Chapter 1: Cont'd

    “Frank, come on in,” Ted’s voice called out from behind his half-open door. The entrance to his office was located only two short steps behind Mildred’s desk.

    I somewhat anxiously made my way into Ted Winters’ office for only the second time in my life. The first had been eight years before, when I'd been interviewed and then hired to work for the company. Suffice it to say the firm was a leading manufacturer of single-sided, double-sided and multilayered circuit boards. I'd prefer not to be any more specific than that, I'm afraid.

    Over the course of the eight years I'd been a part of that organization, I'd seen Ted a number of times. Certainly our paths had crossed in the hallways, occasionally in the men’s room, or at some company function or another. We nodded in a familiar manner, of course. But neither one of us had ever said anything of importance to the other since the day he’d congratulated me and welcomed me aboard as an employee of the company. That was about to change.

    “Have a seat, Frank,” Ted intoned, waving a hand at the lone empty chair in front of his desk. The office was dingier than I’d remembered it. The wallpaper was beige and unremarkable, the bookshelves dusty and unkempt. Aside from the empty seat he’d indicated, there was only one other chair in the room, his. I hadn’t noticed it eight years before, but Ted’s desk was one of those build-it-yourself deals you can pick up at discount stores for cheap. I found the room as depressing as the reason I’d been invited into it was curious.

    I sat down as instructed, saying the only thing that came to mind, “Okay.”

    “Frank, we’ve got a problem.” Ted was matter-of-fact. He didn’t hem or haw or beat around the bush in the least. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to let you go.” The words rolled smoothly, effortlessly off his tongue. There was no emotion of any kind evident in his voice.

    I returned Ted’s gaze with the blank expression of a man who’s only recently received a sudden, debilitating head injury. “Huh?” I said.
"It’s your attitude, Frank.” He wasn’t apologizing and he wasn’t about to backtrack or try to rephrase the salient point of my visit to his office. He merely proceeded to form the news into bite-sized portions that I could more easily digest.

    Ted was the consummate professional when it came to personnel matters. He didn’t show his feelings one way or the other. For all I knew, he was mentally working out the amortization schedule for his mortgage or considering the potential benefits of changing insurance providers while we were having our little chat. The man was that detached. He was a wonder. Ted continued, “Your productivity scores have been sliding for months...you’ve received three consecutive unsatisfactory reviews from your supervisor and from what I’ve been able to gather, you haven’t made any effort to correct these inadequacies at all.”

    Throughout the entire exchange, brief as it was, Ted was polite, dispassionate and unshakable as he delivered the bad news. I, on the other hand, was having great difficulty getting myself up to speed. It took me a few moments to grasp the finality of Ted’s message. By the time the gist of his message finally sunk in, I realized that Ted was holding an envelope in his right hand, offering it to me. Slowly, unsteadily I took it. The envelope contained my paycheck. The one I’d expected to receive without comment from Mildred moments earlier. Now here it was, weighing on my mind far more than it did my extended hand.

    As it turns out, the thin slip of paper inside that envelope Ted Winters so casually presented me with represented the last paycheck I’d ever receive from an employer. No more would I take money in exchange for hours of mind-numbingly dull work each week. Not that I didn’t want to. But in a tight job market, a man in my position has limited options.

   

 

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Copyright © Jamie Beckett - 2005. / Last revised: October 26, 2006.