In Markie’s view, more than simply being an exercise in sartorial humiliation and interpersonal unpleasantness, her weekly trips to headquarters were a ridiculous waste of time. Surely, she had suggested to Gregory, it would be more efficient to have all the files scanned and available online, to have Markie submit her log sheets over e-mail, and to have the Log Sheet Lady send new ones the same way. The claims review department was singularly focused on churning out as many closed claims as possible (preferably with DENIED stamped across the front). Indeed, Gregory’s entire bonus structure hinged on the number of completed files his team members reported each week. Wouldn’t everyone involved be better served if Markie spent her Friday mornings at home, adding another dozen or so files to her weekly numbers count?
But streamlining the work-at-home process wasn’t a priority, Gregory had insinuated, though he refused to come right out and say it. Hiring a few dozen work-at-home employees was the brainchild of Global’s human resources department, as a response to shareholder dismay about the company’s being passed over by a number of “preferred employer” lists. It was bad for PR to have the company excluded from those lists, many of which focused on how much flexibility the workplace provided for its employees.
Global’s leadership agreed to give the program a try, but they hadn’t completely bought into the idea, and for that reason, some of the clunky aspects of the program, such as the weekly in-person file-and-log-sheet swap, weren’t likely to be ironed out anytime soon, or possibly ever. Markie had begun to suspect that management was hoping the work-at-home employees would find it all so frustrating that they would finally give up and agree to take up residence in the cube prairie. The company would still earn a place on the various lists for having “offered” the flexible positions, and it would have all its rank and file downtown, under the close supervision of managers like Gregory.
She could imagine the rhetoric in the future press release: “We at Global Insurance have generously offered flexible work situations to a number of employees, and some have tried it. It is a proud reflection on the unique esprit de corps we have developed in our office that each of our work-from-home employees has opted to give up their flexibility in order to join their fellow Global comrades in our downtown headquarters.” If Markie hadn’t been desperate to hang on to her work-from-home privileges as a means of hiding from the world, she might have been tempted to fight for them as a statement against corporate oppression. But reclusiveness was her current focus—she would leave employee subjugation for someone else to rail against.
Stepping out of the Log Sheet Lady’s office, Markie aimed herself toward the two glass exit doors at the end of the hallway. Before she had taken more than a few steps, she heard Gregory call her name from somewhere deep in the cube prairie, and without thinking, she made the dire mistake of stopping midstep. Now he would know she had heard him—there was no way she could race to the exit, pretending she hadn’t. Next week she would be more strategic.
As the considerably sized Gregory puffed and sweated his way down the corridor, Markie studied her fingernails and pretended not to notice how long it was taking him to shuffle his heft the final forty feet that stood between them. She knew she should close the gap herself, spare him the effort, but she was hopeful that having to cover the entire distance would cause him to associate physical discomfort with trying to talk to her so that next time he wouldn’t bother. She also knew she deserved to go straight to hell for such thoughts and hoped her pre-divorce displays of compassion would make up for her post-breakup grumpiness.
Finally, Gregory reached her, doubling over, hands on knees, to catch his breath. After half a dozen wheezing gulps, he straightened. “Whoo! Maybe I need to add more steps to my Pep Walks!” He held out his wrist to show her the electronic step-counter he wore. Not surprisingly, his wasn’t the subtle black she had seen on other men, but the same garish hue that colored the walls of the fortieth floor, the surface of every desk, the cushions of every chair, and even the ceramic sinks and toilets in the bathrooms: Global Insurance purple.
“Purple is energizing!” Gregory had told her during her office tour. She thought “vomit inducing” was more accurate, but she kept the thought to herself, sparing herself the chiding from Gregory that such a comment would be considered, according to the Glossary of Global Insurance Terminology, “Morale Oppositional” or “Potentially Team-Dismantling.” In Markie’s four weeks on the job, she had not demonstrated satisfactory use of GI terminology, despite countless hints from Gregory that her Recommend for Retention Rating would skyrocket if, in addition to her higher-than-average Claims Review Completion Levels, she would demonstrate a willingness to exhibit Full On-Boarding with the GI Way.
“Nice,” Markie said, indicating his step-counting device.
Gregory clasped his hands over his head and attempted a side bend, but the weight shift put him off balance, and he had to thrust an arm out against the wall of a nearby cube to catch himself. Recovering, he patted the cube wall as though he had been making a planned inspection of it all along, and then he shuffled back into the center of the hallway. He wiped a great deal of sweat from his forehead, checked his step-counter again, and smiled.
Markie was crushed that the work of chasing her down seemed to have made him feel pride rather than agony, but maybe she should have expected it. Gregory fancied himself an athlete. His office was filled with the kind of motivational posters that compared work ethic to physical endeavor. On her tour, he had pointed out his favorite, centered over his desk: under a photo of an eight-man rowing crew was a caption that said, WHEN WE ALL PULL TOGETHER, WE ALL SUCCEED!
“That’s us, here at GI,” Gregory told Markie that day. “And I’m like the player-coach. You know, pulling the wooden . . . thingie, right along with the rest of my, uh . . . boat fellows.” Whereupon he had made a motion with both arms that was nothing close to rowing or canoeing or any other sport, water-based or otherwise.
“How’s it going, Gregory?” Markie asked, giving him a warm smile to make up for her earlier uncharitable thoughts.
“Good, good,” Gregory said. He scanned the hallway, the cube prairie, and his own shoes, looking for something else to say, before finally settling on “You?”
Poor Gregory, she thought. As verbally inept as he was, she knew he would like nothing more than for the two of them to have a long, meaningful conversation. He had told her that he viewed his direct reports as friends more than employees. He considered them family, even, having no wife, no kids, no life, really, outside of work. If he spent all day taking Pep Walks and Networking or Mind Mapping or Info Sharing in the cube prairie and didn’t get his own work done, no problem—he would just stay until seven, or nine, or midnight, and finish up.
“It’s worth it, for the, you know, to be close to people,” he told her. Worth it only to Gregory—on prior visits, Markie had spied him from the hallway as he hoisted himself along the rows of cubes, and she had seen the panicked looks on people’s faces as he got closer, the frantic moves to pick up the phone and fake an important call, the mad dashes out the other end of the row for a pretend bathroom break.