Dave Zeltserman: Outsourced

The light-headedness passed. She caught up with Nancy, and the two of them walked silently to the break room. Nancy poured two cups of coffee and handed one of them to Carol.

“What did you hear?” Carol asked.

Nancy took a sip of her coffee. The muscles along her jaw hardened as she faced her co-worker. “That they’ve added a bunch of new email accounts,” she said. “Charlie Bishop told me an hour ago.”

“What do you think that means?”

“It’s not good.”

“Oh, God.” Carol had to sit down. “I can’t lose this job now.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find another one if you need to. Me, I’ve decided to join the bastards and go to law school.”

“Why would adding new email accounts mean they’re going to get rid of us?”

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Nancy said without much conviction.

Carol had to bite her tongue to keep from crying.

“I’m sorry, Carol. I didn’t want to upset you, I guess I wanted to give you some advance warning. Or maybe I’m just in a lousy mood. Anyway, I’m probably reading stuff into things.”

The two of them sipped their coffee. To Carol it was tasteless.

“We’d better get to that meeting,” Nancy said.

The rest of the paralegal staff were already waiting in the conference room. Most of them looked concerned, a couple of them bored. Tom Harrold, short, balding, sixtyish, with a round head and small, almost baby-like ears, stood by his chair at the head of the table with his hands clasped behind his back. He peered through thick glasses at Nancy and Carol as they made their way to their seats. Tapping his foot impatiently, he waited for them both to sit down before checking his watch. Then he looked back up at his audience and cleared his throat.

“I called this meeting to dispel any rumors that we are planning a layoff,” he said. “Nobody here is going to lose their job.”

He waited for a reaction. There were a couple of sighs. Another paralegal a few years younger than Carol, Charlotte Henry, clapped her hands. Carol found herself breaking into a smile. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Nancy smirking.

“We are, however, going to take advantage of a unique opportunity,” Harrold continued. “Many of you may or may not know this, but India has a similar jurisprudence to us. We are in the process of hiring legal assistants in that country-”

“At one fifth of the cost,” Nancy whispered to Carol.

“…who can research issues for us at night. What this means-”

“We will be your cutting your hours so we can pay ourselves bigger bonuses,” Nancy said under her breath.

“…is that all of the lawyers here at this firm, including myself, will be able to work more effectively. Issues raised late in the day will be able to be researched and resolved by morning. This will result, initially anyway, in a smaller workload for all of you and, unfortunately, we will have to ask for a reduction in hours.”

Nancy burst out with a short laugh.

“Excuse me, miss, do you have a question?” Harrold asked, glaring.

“No, sorry, just choked on something.”

“Drink some water then,” Harrold said. He glared at Nancy for another few moments before turning his attention back to the rest of the paralegals.

“As I was saying,” he said. “This may result in a hardship for some of you. We apologize for that, but our hope is that this will increase our productivity and, most likely, this reduction will only be temporary. I will have my secretary notify each of you by the end of the week as to your new hours. That is all.”

Carol looked around the room and saw a mix of different emotions on her colleagues’ faces. Some were relieved, some crestfallen. She felt a little of both. With Dan out of work they weren’t making ends meet as it was. She didn’t know how they could possibly manage with less money. As she was getting out of her chair, Nancy leaned over and whispered, “Temporary is right. If their outsourcing experiment works out, we’re all out on the street.”

Harrold had walked up to them. He stood staring at Nancy, his small mouth working as if he were chewing gum.

“Miss, what is your name?” he demanded.

She turned to face him, somewhat taken aback. “Nancy Goldberg. I’ve been here five years.”

“Well, Miss Goldberg, do you have any expectation of being here another five years?”

Reluctantly, she nodded.

“This is a law office, Miss Goldberg. We expect a more professional attitude. Understood?”

She stood blankly for a moment, then a funny look came over her face. “I’m sorry. I guess you want me to smile while I’m being screwed. But you know, if I’m going to do that I might as well work in a whorehouse – at least I’ll be in a more professional environment. Don’t even bother saying it, I quit.”

She gave Carol a weak smile as she walked away. Harrold watched her for a moment, his body stiff, his small ears turning a bright pink. He noticed Carol and shifted to face her. “Do you have anything you’d like to add?” he asked, his voice strained.

Carol shook her head.

“And we expect you to be punctual for all meetings. Three minutes late is as bad as thirty. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

When Carol got back to her desk she started to cry. She couldn’t help herself. Still sobbing, she picked up one of the liability cases and forced herself to read through it, being careful to keep the paperwork from getting wet.

Dan arrived at Bristol, New Hampshire a little after four thirty and still had a fifteen-minute drive over a dirt road to get to Joel’s sprawling ranch, which looked more like army barracks than a home. The building was an eyesore. Not that it mattered. Not too many people were ever going to look at it. Joel’s nearest neighbor lived six miles away.

Dan walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Joel bragged to him once that he had a steel reinforced front door installed and that no one, especially not the Feds, were ever going to kick it down. Within seconds of ringing the bell, the door opened and Joel popped out.

“Well, well, look who drove up all the way from Taxachusetts,” he said, a big shit-eating grin in place. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

“Nice to see you, too. If you didn’t live so far up in the boondocks-”

“Fuck you, don’t give me your excuses, and I’m happy right where I am. You can have your Taxachusetts with all that liberal scum.” Joel scrunched his face into an exaggerated display of disgust as he sniffed the air. “What’s that stench? Ah, yes, the smell of liberal scum all over you.”

He broke into a short laugh and held out his hand. “So how are you doing, pal?”

“Could be better.” Dan took the hand and felt like he was being squeezed in a vise.

Joel Kasner stood like a rooster with his chest puffed out. With big ears, small glassy eyes, and hair that was mostly thinning, he resembled an animated cartoon character more than anything else. He pointed to the briefcase Dan was carrying. “What you got there?” he asked. “All the money you’re going to be losing to me in backgammon?”

“I’ll show you later. So how things going?”

“How do you think? They suck. How ’bout you?”

“Probably suck even worse.”

“Yeah, I know,” Joel said, his shit-eating grin fading. “It’s got to be hard. I feel for you, pal. At least in my case I’ve got my expenses under control and I don’t have kids living at home like you. Mine are all over eighteen and I don’t have to support their lazy asses anymore. Come on in, I’ve got the ’gammon board set up. Time to take some money off you.”

Dan followed Joel into the house. The place looked like it had been decorated from garage sales. None of the furniture matched, and the individual pieces looked worn and tired. A couple of gun magazines lay scattered on the sofa.