been in this field too long, and should
embark upon another career path. What followed that Saturday
morning shock was certainly enough to sour me on TimeWarper, at
any rate. I spent the rest of that day and a good part of Sunday on a
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