"Your services are no longer needed, Hero."
For the second time today, my world came crashing to a halt. I’d barely even started this time around. Maybe I was still in shock, maybe it was too much to take in, or maybe it was never real to begin with. But with those words a seeping numbness overflowed from my chest, leeched life from my limbs, and seemed to pool in my ears in a roaring buzzing. As my vision darkened I felt I was falling backwards into an unending abyss, the scene before me shrinking, condensing into pinholes of light. Once again, everything went dark.
✦ ✦ ✦
The day felt off from the moment I stepped into the office. I was early, even more than usual. I had some retrospective wrap-up materials to review, and some customer interview transcripts I wanted to make sure were in order before our next sprint planning meeting later today. Nothing critical, but I wanted to give it my full attention, so I figured the quiet before my coworkers arrived would be ideal.
But the office lights were unexpectedly on when I left the elevator lobby. While there weren’t many folks in yet, there were more than I expected, some folks I knew from IT buzzing around, talking in hushed tones. I made my way to my desk, and saw some group leaders huddled together in a conference room. My boss, Prema, was among them. Just in case, I made eye contact with her as I walked past the glass wall so she knew I was in. She nodded at me, then turned to say something to the others. Was there an internal network issue? Outage event? I reached my desk and pulled out my laptop and to log in. If it was an all-hands-on-deck moment, I’d better get connected and ready to pitch in. The floor was still eerily quiet. While typical for this time of morning, the air was tense with more people moving around than you’d expect.
"Mai, do you have a moment?"
I swiveled around to see Prema had appeared behind me, a tense look on her face.
"Sure, what’s up? Something going on?" I queried, trying to get some context for what was needed. It seemed my hunch was right, something happened and we all needed to step up. Giving up on my plans for the morning, I unplugged my laptop and started to carry it with me as I stood.
"Leave your computer, you won’t need it. We've reserved Unicorn upstairs. Go on ahead, and when you get there they'll tell you next steps." Unicorn was a conference room one floor up. Something big must be happening if they’d booked a room to manage it.
"Okay, then," I agreed. It seemed odd, but I left my laptop and started up the stairs to the next floor to learn more. Figure it out, first, then figure out what to do.
I badged in from the stairwell and climbed up to the 5th floor. It was mostly back office folks, Finance, Legal, HR. Ours was one of the older tech companies, and we’d been publicly traded for a while now. While Complyze is nowhere near the likes of a Google or Amazon, we’d carved out a niche in enterprise automation and compliance software. We were modestly profitable. We weren’t exactly a household name, but chances were a company whose product you used leveraged our software if you were in the US, and increasingly in Europe and Japan. I'd been here about 6 years, a lengthy time in the Tech world. But I'd earned a lot of freedom in what I worked on and how I did it. And there was always something new to build, a system to improve, a problem to solve.
I peripherally noticed lots of folks and activity here, too, on my way through the open floor. But it was nearing the end of the fiscal year, so it wasn’t too unusual to see a burst of work closing out books and completing new forecasts for the upcoming year. Still, it seemed off somehow. Strained. Maybe the sense of emergency is coloring my perception.
I reached Unicorn, a more private, medium-sized conference room toward the far end of the floor, and opened the door. I froze briefly at the threshold, seeing two figures already inside. A woman I didn’t recognize, but I knew the other well enough – Ben Brandt. Both of us had joined Complyze at around the same time, though we weren’t close. Ben started off in a senior role in my department, but he was the VP of Strategy now. His career trajectory far exceeded mine as a Product Manager, and we moved within different circles. I wondered for a moment if I’d entered the wrong conference room by mistake, but Ben looked up with a small smile and beckoned me to sit.
"Mairead, come in. This is Jeanne from HR." He pronounced it "my-REED" instead of "MY-raid", which grated on my ears, but I was used to letting it go by now. I sat gingerly in the chair across from them both with confusion. Ben's serene smile never changed, but his eyes were cool.
"There’s never an easy way to say this," Ben sighed heavily and looked across the table with his hands clasped in front of him. The HR rep tapped quietly at her keyboard, not looking up.
"Mairead, your services are no longer required at our company."
