Spreadsheets and Breakfast Burritos
A Short Story
Spreadsheets. Morgan Barnett hated spreadsheets. He had come to believe that when man had eradicated the plague as a serious threat, God had replaced it with Excel and considered it a fair trade. This hatred would not have mattered much if it were something that could be avoided (as was the case with his fear of clowns and sharks). However, Morgan made his living entering numbers into spreadsheets. Pie graphs, pivot tables, linked workbooks; these were the tools of his trade, and had been for over two decades.
Perhaps the only thing as bad as the spreadsheets was his employees. Not all of them were bad, if he was honest with himself, and even the bad ones seemed worse because of the HR rules. He hated Human Resources even more than spreadsheets. The main problem with his staff was that since the company had more employees nationwide than the population of Ecuador, a plethora of Federal regulations governed what he could and could not do as far as employee discipline. It seemed that if an employee had ever seen a wheelchair on television, they were now covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and could not be fired for any reason, up to and including screaming obscenities at him while having sex with the copier repairman…on the copier.
Life as a glorified clerk/middle manager rarely changed for Morgan. He had heard that his company had recently been bought by a consortium of hedge fund managers-turned-corporate raiders, but the company had been bought and sold so many times over the years he really didn’t know who owned it anymore; the folks at that level rarely interacted with those at his.
He was working on a spreadsheet for HR that listed all his employees who were over 40 years old, or were female, or minority, or bipeds (which covered almost everyone) when his phone rang.
“Barnett,” he answered, not at all cheerfully. It was an internal call; no customers ever called the central business office where he was located.
“Morgan, buddy,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. It was his boss, F. Dale Hampton, Regional Vice President. His name was actually Francis D. Hampton, but when you reached a certain rung on the corporate ladder it was mandatory that your first name become an initial and that you go by the middle name. Looked better in the country club directory too.
“What’s up, Dale?” Morgan asked, hoping it wouldn’t be another of his ‘I’ve got a great idea for a new pivot table’ conversations.
“We need to have a talk about some changes that are coming down the pipe with the new owners,” Dale said. “I’m booked the rest of the day, so how about first thing in the morning?” He was using his most reassuring voice, which was never reassuring. Morgan could see his workload increasing as he spoke.
“Tomorrow’s clear for me,” he answered. “How about 8:30 in my office?” He knew Dale was never here before 9:00 a.m., and that he hated coming to Morgan’s side of the building. There was a short pause.
“Make it 9:30,” Dale said. “And let’s do it in my office.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Morgan said, but Dale had already hung up.
At 10:00 the next morning he was sitting in Dale Hampton’s office, looking around at what could easily be mistaken for a wing of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Saying Dale liked baseball was like saying Sid Vicious liked heroin. There were signed balls in glass cases, signed jerseys in glass-fronted frames, and more signed photos of Dale and some Major League legend than Morgan could count. He fully expected baseball jargon to dominate their meeting; it always did.
Dale turned from the computer monitor he had been studying, took a huge bite from a breakfast burrito, and smiled broadly at Morgan. Despite the smile, though, there was a tension in his body language that even Morgan could read, and he was not good at reading people on his best day. Something big was up.
“So, sport,” Dale began, still chewing, “how are you doing?” This was an odd start.
“Good,” he answered. “How are you?”
“Fine, fine. Thanks for asking.” Dale shifted in his chair, as if he couldn’t get comfortable. “So, you’re probably wondering why we’re meeting.”
“Yes,” Morgan replied. “I thought maybe it was about the rise in last quarter’s over-120 numbers.”
“No, the numbers are fine. You’re doing a great job, have always done a great job.” He paused to take another bite. “Which is what makes this even more difficult. The boys upstairs want to make a change. They think that even though the team’s been doing well for a long time, a shake-up in the lineup is needed. They have a guy in another part of the organization who does some of the same things you do, and he’s in tight with the new owners. So…”
“So, you’re sending me down to the minors?” Morgan volunteered. Dale smiled briefly, then shook his head.
“No. I wish it were that easy, that life was like baseball, but no.”
“So…I’m fired.” The realization stunned him. It was one thing to voluntarily leave a job you had hated for most of the time you’d had it, but something else entirely for the ungrateful bastards to show you the door so some young punk with a relative on the Board could move up.
“No!” Dale replied more loudly than he probably intended. “Fired would imply some wrongdoing on your part, so it’s definitely not that. Your position is being eliminated.”
“You just told me someone else had the same position and…”
“But a different title,” he said, as if this did anything except possibly prevent any legal action on Morgan’s part. “And I am personally sick that this has to happen after so many solid seasons with the club.” Not so sick that he couldn’t take another bite of the burrito. “We all have to hang up the cleats sometime, and you’ll get a nice severance for hanging yours up.”
“How nice?” He was still in shock over what was happening.
“One week’s salary for every year you’ve been with the company, plus any unused vacation time and medical covered for three months.”
“Six months’ pay,” Morgan said, quickly doing the math in his head.
“Um, actually sixteen weeks,” Dale answered. “They’re only counting from the time of the sale to D&H Capital. But we won’t fight it if you file for unemployment.”
“Four months.” Four months for a lifetime of servitude.
“You’ll land something long before that,” Dale said brightly, the unpleasant duty now almost over. He popped the remainder of the burrito in his mouth and continued talking. “Feel free to use me as a reference anytime. Jodi from HR will have your packet, and of course you’ll be paid through the rest of today, even though it’s not noon yet.”
Dale extended his hand across the desk without standing. Morgan considered punching him in the face, but at that moment Dale’s eyes went wide. Morgan turned around, thinking he had seen something alarming behind him, but there was nothing but the closed door.
Dale opened his mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. He threw his hands to his throat in the universal sign of choking; that last bite of burrito had been too big. Morgan leapt up and ran around behind him, prepared to do the Heimlich maneuver as he has done on his son years ago when he swallowed a toy soldier. Dale was already showing a tint of blue in his cheeks.
Dale had half-stood, perhaps anticipating Morgan’s help. Morgan started to put his arms around Dale’s midsection, but as he looked down at Dale’s desk, he saw it. In the margins of his notes for their termination conversation, Dale had scribbled a list of his all-time favorite shortstops.
It took mere seconds for him to decide, seconds Dale did not have. Instead of starting the Heimlich, Morgan put his hands on Dale’s shoulders and forced him back down into the chair. He struggled far less than Morgan had expected; clearly the burrito was solidly lodged. Less than a minute later, Dale pitched face-first onto the desk.
Morgan removed his hands from Dale’s shoulders and watched him for another two minutes; no movement at all. He walked back around the desk, gathered himself, and put his hand on the doorknob. This had to be convincing.
“Help!” he screamed as the threw open the door. “I need help here! Dale is choking!”
There was a mad scramble as people rushed around like headless chickens, pulled Dale’s lifeless form from the chair, and called 911. Morgan stood off to the side, trying to look as shaken as everyone else.
After the EMTs had taken Dale away and the cops had taken his statement, Jodi from HR walked up to him with a large manila envelope. She stared at him, shuffling her feet a little, apparently searching for the right words to say.
“I know this is awkward,” she finally said, “but I have to give you this and take your keys and badge.”
“I know,” he replied. “Dale told me before…before it happened.”
She nodded and handed him the envelope.
“Did he tell you about the severance?”
“He did.” Morgan said. “Four months’ pay and three months’ medical.” Plus one final perk that only he and Dale would ever know about.