Thursday, November 3, 2016

Microstory 444: Floor 42 (Part 2)

Construction Administrator: What the hell are you doing up here?
Research & Development Head: I’m here to discuss moving our department back to the original facility. What are you doing?
Admin: Honestly, I’ve come to lobby the president to institute a complete overhaul of the personnel and department system.
Head: Figures. I always knew that you were gunning for my job.
Admin: It’s not about you. You must admit that something went wrong with the defective windows. We have to do something to take care of this problem. I know you know the definition of insanity. We can’t just leave things be and expect them to work out on their own.
Head: I understand that, but what we need to do is find the source of the problem. You can’t cut off your entire arm when you have an infection. You find the damaged tissues and only remove those.
Admin: No, you take medicine that clears up the damaged tissue no matter where it is.
Head: My God, you know what I mean. You want to destroy the whole company and rebuild it, hoping that solves the issue. And yeah, it probably will. But then a lot of good and innocent people are going to be out of work, and that’s not really fair, is it? Why should they suffer for someone else’s mistakes?
Admin: No, it’s not fair, but it’s not the company’s responsibility to keep people employed. Its job is to make a profit, and we can’t do that if we don’t have any clients. This requires a response, so that people know we’re serious about safety and customer satisfaction. The employees we let go will find work elsewhere, because other companies are having their own problems, and they’re looking for new personnel as well. That’s how the job market works.
Head: But you even admit that you don’t know whose fault it is that the windows were defective.
Admin: It’s not my concern if that person, or those people, start working for some other company. I don’t really care about that.
Head: No, you wouldn’t, but you should. What if they start working for a vehicle manufacturer, and start putting parts in backwards? Or what if they design a cell phone battery that explodes? You could end up purchasing their bad products. But that’s not my point. My point is that it would be impractical to fire everyone in the company, and my guess is that you don’t want to let go of anyone in your department. Sounds pretty self-serving to me. What if one of your people is the culprit?
Admin: We don’t build windows, we can’t be at fault for windows. It’s that simple.
Head: Maybe not. Maybe it’s more complicated than that. Maybe you contributed to our issues without even realizing it.
Admin: I can’t imagine how, but we can let the president decide. Where is he anyway?
Head: Maybe he went to the basement after that earthquake.
Admin: I’m starting to think that wasn’t an earthquake...

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