✦ ✦ ✦
Silence stretched on between us as I tried to understand what was said.
"Your position has been eliminated as part of a company-wide restructuring." Ben resumed, still staring straight ahead, the small smile never leaving his lips. His voice was even and cool. "Today is your last day."
I swallowed, my eyes dropping down to my hands on the table, struggling to process.
"Typically we would now discuss your severance package and other logistical details, but in this case," He paused, and picked up a paper in front of him, "that's not necessary." I looked up sharply in confusion. "Due to evidence in our possession of misappropriation of funds, we will not be offering any form of severance or exit package. You understand what I mean, right Mairead?"
The HR rep continued tapping away at her keyboard as I stared ahead at Ben, blinking in confusion. Ben wore an expression of tired resignation, but his eyes glinted fiercely as he waited for my response.
"I don’t understand any of this. What do you mean, misappropriation?" I finally got the words out, my face felt flushed and hot. My heart was beating rapidly, but it felt like a distant drum, apart from me.
Ben gave another performative sigh, and sorted through a set of plain manila folders in front of him. He opened one, and began laying papers out on the table in front of me. I stared at them blankly. They looked like printouts of invoices. The HR rep tapped away, the only sound for the space of a few breaths, an eternity.
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"In the past 3 months, you submitted falsified invoices from contractors for amounts above and beyond their typical rates, or for services not rendered." He laid another piece of paper on top of the invoices. "We have statements from one of these contractors that you coerced them into a partnership where they would submit these false invoices in return for continued business with our company, and they would deliver the excess amounts to you." He waited a moment to gauge my reaction, before collecting the materials again and closing the folder. "Of course, this is likely the tip of the iceberg. We are currently conducting an audit of past transactions and deals you have been party to, as well as interviews with additional vendors to see how far this corruption goes. But, Mairead, I have to say I’m extremely disappointed." His face shifted into a mask of sadness, his voice a caricature of parental concern, but his eyes were hard.
"I don’t know about any of this!" my voice rising higher than intended, my mind racing to make sense of what I was hearing and seeing. I could remotely feel the sweat dampening the back of my shirt and palms, my heartbeat now thudded in my ears. None of this made any sense. It couldn’t be real.
The constant tapping of the HR rep stopped, and she seemed to look up at me for the first time, eyes dead and cold. Ben, too, watched me warily, but his eyes were calculating. The silence stretched out, the only sound the thudding of my heart beating in my ears.
"In light of this evidence, we considered pressing charges." He continued, his tone now soft and light, as if he was talking about menu options at a restaurant. "But to protect the reputation of this company, we would prefer to handle this in a more discrete manner. Although you stole," Ben paused to emphasize the word, "significantly more than our typical severance, we will consider that amount your exit package. We will not press charges, so long as you sign this agreement to not disclose your crimes or make any disparaging remarks about the company, etc., etc." Ben pulled out another packet of papers and slid them across the table in front of me. "In exchange, you'll avoid arrest, trial, and jail." Ben paused briefly to let it sink in, before resuming "I suggest you consider it carefully and sign. You have one week before we take up this matter with the authorities. For our own protection, of course."
I sat, head in hands, staring at the table and the packet of papers in front of me, uncomprehending. Ben stood up and left the room, and the HR rep began to recite a litany of logistical details regarding the end of benefits, recovering company equipment, and collecting personal effects. Shortly thereafter, Ben returned with a large security officer holding a foldable cardboard moving box which the man pushed into my hands. By the shifting weight, it contained the small amount of personal things I'd kept at my desk. I was momentarily taken aback by how light it was. Ben picked up the packet left on the desk, opened the lid on the box, and dropped the papers inside.
"Think about it, Mairead. Then do the right thing. For the company, and for yourself."
