Copyright Catherine Coyle Murphy 2000
"Something wrong?" I asked as Leo approached with that slow, purposeful stride that meant, "We have to talk."
"That was Roy on the phone," Leo said. "He's in the hospital. Thinks he had a heart attack," he continued, not even feigning sympathy.
"Great," I replied. "Is he OK?" I asked, suddenly aware that I wasn't showing much sympathy either.
"He sounds fine. It's probably just indigestion. Have you seen what he ate last night? A whole bag of Ripples and five Dr. Peppers," Leo said with disgust.
Leo had a habit of looking in the trashcans to see what the second and third shift guys had to eat. It bothered him that they never re-shelved the backup tapes or did much else during their shifts except to eat. Whenever he found packages from a take-out place, he'd say, "Looks like they had a party." But it had been a while since that happened because second and third shift were both down to one man each, Roy on third and Little Joe on second. Since they were alone, they couldn't leave the building.
"How long will he be out," I asked, already trying to figure how Leo, Joe and I would cover Roy's shift. I never could understand the company allowing positions to go unfilled for as long as six months. Their policy seemed to be to hire only once a year, during February. Then they would institute a hiring freeze that began in March and would always last through the end of the year. If anyone left after February, the rest of the employees had to cover the spot until the following year.
"He doesn't know yet, but a few days at least. I'll tell you one thing, I'm scheduled for a four-day weekend and I'm not working through it," Leo said in a voice that told me he knew he could kiss his little vacation good-bye.
Poor Leo. I had just come back from vacation, which meant Leo had been working 19 days straight already without a break. He was really looking forward to his four days off. Even so, I wasn't too quick to commit myself to fill in completely for Roy. I hated that. Just when you return from a break you have to start working literally non-stop. The worst part, though, were the actual hours. I always thought getting up at 4:30 in the morning wouldn't be so bad if I had regular weekends off to recover, but having to do it twelve, nineteen, or more days in a row was a bit much.
"We'll have to talk to Joe this afternoon and see what we can figure out," I told Leo.
"Yeah," Leo said as he subconsciously pressed a few keys at the main console.
"This is nothing but a sweat shop," he mumbled as he walked out the door.
A minute later Rick ran through the room while I was taking readings from the air conditioners. Even though I was against the back wall and there wasn't anyone else to see him, he made his usual pass through the room with the index finger of his left hand held lengthwise under his nose, a gesture meant to be an imitation of Hitler's mustache.
Rick, like everyone else, hated the new executive director, the 10th in four years. But, like everyone else, he was also scared enough of him to risk being overheard saying anything about him, thus the silent gestures. He was saying he thought Mike was a Hitler.
Rick also developed the habit of cutting through the computer room whenever he left his cubicle to avoid passing Mike's office and risk being called in.
Leo couldn't help but laugh at Rick as they passed each other through the door.
"Did you know there's a book out called The White Collar Sweat Shop? I asked Leo upon his return.
"Let me guess, you wrote it," he said. Leo was always making fun of me because I had written a bit in the past for a local newspaper.
"No, but I read a review of it last week," I replied.
"So, we're not alone in this?" Leo asked.
"Looks like the IS professionals are going to have to unite," I said.
"Oh sure. We'd get a lot of support from all the Asians and Middle Easterneres that work for nothing but a green card," Leo said.
He had a point.
Our camaradereie-like conversation was interrupted by Suzie, the Oracle girl. Suzie handled problems with Oracle software. She was an old Sports Wear employee, too, like Leo, Roy, Rick and others who had been absorbed by Data Mergers when they came in and took over the IS department four years ago.
"Are you guys being asked to fill out a form describing your volunteer activities?" Suzie angrily asked us. Suzie was the only one who seemed unafraid of Mike or anyone else from Data Mergers. Maybe because her husband hd a decent enough job. Or maybe she was hoping to be let go.
"Not yet. Are you?" Leo replied.
"They want us to fill in a form each month describing which volunteer activity we did. Who do they think they are dictating what we do with our own free time?"
"I know. Mandatory volunteering. That cracks me up," I told her.
"I already filled my form out and do you want to know what I put?" she asked.
"What?" I replied.
"I said I did yard work for my parent's neighbors, a woman in her sisties and her parents, who are in their eighties, all of whom have cancer," Suzie said with finality.
"That sounds good to me," I said. "I'm not worried about it myself. They know it's illegal to force people to volunteer. They won't give trouble to anyone who resists," I added.
"I don't care if they do," Suzie said as she headed out of the room.
What the company really wanted was for its employees to spend time working on volunteer porjects within the community, projects set up by the company, so we would be volunteering under the company name, all just for a little PR for Data Mergers. There was nothing in writing concerning the mandatory nature of the volunteerism of course, it had come down through word of mouth.
