Spirits in the Material World Pt. 12

"Nope, nothing yet out of Tom, but he may be saving it until we sync up over the weekend. How about you?"

"Julie sent me an email with pictures and a video she took. It looks small but very clean. I think we need to talk with them as a group. I'm still very concerned."

"And that's as good a segue as I'm likely to get tonight, Rose. Why won't you video conference with your parents? You promised me, no evasions."

"Yes, I did. Very well. The most primary reason is that I don't want to."

"You don't want to? They are your parents, Rose. Your daughters' grandparents. Yes, I have spoken with them, and while Elliott was a real piece of work, your mother seemed very nice and ran some interference between us."

"And interference is her hallmark, Alan. If I don't keep her at a distance, she will come in and try to rearrange my whole life to suit her ideas. I mentioned it earlier, they keep calling me 'Rosie' even though I'm 43 years old. It's a psychological ploy to have their desires run rampant over mine."

"So, by continuing to call you by your juvenile moniker, they are refusing to allow your relationship to be anything other than parent-child? Am I hearing you correctly?" Alan asked.

"Yes, in a nutshell, that's it. They disapproved of my dating and then marrying Ron Lawson ..."

"And in that case, were they wrong?"

"Alan! Yes, in that case, they were correct but had I not married Ron, I would not have had Julie and Maggie and Julie would never have met Tom and I would never have met you. The point I was trying to make was that they just dictated things to me, never asked for my opinion, never gave credit for my ideas or beliefs. I had to put space, physical and emotional space, between us to save my sanity."

"I'm hearing everything you are saying, Rose. I have an idea. What if you and I were together when we video conference them?" Alan suggested.

"I suppose a video conference could work. We could suddenly have "technical" problems if they begin to push my buttons," Rose allowed.

Setting this challenging topic aside, Alan then distracted Rose, starting with, "Guess what I'm doing now," and things snowballed from there, ultimately to a very satisfying conclusion for both of them.

= = =

Friday, 11 December

Alan's alarm clock flipped from 5:59 to 6:00 am, and the radio kicked on. Three seconds later, Loverboy's "Working for the Weekend" filled the room. Alan was caught between admiration for the DJs and the programming director for their all-to-appropriate choices for the 6:00 am tune and his innate sorrow that he, too, was now just working for the weekend. He did not like being in that state of mind. But work was now a place of irritation for him, and the sooner he was gone, the better. And then, to top it all off, the Easybeats came on with "Friday on My Mind." But that's what you'd get sometimes, listening to the Oldies station as Alan did.

He levered himself out of his bed and did the S3 routine (shit, shower, and shave) and was on his way down to the kitchen by 6:30. Waiting for the half-pot of coffee to brew, he toasted a cinnamon raisin bagel and slathered butter on it; he was not partial to cream cheese, himself, although he would stock some for the boys when they were home. As he waited, his thoughts ran ahead. He had his exit interview that afternoon. In every other case he had witnessed, the exit interview happened right before the person left, never to return. He would be well served to be a good Scout and be prepared. What could he do if he was walked out early?

He tamed the email beast until he had to have his project team's stand-up meeting at 9:00. Encouraging everyone to keep their "eye on the prize" to have a successful release in January, there were no blockers reported by the team. Collectively, they did want to take him out next Friday, the 18^th, to a nearby watering hole to have a "Good Luck, Sellout" drink. Alan did not drink much or often but allowed that it would be a nice way to complete the separation.

Exiting the conference room, he walked by the copier room and snagged an empty copy paper box, a little larger than a banker's box and a whole lot cheaper. He even got a lid for it. Returning to his cubicle, he went through his file drawer first, examining every folder's contents and claiming only a few as his own and not belonging to the company. Next, it was the drawers. It was amazing how little pieces of detritus and crap accumulated. He threw away at least a dozen pens which no longer wrote, found a red Swingline stapler with staples which he put in his box. The black Ecco stapler on his desk would remain, but the red one was his and nobody had better try to take it away! Accumulations of paperclips, binder clips, rubber bands were all extracted and collected and placed in the office supply shelves for future use by somebody else. The whiteboard dry-erase markers were his, and they went in his box, as did the eraser for it. A collection of magnets likewise was placed in the box, but the collection of 2" by 2" Post-It Notes kept growing, and he had no use for them, so he placed them in the office supply shelves.

