Her work was everything, p.7
Her Work Was Everything, page 7
Zachary picked up the handbook and opened it up to one of the first pages, reading the big, bold headlines.
Drake, Chase, Gould
Building wealth, building community
A world leader in investment banking.
He didn’t spend a lot of time browsing through the handbook, just reading a section heading here and there throughout the book and looking at the pictures of happy employees doing various things. He’d spend more time on the handbook later, when he had the time to read it without someone hovering over him.
“This looks really good, thank you.”
He turned to the health and welfare brochure, and saw that it outlined information about the company gym and their activity program, as well as a few other headings about counseling for substance abuse issues, benefits for things like massage therapy and acupuncture, and a corporate dietician to help employees work through meal planning, weight loss, and other issues.
“One of the interns mentioned your gym,” he said. “I think it’s great that you have something on-site where employees can go to get their workouts. When you’ve got people working as hard as your employees do, it’s such a great idea to have something right on-site so that they can take a break whenever they need it, get their workout, and go back to work fresh.”
“That’s right.” Bev nodded vigorously. “Exercise is absolutely vital for employee health. And we’ve gone one step further. Not only are they allowed to take breaks to go get some exercise, it’s actually prescribed. They have to log a certain number of exercise hours a week at our gym. And not all on a Saturday or Sunday, either. They have to be working out regularly throughout the week. We want to make sure that people are getting the exercise they need, that they’re getting away from their desks and actually doing something physical.”
“You track their workout hours?”
“Absolutely. And if they are not putting in the hours they need to in order to maintain peak health, then their supervisor is going to be talking to them. It’s very important to us.”
“Wow. That really is forward-thinking. I’ve never heard of a company doing that.”
“Our employees are important to us. If we don’t take care of their health, then we’re going to end up losing a lot of hours that they could have been working dealing with sick leave and disability. We don’t want to have to deal with downtime. We schedule workout time so that they have the best possible chance of maintaining peak health.”
“Do you require a physical when they start? They always say that you have to consult a doctor before beginning a new exercise program. I mean, what if you had someone who had a bad heart and they got on the treadmill, and…”
She chuckled. “Well, we don’t want to have to deal with that kind of liability. So, yes, we do have employee physicals, both before they begin working here and annually, so that we are up-to-date on those kinds of issues and can head off problems before they really become an issue. If you can see a problem developing and refer the person to the corporate dietician to get them back on track, why wouldn’t you do that? So much easier to deal with it at the beginning than once it becomes entrenched.”
“So everybody would have a physical before they start working here.”
She nodded her agreement.
“I’d like to see the report on Lauren’s physical, if I could.”
Bev stared at him. She didn’t move. She didn’t get up to go to one of the banks of file cabinets and pull out Lauren’s personnel file or a file on employee physicals.
“We don’t have one for Lauren.”
“Not for Lauren? Why not?”
“She wasn’t a permanent employee, she was just an intern. If she had stayed on with us, we would have had a physical done then. But we don’t do them for interns. Why would you waste your time and money on a handful of employees who are not going to stay with the company? Once they’ve been put on-track as permanent employees, then we do the physicals.”
“But they were required to go to the gym.”
Bev’s mouth twisted into different shapes as she tried to find a way to explain this discrepancy. “Well… an intern isn’t actually required to attend at the gym, but they do have access to it. It’s at their own discretion. They are allowed to, but they don’t have to.”
Zachary frowned, thinking about that. He made a note to go back to it later.
“That makes perfect sense,” he told Bev. Her face relaxed, relief showing through. “Why would you spend money on temporary employees who were only going to be here for a few months and then move on to something else?”
She nodded her agreement.
“So what do you do when an employee has heart problems or high blood pressure or some other issue that precludes them from exercising?”
“You’d be surprised. There aren’t really a lot of conditions that would bar someone from exercising. They might have to start off easy, limit what kinds of exercise they did at the start, but most people can do some kind of exercise. It’s just a matter of finding out what it is and starting slowly.”
“Okay. Sure. That makes sense.”
“We have a portable v-fib machine in the gym,” she said proudly. “And we have staff who are trained in how to use it and in CPR and first aid. All that kind of thing. They are on-site to handle any issues, from a sprained ankle to heart attack. We’re investing in our employees’ futures.”
It sounded like another slogan. Zachary looked down at the brochures and saw the same tagline written across the front of the health and welfare brochure. We’re investing in our employees’ futures.
“That really sounds good. I wish other companies would do that.” He fidgeted with the edges of the brochure, running his eyes over the headlines again. “Do you have a lot of issues with substance abuse? I would imagine you must have a few employees who… abuse caffeine… maybe drink too much on weekends when they get away from the grind.”