"By the way, the laser printer is down," Leo said just after Suzie left.
"OK. I'll tell Tom when he gets in."
"You know, we're really supposed to call Waco when we need hardware repaired," Leo informed me.
"Really? How come you never told me that before?" I asked.
"I don't know. Guess it just seemed easier to go get Tom," he replied.
I put in a call to Data Mergers' corporate headquarters. It was located in Waco, Texas. Like the CO III desk, people here used to refer to Waco, never telling me whom or what they were talking about. But now I had been here long enough that I was beginning to feel comfortable, having picked up on their different names and acronyms.
A few hours later I received a phone call.
"Hello. This is Tom. I'm told you have a printer down."
"Yes."
"Can you tell me where it's located," Tom said.
I began to give Tom the location of our building in Chesterfield.
"No. No. I'm already in the building. Can you tell me where the printer is located," Tom interrupted.
I then began to give Tom specifics as to the location of the laser printer.
"So its the laser in the copy room next to the computer room?" Tom inquired.
In sudden recognition of the voice on the other end, I said, "Is this Tom Jansen?"
"Yes," he said.
"Tom! I was told I had to call Waco to report the printer. I thought they were going to send someone from the outside."
"They just want you to call Waco so they can keep track of how much work we do. Heaven forbid they end up paying for too many technicians," he said sarcastically.
"Maybe they also want to make sure you're not overworked," I said with a laugh.
"Yeah. Right," Tom replied.
"So, Tom, I'm supposed to phone Waco, Texas every time I need something as little as a printer repaired when all I really need to do is walk ten steps to the door, open the door and call out to your cubicle, "Hey, Tom. The laser's down.'"
"You got it," Tom said.
"This company doesn't have a problem with micro-managing, does it?" I asked.
"Not a bit," Tom replied.
"I'm just wondering on thing, Tom. Does the satellite site in Hong Kong have to call Waco when they need a printer repaired?"
"Good question," Tom laughed. "I'll be right over to fix your printer."
Just as I hung up the phone, Rick returned to the computer room in tears. He was laughing so hard he was crying.
"You guys won't believe this," Rick began. "You know those text pagers Mike introduced at the last team meeting."
"His new toy, you mean," Leo said.
"Yeah. Well, you know the problem we had with the mainframe over the weekend? I sent him two text pages, but he never did call us. We figured he must not have been that worried about it. Well, he just called me and John in and asked why he wasn't informed of the problem. I told him I sent him two text pages and he said, "Oh, I don't carry the text pager on the weekends. Johnny said later, 'From now on, we'll send him a text page, then we'll call him on the phone to tell him we sent him a page,'" Rick said.
"That's good," Leo said. "What an idiot, you know?" he added.
Rick walked out of the computer room laughing too hard to remember to put his finger under his nose.
As the end of our shift neared, I was again at the CO III desk fillilng out my time sheet. Then I filled out my other time sheet. Then I filled out my third time sheet. One was for Data Merger's corporate headquarters. We had to fill in how much time we spent on various duties during the day, handling problems over the phone, handling problems in person, reading our e-mail, etc.
The other on was for Sports Wear Manufacturers. They wanted to make sure they were getting their money's worth from Data Mergers, so they wanted to know how much time we spent on various duties during the day, handling problems over the phone, handling problems in person, reading our e-mail, etc.
The thrid time sheet was just a recording of our hours worked. It was the one used to compute our pay.
"Hey, Leo," I said as I began filling out my second time sheet for the day. "How come they don't ask us how much time we spend filling out time sheets?"
"That's good. That's real good," Leo said. That was his way of giving a compliment about something witty you had said.
Little Joe, "Pup," as he was also called due to his youth and the fact he was the new kid on the block, arrived and dropped a bag of little toy army men on the CO III desk.
"For the War Room," he informed us.
He was referring to the small stock room in back of the computer room. Mike wanted Leo and I to clean it out so they could turn it into a private work space for Rick, John and the other programmers when they had a difficult problem to work on. Mike, in his constant quest to relive his military career, liked to refer to it as the War Room.
After a laugh, I went back to filling out my time sheets while Leo began telling Joe about Roy's heart attack, still showing no sympathy.
I had decided by then to go ahead and fill in extra so Leo could have his four days off. Joe, too, who was a single kid of twenty, said he didn't mind the overtime. He had just bought a new truck and moved out on his own and was beginning to feel the realities of adult responsibilities.
As far me, I was beginning to feel guilty because I knew it would be a long time before Leo got any more time off. Little did he know I was planning on turning in my resignation that week. I had had enough of the corporate culture and I was going to go back to school.
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