Looking up, he saw it was 11:45, so he chose to heat and eat his lunch at his desk. Oddly, nobody came by his cube to talk or BS with him. He found it kind of odd, almost a "dead man walking" sort of vibe. While he ate, he finished updating the project management spreadsheet with its myriad of worksheets and ran across his account of what had happened on his date with Maria. He printed three additional copies and placed them in a file folder and placed the folder in his box. He then removed the file from his hard drive. He pulled down his office humor pieces and placed them in a folder as well. The Most Interesting Man in the World recounting how "I don't always test my code, but when I do, I do it in production," was his favorite. That piece rang so true with how things were done here. His meeting alert caught his attention at 12:55 pm. He placed his photographs of Laura, Tom, and David in his box. He would leave the box here until he actually left, but this way, there would not be any reason to come back in for an hour on a weekend and impact someone else's time.

He fired up Zoom on his laptop, pulled the Post-It tab off the camera, and entered the information for his meeting with corporate HR. He was the first in the meeting but was soon joined by three people from corporate Human Resources, including Elliott Reynolds. Elliott started things off with, "Good afternoon, Mr. Harrison. Thank you for taking this time to meet with us. We're very sorry, but the budget does not allow for us to travel to do this in person, and your local HR person is unavailable. Do you have any questions about this process?"

"Yes, sir, I have one. In almost every other instance of the exit interviews I have observed, this was the very last thing the interviewee did before leaving the office for good. Is this the case here today with me?"

"Let's just take the interview questions as they come and we'll see where we end up, ok?" And Elliott sat back and allowed the other HR personnel to lead the meeting.

Alan was quite surprised when a burly security officer reached over his shoulder and placed a file folder on the desk in front of Alan, then backed out of Alan's cube. The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the meeting were spent going over the forms and information contained in the file folder. A few of those pages required Alan's signature, and then the forms review was completed. The third person from corporate then took charge of the discussion.

"Mr. Harrison, I have some questions to ask you now, please. How long have you been an employee with our company?"

"Twelve years, two months, and ten days. I hired in on October 1, 2018, as a project manager," Alan answered.

"I understand you have resigned from your position with us. Do you have another job already confirmed?"

"Yes, I have a position as Project Director over four projects waiting for me with a competitor." That earned frowns from all three other participants.

"I see. I see on your resignation letter that you do not cite any particular reason for resigning, yet you have another position lined up. Can you tell us now why you are resigning from your position?" Elliott perked up, paying closer attention to Alan's response to this question.

"My reasons are my own, thank you. I guess you could say the long and short of it is much greener grass on the other side of the fence. My compensation includes a SIGNIFICANT increase from my current pay, and they are offering me a signing bonus as well, seeing as I will not get a holiday bonus from this company now. For some reason, good, experienced senior project managers are in very high demand and very short supply at this time. But I should not have to tell you about the employment marketplace. As Human Resources professionals, I'm sure you keep in touch with the latest trends out there." Alan was really sticking it to them under the guise of telling them what they should have been doing all along. Elliott's face was starting to redden slightly.

"Given your service in our company, is it accurate to say that you would like for circumstances to get better, even after your departure?"

"Yes, I would want things to improve for everybody, not just those employed here."

"Can you offer some suggestions on how we might improve the environment here?"

"I have a couple of ideas. One: value your personnel and communicate their value before they look elsewhere. It's much like a business and its customers. It's much more cost-effective to keep the customers you already have, rather than have to attract new customers. I believe it is similar with employees. It's more efficient to keep the employees you have rather than treat them like replaceable cogs. There is innate process knowledge loss, call it 'brain drain', when someone walks out the door never to return. How much time and resources are needed to onboard a new employee to the point where they are as effective as the one whose position they are filling? Two: strongly discourage relationships in the office environment. To my knowledge, there is no corporate policy against two peers dating, yet that can result in issues which can have a serious negative impact on the office culture. And a third is related: there needs to be a mediation process if two people have an issue they cannot resolve themselves."