“There are issues in any company. I don’t think we have any more than is normal in any other company. And we are dealing with it right away, with counseling and keeping track of employees through their annual physicals. I don’t think you could say the same about most companies. That’s just not normally done. We’re way ahead of the curve there.”
“And how about overwork? It seems like your interns especially are racking up some crazy hours…”
“No, certainly not. We have policies on how many hours they’re allowed to work. We know that the type of people who become investment bankers tend to have those type A personalities and really get into their work. So we have policies to guide them on how long it’s reasonable to work, and then they need to go home and get some sleep. These self-starters, they will run themselves into the ground if you let them. You have to be strict and say they aren’t allowed to work more than a certain number of hours in a day or a week.”
“Really. Do you have a written policy?”
She went to her drawer again, and pulled a single sheet out of a folder. Zachary looked it over. It was an infographic with numbers and graphs and little pictograms showing how employees needed to log their hours and ensure that they weren’t working too many days or hours per month. On the back was a daily time log that could be photocopied. As well as an internet URL showing where they could download a tracking app on their phones or computers.
“So they actually have to clock in and out.”
Bev nodded.
“Could I get a copy of Lauren’s logs? And the other interns’ that she worked with?”
“That’s private employee information. I really can’t share that with you.”
“I’m going to need to see it,” he said firmly. He pressed a little harder, working on her assumption that he was a police officer. “Am I going to have to come back here with a warrant? Gordon told me that I would have the company’s full cooperation.”
“Well, of course I am cooperating, but this information is private…”
“I see.” He wrote ‘warrant’ slowly and deliberately in his notepad. He didn’t know how well she could follow his pencil movements and tell what he was writing down, but he figured that even someone who had no talent for cryptography could tell that the word started with a W.
Bev was looking distinctly uncomfortable. Zachary looked down at his page, and wrote down ‘call Gordon’ in his slow, awkward printing. She shifted in her seat. Her forehead was creased with frown lines. Finally, she decided to cooperate with him.
“Okay, okay, you don’t have to do that. I’ll get you Lauren’s log.”
Zachary sat back and waited. She looked back at him. She clearly expected him to go on with the interview, and she would track down and send him Lauren’s work log later. Or not at all, hoping that he would forget to follow up on it. He just looked at her, waiting for her to produce the log.
Bev finally turned her attention to her computer and tapped on the keys, logging into their time tracking program and searching up the employee and report that she wanted. She printed it off and handed it over to Zachary, her nose wrinkling like Zachary smelled bad.
“I really don’t like this. I don’t think I should be compelled to give you confidential employee records…”
Zachary looked over the columns of numbers. He would have to study it at home later, when he could really focus and see whether Lauren had been working the hours that her roommate claimed, or whether that had been untrue.
“And the other interns’ logs?” he pressed. He had waited until he had Lauren’s log in his hand, not wanting her to backtrack and end up hiding the information because he’d asked for too much.
“It’s one thing to give you Lauren’s. She is dead and you are investigating her death, but the other employees… I really don’t think that I can justify that. I might have to talk to our lawyer…”
“I see.” Zachary put down Lauren’s time log and sat back in his seat. He looked at the other handouts that Bev had given him. “Why don’t you tell me about the employee retreats?”
11
“I’m sure you’ve seen or been to corporate team-building events before,” Bev said, looking over at the flyers she had handed to Zachary. “Inspiring speakers, building trusting relationships, working together for a unified goal, camp type situations where everybody eats together, sleeps in communal cabins or cottages. We work on visioning, corporate cheers, personal goal-setting, or dream-mapping. We’re really invested in developing a sense of community and loyalty to each other. Not just to the company brand, but to their coworkers and the company’s vision.”
“Well, from what I’ve seen, it’s working.”
Bev nodded her agreement. Zachary didn’t point out that she was the only one so far who had resisted being a team player, trying to get out of talking to him. While the lower-level workers were loyal to the company, he wasn’t sure that management had the same attitude.
“You don’t ever get anyone who refuses to participate or comes back with a bad attitude? Maybe mocking the whole team-building process? Because it seems like you always have the one guy…”
She rolled her eyes. “One clown who has to mock everything and act like he’s above it. Yes. We have had one or two of those. But you know what? If they don’t come around in a session like that… your best course of action is to get rid of them. Give them notice when they get back to the office and have them out of there in two weeks or sooner. You don’t need rabble-rousers like that who aren’t going to fall into line.”
“So I assume you never got that kind of attitude from Lauren.”
“Heavens, no. And not from any of the other interns either. They all know that if they want to stay with the company, they’d better show us what they’re made of. There’s no skepticism tolerated with the interns. Fall in line or you can go home. Everybody else is working their butts off to earn a place here.”
