Page 97 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Overtime

Now Ms. Cornflower was on firmer ground. “Certainly.
TimeWarper is in the forefront of automated solutions to
environmental control. The building, although constructed in 1994,
did not use software that was Y2K-compliant. The vendor
implementing that system was chosen by people no longer working
here. Our department, as a center of excellence, is responsible for
quality control in the testing of P&L’s program fixes.”
Labelle was unfazed by all this cant. “Is it on schedule?”
“The testing? Yes. Vincent and Terry have been meeting their
targets.”
“No, I meant Pesado and Lejeune’s work.”
Maisy grimaced. “You will have to talk to Bendan or Perry. They
deal with P&L. My deliverable is structured testing.”
This might have sounded like equivocation to an outsider. And
listening to our employees’ response to Lieutenant Gramercy forced
me to take a more objective view of Maisy’s reply than I ordinarily
would. We called it CYA: cover your ass. Her carefully crafted role in
the organization was being played smoothly, and she would cast no
explicit aspersions on anyone else’s. I admired her ability to pass the
buck. If ever I needed someone to re-arrange the deck chairs on the
Titanic, I would think of her first. The corporation, like the
ecosystem and the polity, was there to be plundered: that was the
good business-school attitude instilled in this younger generation of
technocrats, and it created a selfish breed of amoral go-getters easily
manipulated by their superiors. Middle managers—and certainly
minor factota like Kates—should not be concerned with the ‘larger
picture.’ The well-oiled engine of a successful business did not run on
democratic debate. Its rank-and-file robots were cheerful as a matter
of self-interest, following the example of their higher-ups. Kates was
getting rusty, a squeaky wheel. Had he been questioning the
performance of P&L? I strained to recall what was in his personnel
folder. Gripes about working conditions, compensation, promotions;
definitely more than most employees. But the company, like any
family or fascist state, likes to have dissent localized and visible.
Authority, revealed when necessary as the iron fist within the velvet
glove, needs to maintain a monopoly on the means of coercion.
Order is maintained by keeping questions unasked and independent

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