Elliott jumped in at this point. "Alan, it sounds like you have some personal experience with this last bit. Would you please tell us more about how you have experienced this?"

"Mr. Reynolds, sir, I would prefer not to get into specifics in this forum. Perhaps at a later date, when the conversation is not being recorded for posterity." The other two corporate persons flushed deeply red with embarrassment. They had not thought Alan knew the whole meeting was being recorded. Elliott was disappointed in Alan's cleverness.

"Alan, are you 'falling on your sword' to protect someone? Someone very special to you, perhaps?" Elliott poked, trying to put words in Alan's mouth.

"Mr. Reynolds, I won't say much more on this subject, but I will tell you this: a management representative of this company informed me that it would be much easier to replace one person, me, than two or more others who had been told something untrue but refused to believe me. While that person was conveying their own thoughts, they were also acting as a representative of the company, and therefore their words were the company's. With that sort of loyalty exhibited, I had no choice but to seek alternative employment opportunities. Are we done here now?" Alan was exasperated. He would not give up Maria's name; only Bob knew it was Maria who was causing the mess, and Bob was not going to do anything about it. So be it.

Elliott's face hardened and he ended the meeting with, "You may return on Saturday at 3:00 pm to clean out your personal effects. Please tender your badge and keycard to Carl there behind you, shut down your computer, and have the rest of the afternoon off." Elliott nodded to the screen, and Carl the burly security guard made his presence known to Alan. Elliott ended the Zoom call, and Alan was so very glad he had prepared for something like this.

Alan unclipped his badge and keycard and handed them to Carl. He then shut down his laptop but left it in the docking station. He stood, slowly, so as not to alarm Carl, turned and smiled to the unsmiling security guard, and informed Carl that his stuff was already packed and he would not be back. He put on his coat, placed his lunch bag in the box, picked up the box, and headed quietly for the door. He stopped to remove his nameplate with a "12" in a star indicating years of service and allowed it to tumble from his fingers into the trashcan. Carl, still unsmiling, accompanied Alan to the door, and once Alan had stepped out, said, "Good luck, sir. You will be missed here."

Surprised at this touch of humanity, Alan replied, 'Thank you, Carl. Good luck to you, too." Alan then walked to his car, got in, and headed for home.

At 2:00 pm, an email was sent to all personnel in the office from corporate Human Resources stating that Alan Harrison was no longer an employee of the company and should not be permitted back on the premises. His project team, almost as one, leaped to their feet, prairie dogging at someone's "OH SHIT!", looking around. They walked over to Alan's cube and saw that all his personal stuff was gone, the laptop shut down, and someone noticed his nameplate in the trashcan.

"Those rat bastards!" someone muttered. "Where's Bob Ryan?"

Someone else said, "I think he's in a meeting with Sam Roberts. You know, I'm starting to feel a little ill. Must have been something I ate for lunch. I think I'll go home, sick, now. You're looking a little green around the gills, too, you know." And without any further discussion, the team returned to their workstations, each sending an email to Bob Ryan, copying Sam Roberts, stating that they were going home ill, probably due to something they ate at lunch. And the entire project team left the building.

= = =

While driving home, Alan's thoughts were all over the place. He did not expect to be unceremoniously escorted from the building, yet he wasn't completely surprised either. He had seen this happen before. He was surprised that neither Bob nor Sam was around to say anything to him. "I guess that is just another way that particular company views its employees as entirely replaceable parts. IF one part doesn't seem right, just swap it out," Anal mused. In a moment of perfect serendipity, he turned on the car's radio and the oldies station started to play Johnny Paycheck's "Take This Job and Shove It". While the lyrics did not match Alan's life, he could empathize with the singer and the songwriter, and a huge grin spread across his face. Then he began to laugh. His soul seemed lighter, his spirit burned a bit brighter. He was FREE!

