Page 69 of A Light in the Dark
“Remind me to keep a spare outfit at work so I can change into my power clothes at will. Obviously, this is a sacred outfit best used to trick the unwary into believing I’m the boss.”
“With the value of the contracts you brought in, albeit unwittingly, you may as well be the boss this week.”
“I still do not understand how the Sampson Sigils contract is so valuable.” I kept taking photos of all the refugee resumes so I could send the front pages with the keyinfo to my boss. “Am I okay to spend some time tonight sending these to you from my phone?”
“Yes. I’ll make sure your overtime is handled appropriately. Just so you are aware, we will both be paid ten thousand each as bounty for finding suitable employees from the job fair, as we went above and beyond the call of duty seeking out refugees to hire.” He sighed, and he got on the other side of the vehicle, taking the resumes I’d finished photographing and putting them away. “I tried to protest because we’re doing it on work hours, but I was told to can all complaints about it. They aren’t comfortable with keeping the bonuses we get for hiring refugees, so we’re getting ten grand each and the remainder of the funds are going to the refugee.”
“How are we going to verify the eligibility of the refugees for the bonus, though?” As I suspected the bonus was the reason people were being killed off, if I could gain access to the system, I’d be able to get a better idea of who might be targeted.
“We have a database we can reference. I’ll send you the link to the database. If you decide to check refugee eligibility, record it, send an email with what you learn, and so on. We get the bonus even if the refugee isn’t eligible—and honestly, we might specifically hire the ones who aren’t eligible.”
“Less tax ramifications?”
“It also solves the unemployment problem better. Honestly, we’re going to be doing a lot of hiring; they’re going ahead with opening a new location to work on areas outside of Stonecreek. You’ll end up with an entire team, and we’re going to be taking over several more floors of our building. You’re going to be getting an entire floor.”
I was going to be getting an entirefloorof our office building? I stopped what I was doing to stare at him. “Come again?”
“The Sampson Sigils contract alone justifies it and will fund our expansion efforts. I’ve been in meetings with Joel most of the week going over the specifics, and we’ll be finalizing the contract on Monday at the same time the first paperwork delivery gets in. Their paperwork has been holding their expansion plans back, so by moving a lot of the documentation to us, they get to focus on what makes them shine as a company. They’re willing to pay for our expertise. And I did get confirmation that Madeline is eligible for the payout. Her company hadn’t done the paperwork, and she was ultimately burning a hole in their pocket because they didn’t have anyone brave enough to navigate through said paperwork.”
How odd. I resumed taking photographs, and after a batch of twenty, I stared at my boss again. “An entirefloor?”
“We’re expecting a lot of paperwork coming in, and your job will be to review everything your army of minions will organize for you. Every sheet of paper will go through you, but the piles will be presorted to your specifications before you get a hold of it. You don’t really review anything during the initial pass, correct?”
I nodded. “I don’t. I just put everything in the correct pile and then review groups based on type. It allows me to look for oddities within the group. And I want to be fresh when I’m doing my reviews, so the sorting involves a basic glance. I’ll train Madeline to put sticky notes on things she thinks are questionable at a glance. That’ll let me take a closer look at it out of the gate.”
There would be a lot of changes, but since the first pass tended to eat up half my time, I would be able to handle a great deal more paperwork and focus on the truly interesting stuff. I’d enjoy the challenge, although there would be days I’d want to be sorting papers so my brain could rest. On those days, I likely would join the sorting phase for an hour or two.
Returning to photographing the refugee resumes bought me time to think. “Are the performance bonuses normal?”
“Ah. You aren’t sure if you got preferential treatment. The company retains twenty percent of profits for performance bonuses. Reliability, long-term contributions, and so on all factor into the performance reviews. Because you were the only person in the firm with your position, the position got missed in the yearly performance reviews, so the company retroactively applied your bonuses. You didn’thavea department. This year, you will, and you’ll receive your bonus yearly moving forward. As a general rule, department leads get double bonus compared to the rest of the department, but the leads also have more stress and general responsibilities. In the future, your entire team will have a pooled bonus, you’ll get two shares of it, and everyone else will get one share of it. We’ve found that helps motivate entire departments, and nobody typically begrudges the department heads for getting a larger bonus. They’re the first to have to pull overtime so the rest of their staff does not.”
“But aren’t you my department head?” I asked.
Mr. Accor shook his head. “I am pooled with general managers, and we have our own share program. Department heads are one step below the general managers, and our pool is based on the performance of all departments we’reultimately responsible for. We have the potential to have even larger shares than the departments below us, but it’s also easier for us to have a department drag us all down. It helps encourage all managers to keep their departments working well. But essentially, fifteen percent of the year’s bonuses are divided by the number of departments. Three shares of every department are assigned to the manager pool, but those shares are pooled and split into one share per manager. The upper managers receive a set percentage of the company’s profits, which are shared equally among them. If your department does well, the three shares I contribute are high. If all our departments do well, we’ll get three lucrative shares. If our departments don’t do well, we get three lackluster shares. So far, the system has worked well for us. The company’s owner feels if he’s in the business of making his employees all rich, then he’ll have better workers striving to make him even richer.”
I understood that; I’d walked in those shoes myself. “And so, by grabbing up refugees, eligible or ineligible for the bonus, he’s put in a position where the employees have gratitude towards him in addition to opportunity and cause to work harder.”
“Exactly. And I’m sure the boss is going to have more audits done since you’ve started working with us, as he’s going on a bit of a rampage about it. But this is also why he retains five percent of the employee bonus a year. It lets him correct stuff like this immediately without screwing the company budget. He also issues special bonuses at employment landmarks. Five and ten years employed with the company, for example. You’ll be coming up on your fifth year soon enough, so you’ll get that bonus.”
Before the bonuses, I’d been able to live my life comfortably. After the bonuses, I had no idea what I would do with myself. I wouldn’t buy a car; I had nowhere to park it and no desire to pay a monthly bill to make use of one of the garages up the hill from me.
While I could buy more of Shifter Five’s sinful silks, I needed to use what I had first. That would eat away time.
Filling my empty bookshelves, eventually buying a computer for myself, and planning a vacation around future possible schooling would spend some of the money. The rest would go to upgrading my house, transforming the basement into more living space, and renovating my kitchen, which was dated but functional. New appliances would be on the agenda, too.
“Where does someone buy a laptop?” I asked. “I think I’m going to need one.”
“You don’t own a computer?”
I shook my head.
“We’ll get one for work on the way home. That’s a phone call away to authorize. With the number of resumes we have to go through and the onboarding, you’ll need it. And you’ll want it for schooling.”
“Joel offered to let me use his computer for schooling,” I admitted.
“You can still use his computer for schooling if you want, but you’ll need that laptop. You finish getting that photographed, and I’ll take care of talking to the boss about getting you a work machine.”
I returned to work, snapping pictures with my phone and marveling at the sharp left turn my life had taken in the past week.
