Waiting for Thieves

No one could say with any certainty who first mentioned the prospect, much less the certainty, of a thief planning to hit our offices, but we had our ideas. One likely suspect was the new kid in the mailroom, Chas, not only an outsider brought in by HR consultants (we’ve always before promoted from within, the mailroom people brought up through channels established long ago between Mail and Accounting, and Mail and Legal) but there was, obviously, the question of his name. The firm once could brag about its talent development program, about the long line of CEOs who had come through the ranks this way. The most recent before the latest was discovered by Management while an intern in Corporate Governance and over time was passed around and groomed by all the senior Department Heads until she landed in the Boardroom. By all markers, historically speaking anyway, a successful tenure. Very profitable. Very much enjoyed seeing and meeting her in the hallways, a real inspirational leader. The Scandal, as some call it, or Crock of Shit as most of us do—well, she made out all right, no complaints about her Golden Life Net held by the contractually positioned fireman on the street below the window from which she was forced to defenestrate (just a metaphor!), thank goodness. That was the beginning of the Invasion of Consultants as we called it, or The Breaking of Chains, as they called it. I think they meant that figuratively, mostly, being our liberators and all. These events, the trauma of this kind of disruption (and let’s be frank, the euphoria of some and the disappointment of others during and after the Reorganization) can’t be disentangled, surely not, from the emergence and rapid spread of the talk about a thief, or thieves, the widespread fear of an impending Violation. Of course not. That’s obvious, basic psychology.

It might have been Sharon, or maybe Susan—from the Copy Room, or Communications, respectively—who first mentioned it on our floor, who said in passing, as if it were idle information, that Credible Threats had been made, that we are not as safe as we think. I didn’t actually hear the word “thief” for another week or so. A shrug, a chuckle, a mumbled bullshit—that was pretty much the collective response (except, now that I think about it, Christof—note name again—who nodded in agreement and said something about cosmic irony). He was one of those college interns who at first behaved as if he were doing us a favor by allowing us to exploit his unpaid labor in exchange for a reference, until his unemployed and underinsured father died of exposure on an ill-conceived mountain climbing adventure, a preventable tragedy which forced him to quit school and suddenly need full-time work. He probably did know more about the inner workings of the machine than the rest of us, since he spent most of his day at the shredder, a job Tony used to do in about an hour each morning, time now freed up to do “routine web searches” (as he calls them) on the company, the executive team, and a mix of industry keywords, which he compiles into a report circulated each morning. Anyway, who do you guess became all about how much he had yet to learn, how much he appreciated the opportunity, how hard a worker he was (his grandpa was a vet with a farm or something like that) when given real responsibility? We never doubted they’d hire him; he probably would have been our boss (or the equivalent elsewhere) in five years if events had been on his side or if his father had known not to eat the snow. Still, the middle managers took noticeable pleasure in stringing him along for a month or two, keeping him on ice (sorry) until after his father’s remains had been recovered (hat tip to taxpayers—don’t let anyone tell you Americans don’t value life and the living when, out of an abundance of respect, we’ll spend tens of thousands of dollars searching for a corpse to bury long after any hope of rescue is abandoned). This allowed them to squeeze him for an extra peck of dirt-in-mouth gratitude and a few thousand less per annum. He’ll probably start picking up a class or two and in ten years be section leader with a corner cubicle. He probably is better than the rest of us, all other things being equal.