I was led listlessly out of the room and down the hall. I noticed a couple of other rooms with other scenes playing out, with HR personnel, managers, and employees presumably receiving the news of their layoff. I saw some tears, some familiar looks of shock, heard some angry voices. Dan Peters, who I knew from Sales Development, was sitting in shock, barely reacting. Another room had a young man I didn’t know nodding quietly, looking dead-eyed at the paperwork in front of him as an HR rep read off her screen. I saw an office with a woman from Support whose name I couldn’t recall. She was alone, arms tucked in and bent over a table with her back toward the glass, quietly shaking, a tissue pressed against her face. In the last office in the row I recognized Bushra Patel, from Engineering. I'd worked with her before on a project. She was leaning far across the small conference table, one arm braced against the table and the other pointing emphatically at Jon Hu, the VP of Engineering. Her bright red blazer was like a red flag waving, and Jon seemed frozen before the onslaught, eyes wide. A different security guard arrived jogging down the hall with Thorsten van den Berg, the CMO. They quickly entered the room to restrain her, blasting the hall with her outrage.
"You lying bastard! You can’t do this! I’ll…!"
The door closed muffling the continued shouting, and the security guard at my side pulled my elbow along before any more could be heard. Clusters of people stood a distance away, some faces wide-eyed in shock, some idly curious, some looked away. But I was in a daze. If everything could just stop for a moment and let me figure this out. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. My head was pounding, my hands clenched on the box. I had to figure it out, to fix it somehow…
As we entered the elevator lobby, I saw Prema standing there, looking at me with an unreadable expression. My eyes met hers, her mouth pinched. She shook her head almost imperceptibly and turned away. A sharp pain twisted in my gut. My throat seized shut. No words came. An elevator opened. The security guard escorted me inside, and out of the building.
✦ ✦ ✦
I stood at the curb, blasts of brisk wintry air from the rush hour traffic abraded my hands where I held tightly to the box. I clung to the sensation, as if the box and the cold were the only real things left in the world. The clamor of passing vehicles drove away the whispers and gossip of bystanders, but it didn’t take away their stares.
It made no sense.
Stealing? From the company? Me?
How?
Why?
Ben’s face flashed in my mind, his eyes looking at me like so much mud on the hem of his trousers.
I did everything right. I didn’t so much as accept a free drink from our suppliers. This had to be a mistake. Right?
How do I fix this? Where did it go wrong?
I don’t know how long I just stood there, my mind blank, thoughts spiraling.
Suddenly thinking I should contact someone, I shifted the box awkwardly under my arm and reached in my pocket for my phone. But once I had it out, I had no idea what to do with it. Call someone? Who? A lawyer? A colleague? Maybe Prema could...no. I couldn't figure out what to do next.
"You!"
I felt a rough hand grab my shoulder, and spin me around. In surprise, I let go of the box and my phone, and they clattered to the ground. The box spilled its contents across the broad sidewalk, while my phone skittered along the cement.
"You bitch! This is your fault!" the enraged male voice yelled.
"Wha…" I gasped in reflex, as a sudden burst of pain erupted all along the side of my face. Wildly off balance, I stumbled back and fell to the sidewalk.
"I’ve lost everything because of you! How I’m gonna feed my family? Hunh!?" A shadowed form loomed huge above me, breathing heavily. My cheek was throbbing with a numbing ache where I was hit. I squinted at the figure, and recognized him. Bill? Bruce? I couldn't recall exactly. But he was a manager from the supplier I'd worked with, the same company on the invoice Ben showed me earlier. Heat rushed to my head, burning away the numbness.
"Why?!" I launched up at the man, grabbing his coat and clung to him. "What did you do?! Why did you do it?!" I was nowhere near his size, but any fear was incinerated to ash as an all-consuming rage flared within me.
"Get off me!" he tore at my hands, trying to push me away, but I grabbed at him again and again.
"Why?!" I screamed. "Why?!"
"Me?!? You fucked us both! Couldn’t leave well enough alone! All you had to do was shut your mouth!" His eyes blazed with rage, spittle flying through the air as we grappled together. "Didn’t they offer you enough? Greedy bitch!"
"Hey, stop it!" a high-pitched voice called out, "Not in the street, you idiots!" I saw a flash of red out of the corner of my eye, before the man finally freed himself with a vicious shove. I tumbled, my heel turning off the edge of the curb, arms flailing for purchase as I stumbled backwards into the street. I heard a low horn blast close to my ear, and a high-pitched squeal. An oddly warm rush of wind enveloped me for a second, followed by a terrible, crunching impact and white hot pain. My feet left the ground and I fell into darkness.