Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Okay, Victoria, take a deep breath and tell me what’s up.”

“Will you please explain to me what’s going on with Dashboard?”

Dashboard was one of the big new projects Victoria was developing, a portfolio of flexible, modular glass walls and partitions — very cool, beautifully designed, and something Victoria was really high on. Nick was high on it for business reasons: there was nothing else like it out there, and it was sure to hit a sweet spot.

“What do you mean, ‘What’s going on’?”

“After all the time and money we’ve put in on this, and — it just makes no sense! ‘All major capital expenditures on hold’ — what do you mean by that? And not even giving me the courtesy of advance notice?”

“Victoria—”

“I don’t see how I can continue working for Stratton. I really don’t. You know, Herman Miller has been after me for two years, and frankly I think that’s a far better home for—”

“Victoria, hold on. Cool your jets, will you? Now, who told you we’re shelving Dashboard?”

“You guys did! I just got the e-mail from Scott.”

What e-mail? Nick almost asked, but instead he said, “Victoria, there’s some kind of glitch. I’ll call you right back.”

He clicked off, slammed the car door, and went to look for Scott.

“He’s not here, Nick,” Gloria said. “He had an appointment.”

“An appointment where?” Nick demanded.

She hesitated. “He didn’t say.”

“Get him on his cell, please. Right now.”

Gloria hesitated again. “I’m sorry, Nick, but his cell phone doesn’t work inside the plant. That’s where he is.”

“The plant? Which one?”

“The chair factory. He’s... well, he’s giving someone a tour.”

As far as Nick knew, Scott had been inside the factories maybe twice before. “Who?”

“Nick, I... please.”

“He asked you not to say anything.”

Gloria closed her eyes, nodded. “I’m really sorry. It’s a difficult position.”

Difficult position? I’m the goddamned CEO, he thought.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said kindly.

Nick hadn’t visited the chair plant in almost three months. There was a time when he’d visit monthly, sometimes more, just to check out how things were running, ask questions, listen to complaints, see how much inventory backlog was on hand. He’d check the quality boards at each station too, mostly to set an example, figuring that if he paid attention to the quality charts, the plant manager would too, and so would everyone below him.

He made visits to the plant just like Old Man Devries used to do, only when the old man did it, they weren’t called Gemba walks, as they were now. That term had been introduced by Scott, along with Kaizen and a bunch of other Japanese words that Nick didn’t remember, and that sounded to him like types of sushi.

It was the layoffs that made walking the plants an unpleasant chore. He could sense the hostility when he came through. It wasn’t lost on him, or anybody else, that Old Man Devries’s job had been to build plants, and Nick’s was to tear them down.

But he knew it was something he should probably start doing again, both here and in the other manufacturing complex about ten miles down the road. He’d go back to the monthly walks, he vowed.

If he had the chance.

If the factories were still here.

He noticed the big white sign on the front of the red brick building that said DAYS SINCE LAST ACCIDENT, and next to it a black LED panel with the red digital numerals 322. Someone had crossed out ACCIDENT and scrawled over it, with a heavy black marker, LAYOFFS.

He went in the visitors’ entrance and caught the old familiar smell of welding and soldering, of hot metal. It took him back to visits to his father at work, of dog-day summers in high school and college spent working on the line.

The plump girl who sat at the battered old desk and handed out safety glasses, greeted visitors, and answered the phone, did a double take. “Good morning, Mr. Conover.”

“Morning, Beth.” Beth-something-Italian. He signed the log, noticed Scott had signed in about twenty minutes earlier along with someone else whose signature was illegible.

“Boy, both you and Mr. McNally in the space of an hour. Something going on I should know about?”

“No, in fact, I’m looking for Mr. McNally — any idea where he is?”

“No, sir. He had a visitor with him, though.”

“Catch the other guy’s name?”

“No, sir.” She looked ashamed, as if she hadn’t been doing her job. But Nick couldn’t blame her for not checking the ID of the CFO’s guest too carefully.

“Did Scott say where they were going?”

“No, sir. Sounded like Mr. McNally was giving a tour.”

“Brad take them around?” Brad Kennedy was the plant manager, who gave tours only to the VIPs.

“No, sir. Want me to call Brad for you?”

“That’s okay, Beth.” He put on a pair of dorky-looking safety glasses.

He’d forgotten how deafening the place was. A million square feet of clattering, pounding, thudding metal. As he entered the main floor, keeping to the “green mile,” as it was called — the green-painted border where you’d be safe from the Hi-Lo electric lift trucks that barreled down the aisles at heedless speeds — he could feel the floor shake. That meant the thousand-ton press, which stamped out the bases of the Symbiosis chair control panel, was operating. The amazing thing was that the thousand-ton press was all the way across the factory floor, clear on the other end, and you could still feel it go.

The place filled him with pride. This was the real heart of Stratton — not the glitzy headquarters building with its silver-fabric cubicles and flat-panel monitors and all the backstabbing. The company’s heartbeat was the regular thud of the thousand-ton behemoth, which sent vibrations up your spine as you passed through. It was here, where you still found some of those antique, dangerous, hydraulic-powered machines that could bend steel three-quarters of an inch thick, the exact same one on which his father had worked, bending steel, a seething monster that could take your hand off if you weren’t careful. His dad had in fact lost the tip of his ring finger to the old green workhorse once, which caused him more embarrassment than anger, because he knew it was his fault. He must have felt that the brake machine, after all those years of a close working relationship, had been disappointed in him.

As he walked, he looked for Scott, and the more he looked, the angrier he got. The idea that Scott, who worked for him, a guy he’d hired, would dare shelve projects, block funding, change vendors without consulting him — that was insubordination of the most egregious sort.

Four hundred hourly workers in this plant, and another hundred or so salaried employees, all turning out chairs for the Armani-clad butts of investment bankers and hedge-fund managers, the Prada-clad rumps of art directors.

He was always impressed by how clean the factory floor was kept, free of oil spills, each area clearly marked with hanging signs. Each section had its own safety board, marked green for a safe day, yellow for a day with a minor injury, red for an injury requiring hospitalization. Good thing, he thought grimly, he didn’t have one of those hanging in his house. What was the color for death?

He was looking for two men in business suits. They shouldn’t be hard to find here, among the guys (and a few women) in jeans and T-shirts and hard hats.

Periodic messages flashed on the TV monitors, a steady stream of propaganda and morale-building. THE STRATTON FAMILY CARES ABOUT YOUR FAMILY — TALK TO YOUR BENEFITS ADVISER. And: THE NEXT INSPECTOR IS OUR CUSTOMER. And then: STRATTON SALUTES JIM VEENSTRA — FENWICK PLANT — 25 YEARS OF SERVICE.