“How many intern positions are open?”
“Two or three, depending on the needs of the company. It does change a bit from one season to the next.”
“The current batch of interns? How many are they fighting over?”
“Two.”
“Blair Bieberstein seemed to think he has one of them tied up.”
Bev pressed her lips together.
“Would that be accurate?” Zachary asked. “Is Bieberstein already picked for one of them?”
“I don’t know that I would put it in quite those terms… but he is a serious contender.”
“You haven’t been told that he’s been picked already?”
“There’s been talk. But policy says that they don’t get finalized for another month.”
“So maybe he’s an unofficial pick?”
Bev shrugged. “Call it what you like.”
“Was Lauren at the top of the list for the other one?”
Bev shook her head. “I don’t think I could say that. She was definitely up there, but we have some extremely capable and hard-working interns. It is going to be a close race.”
“Would she be picked for the other slot, being a woman? I got the feeling that male interns are preferred, because they don’t have the inconvenience of childbearing to worry about.”
She tapped the end of her pen on the desk, considering what to say.
“It’s a tough world out there for women,” she finally said. “Men don’t really understand what it’s like to have avenues closed because of the fact that they might become parents. For women, it is a reality. Even if you keep working right up until you go into labor, and return as soon as you can be on your feet, there is still a prejudice that you are going to miss a lot of work with baby illnesses and when your childcare falls through, or school gets out for a snow day. For the next ten to twenty years, you have another priority. And if you keep having children… even worse.”
“Is that a consideration here?”
“It is everywhere, whether they will admit it or not. Women of childbearing or child-rearing years are second class. Whether they are married or single. Even if they tell you that they don’t plan on having children. Everyone has been burned at some point by a woman going on mat leave.”
“Lauren was talking about getting her tubes tied. Would that have made her a better candidate?”
“It would certainly help, not only in showing that she wouldn’t accidentally get pregnant, but also that she was willing to put the company before family. Definitely a step in the right direction. The board had been getting pressure because of the gender inequality in the company. You get one woman on the board, and suddenly you have to address why there aren’t women everywhere in the company, on an equal basis with men. Why aren’t we hiring more women? Why are their salaries smaller? We need to be proactive in putting women before men until the inequality is evened out. It’s one thing to have women as secretaries or in human resources,” she indicated herself, “but that’s not the same as having them as investment bankers or vice presidents.”
“So you were actually under pressure to hire a woman rather than a man.”
Bev shrugged and didn’t confirm it in so many words.
“So the male interns didn’t really have much of a chance of getting a position once Bieberstein and Lauren were locked into place. Unless one of them… dropped out for some reason.”
“That’s probably overstating the situation. There was still plenty of competition for those positions. Nothing was—or is—set in stone. It’s still an open audition.”
“But a little less competitive than it was a few days ago.”
“Of course. But I don’t think anyone is going to go through all of our interns, knocking them off until there are only two left. No one did anything to Lauren. She slipped in her tub.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe she had a little help.”
“You don’t have any proof of that,” Bev challenged, leaning forward in her chair. “I really don’t understand what’s going on here. The girl didn’t die under suspicious circumstances. Everything I read and heard said it was an accident. I don’t know why there’s any investigation going on at all. It doesn’t make sense.”
“We want to know what happened. What really happened. Don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Lauren seemed like a nice girl. But to imagine that there was anything… suspicious going on is ridiculous. There wasn’t anything going on.”
“Will Mandy Pryor get the position, since Lauren isn’t in the running any longer? Because she’s the only other woman?”
Bev’s nose wrinkled, clearly projecting her feelings. “I don’t think Mandy has what it takes. Not like Lauren did. She’s a good, capable candidate… but she doesn’t have that extra luster. And I don’t think she’d ever promise not to have children. With someone like that, who would eventually leave you in the lurch… it’s better to say no now than to pick her up and then be scrambling to fill her position another year down the line. We would go back to that original pool of interns to replace her. Why not just replace her before it ever becomes a problem?”
“By not hiring her in the first place.”
“Yes.”
“So much for equality in the workplace.”
“I wish I could say it wasn’t true. But society has a long way to go before we get to the point where women are not held back by childbearing and childcare. Maybe like one of those dystopian books where the children are all grown in vitro and then raised and trained by the state instead of their parents…”
Having spent much of his youth in the care of the state, Zachary didn’t have much confidence in the government’s ability to raise all of the children without the interference of loving parents. They would all turn out to be psychopaths.
“I really need to get back to work,” Bev said, looking at her watch.
“I appreciate you spending the time with me. Before I go, would you mind getting me those time reports for the other interns?”
She froze. “I told you, that isn’t going to be possible right now.”
