Page 79 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Overtime

Whatever procedures Leah had omitted could be performed early
in the week, and payroll adjustments could wait until the end of the
month. I hung up a few minutes later and turned the sound back on
the higher-class sports channel, just in time to hit a string of
commercials for luxury items likely to appeal to a younger sort of
striver. Then a string of associations hit me. Ponce was a name I had
come across recently. It was in connection with a complaint by one
of the office workers. I pushed the mute button and concentrated.
Yes, Ponce was the object of an irate e-mail I had received about a
month ago. According to its author, the guard was stockpiling and
making off with bundles of company documents, many of which
contained sensitive data of potential use to our competitors. High-
tech toys are a cut-throat industry, and I had to pay attention to the
charge. The allegation was written by Vincent D. Kates, the man who
had collapsed and died.
I had talked with Ponce’s supervisor, and learned that his
underling was simply taking the paper to a recycling center and
donating the meager proceeds to a local halfway house. I had ended
the matter (so I thought) by issuing a policy statement on company
documents: all waste paper was to be collected and processed by
Tiresias Trucking, our contract cartage provider, which had signed a
non-disclosure agreement. This, I explained, relieved our employees
and contractors of the burden and responsibility of handling paper
beyond its useful life. The documentation did come back from the
legal department a bit longer and more threatening than I would have
liked, but it did get distributed company-wide and I avoided
confronting either Ponce or his accuser. The sudden termination (as
it were) of both individuals was an unsettling coincidence.
I returned to the tennis match, determined not to let unpleasant
ideas ruin my weekend any further. I functioned at TimeWarper as a
centripetal force, keeping management and labor meshing smoothly,
each convinced it had the better deal in a social contract of which
neither had read the fine print nor much cared to consider the
unwritten sections. I was the referee in an endless volley of trial
balloons and curveballs between these ultimately antagonistic
components of an organization pretending to be a happy family for
mutual survival. The bosses needed work performed and their
workers needed jobs; the rest was window dressing and nominal

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