“It’s No Fun to be The Man” (The One Where Sparky Talks about Corporate America)

Anyone who says that a job in Corporate America isn’t very interesting clearly doesn’t work for my employer. It’s not just interesting, it’s downright fascinating from perhaps an anthropological standpoint—exciting, even, in a creepy Very Corporate/Enron/Days of Our Lives sort of way. Life at my Very Corporate place of employment is, in fact, a Dilbert comic come to life with a little bit of the intrigue borrowed from 24 and a little bit of Office Space, just to round things out.

Case in point: This week, the New Guy got busted by the Big Wigs (BWs) at Corporate for attempting to stage a full-scale, take-no-prisoners, kill-‘em-all-and-let-god-sort-it-out Take Over and Raid of our little Midwestern-based publishing vendor. Oh, and while they were at it, the BWs fired the New Company President who hired the New Guy because, you guessed it, they were in cahoots from the get go.

Dallas, anyone?

So about a month or two ago, everyone at my publishing company was informed that the New Guy was coming in to analyze our “workflow” and make us more “efficient.” This was nothing new. The BWs at Corporate routinely ask us why we aren’t making the sort of money they want us to be making. (Reality check: we are a publishing vendor, not a hedge fund!) Occasionally, the BWs send someone out from the main office in Virginia to slum it with us in Madison for a few days, in hopes of enlightening us as to what we can do better in order to make more money for the BWs. So when the New Company President showed up one week with the New Guy in town, everything seemed totally normal.

The New Guy analyzed things. He made organizational charts and talked a lot of mumbo-jumbo about “Six Sigma strategies” and “5x growth” and adding “1000 seats” to our India operations. He asked really great questions like “Why do we use so much paper? Do we have to print everything?” and “What would happen if I moved all of the office equipment into the editorial office and took away your cubicles?”

We learned to ignore him.

But then, one day, the New Guy moved into the Big Office up front. He started making personnel changes: he moved my immediate boss, the Editorial Queen, into the corner office and he turned our General Manager into a numbers guy. One guy got fired. Another quit. Four more left to pursue other jobs. We started having weekly “all hands” meetings in the front conference room, during which we all huddled around the conference table to stare at the Star Trek conference call phone and listen to the voices of the BWs in Virginia. He changed people’s jobs—he decided that instead of having editors and project managers, he would just mush us all together and create one do-it-all role, and oh, by the way, we wouldn’t be getting any real training, we would just be expected to pick it up as we went along.

At the time, I thought This is it! This is the stuff of Dilbert lore! This is what Corporate America is all about!

Of course, this being my first time working for The Man, I thought that this was how it was supposed to be—that this was what I had to endure in order to get a decent salary and good benefits. I mean, I had dental for the first time in 4 years. Obviously to get dental, I was going to have to put up with a little shit.

So when they told me that I was going to be one of the guinea pigs for the new workflow, I went with it. It was okay. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was catching on. Last week, I created a few job schedules and learned how to approach my contacts at the publisher. On Monday, I got my first job back from file prep in India and filled out my very first job report. I was getting the hang of it. I was ready for this so-called “5x growth.” I kind of liked it, even . . .

And then, at our first training meeting on Tuesday, the Editorial Queen informed us all that as of 10:00 that morning, the New Guy no longer worked for us. And oh, by the way, we wouldn’t be having the training because we would probably be reverting back to our old workflow. But that was all she could tell us for now.

“But wait, wasn’t New Guy here this morning?”

“He was.”

“And now he’s just gone?”

“He is.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

That afternoon at 4:00, we had a video conference with the BWs in Virginia. They gave a few vague explanations for the immediate dismissal of the New Guy and the New Company President, something about trust and ethics, saying that their counsel advised them not to release any details.

And that was that. Case closed. No hope of learning any more, left to wander back to our cubes in stunned silence . . .

Until yesterday when, midafternoon, our General Manager let fly the sordid tale of conspiracy and treason. (Okay, well, really he just told one of my very blunt coworkers who just flat out asked him, but it sounds much more soap opera-ish the other way.)

Apparently, the New Guy and the New Company President had plans. Big plans.

The New Guy and the New Company President were planning a TOTAL COMPANY TAKEOVER.

They saw the potential in the situation: Big Corporate Office over 800 miles away, Small Publishing Subsidiary chillin’ in the Midwest with no real leader but several Big Customers . . .

So they started telling corporate that we weren't making any money, that we were going down, that they needed to sell us off. They were looking for a new office space in Madison, which they couched as a “more convenient workspace centrally located for all the employees.” They were making tons of sales calls, drumming up new business left and right. They were telling us that we were preparing for tons of new growth.

They weren't telling Corporate about anything.

Their plan, in all its sneaky glory, was to totally shut down our Small Publishing Subsidiary and to poach the ENTIRE staff to operate their new company, while simultaneously walking away with all of the big, new accounts they had secured.

Just one problem: they didn’t tell any of us their sneaky plan.

Unbeknownst to the New Guy or the New Company President, our old General Manager was still plugging away, sending his regular reports to the Big Wigs back in Virginia, letting them know how operations in Madison were going because he’s good like that and because no one had ever told him not to.

When the New Guy walked into the General Manager’s office one day to tell him not to, the General Manager got extra suspicious.

“Why can’t I email the BWs?”

“Because they don’t want you to. All communication from Madison to Virginia goes through me from now on.”

So of course our General Manager did the only thing a sensible, honest, suspicious person could do: he started forwarding everything to the BWs.

The BWs were pissed, but savvy. The BWs waited until they had enough proof, retained counsel, and immediately sacked the New Guy and the New Company President.

All of this on a Tuesday before I’d had my second cup of coffee. Clearly it was going to be a very long week.


((Fade to deeply contemplative, schmaltzy piano soap opera theme music))

[[Large Announcer Man Voiceover: Tune in next time for another riveting episode of As the Page Turns, when Sparky has a fateful run-in with the filing cabinet and contracts amnesia while trying to save the office from the pregnancy-crazed project manager about to give birth to the two-headed alien baby. Too bad she never got that second cup of coffee.]]