Arriving at home, Alan parked in the garage and took the box into the house. He set it in his chair in the dining room then paused to regard his wedding photo on the wall. His emotions were conflicted. First, his eternal love for Laura; followed soon by anger for her being ripped from them far too soon, which morphed into anger for how his ex-employer had treated him. That morphed into a brief bit of self-loathing for having allowed his ex-employer to treat him that way and accepting it. Then his recent catchphrase rattled through his head: "Get Busy Living."

Striding purposefully up the stairs, he began to remove his polo shirt. Reaching his room, he flexed his biceps and smiled. With renewed purpose, he felt "physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight," and his smile grew wider still. He placed two pairs of socks, two t-shirts, a pair of jeans, and both pairs of silk boxer shorts into a duffle bag. He then added the rest of the condoms from his nightstand as well as all-important paper with the lab report. Swapping out for his athletic shoes, Alan bobbed his head in acceptance, picked up his bag, and headed towards the head of the stairs. Detouring into David's room for a few seconds, he headed downstairs to his car. Being sure the garage door closed behind him, he began his trip.

= = =

Tom turned his phone on as he left his last class of the day. It had become a habit of his after his instructor had requested it of all of her students last year. The professor had gotten quite irritated at all the dinging and buzzing and the overall distraction that mobile phones had become for her students. So, she had implemented a policy in her classes which she had seen in a Tom Hanks movie, "Larry Crowne". All mobile devices were to be turned off and placed on her desk until the class had been dismissed. Nowadays, Tom just turned it off completely when he entered a classroom. He never had to worry about rebooting his phone weekly, except during breaks and holidays like the one fast approaching.

There was a text from Alan. This was a surprise because Alan seldomly sent texts to Tom, let alone during the workday. Seeing no contact attempts from Julie, he read Alan's message.

Dad: * I need directions to the Lawson residence in Centreville, please *

This text was timestamped not very long ago, so Tom texted him back.

Tom: * Easier to give address and let Google Maps work *

A minute later, Alan's call came through.

"Hi, Dad!"

"Hello, Tom. Can you please give me the Lawsons' address in Centreville? I'm driving there now and I'm gonna surprise them tonight."

"Sure thing, Dad. Hang on, I'll have to look it up."

"I need to pull off the road anyways ... Ok, I'm ready whenever you are."

Tom provided the address and remained on the line as Google Maps did its magic, routing from Alan's current location to his desired destination. Alan returned to the conversation with the sound quality a bit different from before.

"I've put you on speakerphone as my car pre-dates Bluetooth connections. I'm back on the road and rolling again. Can you spare me some time to talk now?"

"Absolutely, Dad. Let me find a bench to sit down. It's just past 3 pm now, and you're driving from Middleburg to Centreville. What has happened? Why aren't you at work?"

"Well, worst case planning was proven to be necessary. They walked me out once my exit interview via Zoom was completed at 1:30. Fortunately, I had already packed my personal items into a copy paper box so I won't have to go back to get my things."

"That just seems really cold, Dad. How long had you worked there?"

"Just over twelve years. Since October 2008. I had seen it done to a couple of others before, so I got things ready, just in case."

"That Justin Case guy sure gets around, doesn't he?" Tom repeated a joke which had been made often around their house. "Are you ok, Dad?"

"Actually, I'm really good right now. My spirit seems lighter ever since I walked out those doors. Thank you, though, for asking."

"So, what are your immediate plans?" Tom inquired.

"As I said earlier, I'm gonna surprise Rose and Maggie by showing up on their doorstep. I'm reasonably confident they will let me in, at least for overnight. They may never let me go, though." Tom laughed out loud at Alan's whimsey. Alan's wit was so dry sometimes. Alan continued, "I have the next eighteen days off right now. I don't report to Mr. Larsen until the 29^th. I guess I'll have time to build out a bedroom and bathroom for some transient house guests." Alan chuckled at his joke.

"I'll be glad to help you as I can, Dad. Both of us have final exams through Wednesday. But we should talk about Bruce's apartment."

I presume you two would rather talk to Rose and me together then, right?"