What You Need(46)

Hooray.

Lola sat at the head of the table. She’d seen a lot of changes in the forty years she had worked as a secretary. She constantly reminded us that technology evolved but people skills were still the most important ones in our arsenal.

Anita took over the meeting. “None of you are in trouble, so relax,” she said with a brittle smile. “These people are envoys from Finance and Operations. They’re here to iron out a few wrinkles that have appeared. Or at least pinpoint the source of the wrinkles.”

“Finance” kicked off my warning bells.

Don’t be ridiculous. This has nothing to do with you. Or your weekend with Brady Lund.

“Renee and Zach are the oversight committee that will meet with each of you individually over the next two weeks at various times, so please cooperate with them in whatever manner they require.”

No one looked around the room at anyone else. We all seemed to be looking at the conference table, hoping this wasn’t a bad portent.

Screw this. If our jobs were on the line, we had a right to know. “Ms. Mohr?”

“Yes, Lennox?”

“Is this a performance review for the department? Or individual performance reviews?”

“Departmental review. It’s been several years since this subdivision of Personnel has been subjected to the checks and balances the other departments are required to comply with yearly. When the oversight was discovered, I decided to rectify it at once.”

The way she said “subdivision” sounded like “subpar.”

Why couldn’t I leave this alone? “Thank you for the clarification. Will we be accompanied to our temp jobs during the course of this review?”

I felt Sydney nudge my knee under the table.

“Yes.”

“To all aspects of that job?”

“Of course. This seems to trouble you. But if you’ve got nothing to hide, then their presence shouldn’t be an issue.”

“I am only speaking for myself, that I have nothing to hide, but it’s not me that I’m worried about. Sometimes we deal with personnel matters for other departments and those managers expect discretion and privacy, which allows them to be honest in their assessments. The same with legal matters that can contain sensitive information. I imagine having another person in the room judging us on how we perform our job won’t give an accurate assessment of how we perform anyway, or where these wrinkles might be starting.”

I could feel Anita’s eyes burning into me, but I could also feel the silent gratitude from my coworkers that one of us had spoken up.

“Lennox has a valid point,” Lola said. “Since this department is an arm of Personnel, the managers expect confidentiality. That’s not to suggest that either of these two would talk out of turn, but many times my office staff are called in specifically because they’ve got no stake in interdepartmental politics.”

“What are you suggesting, Lola?”

“That assessments be done after the fact. Say Lennox is asked to draft a letter for Mr. X. They don’t need to be in Mr. X’s office with her. She doesn’t have to disclose to the oversight committee the nature of the correspondence, just that she did it and the amount of time it took her, and have the supervisor in that department sign off on it. That way we keep the privacy that Lund Industries has always strived to maintain for their employees.”

I wanted to stand and clap for Lola’s sarcastic response to this PC bullshit. Basically Anita wanted to justify looking at all our records. If word of that got out, none of the departments would request our services, meaning we wouldn’t do some of the more delicate aspects of our job, which in turn would make it appear that we had fewer responsibilities than we actually did.

“Fine. We will discuss adjusting the parameters.” Anita and her minions stood. “I wasn’t expecting this much resistance, Lola.”

Not until they were out of the room did Lola say, “Right. You were expecting us to roll over.”

I laughed. But my laughter died when they all looked at me.

Lola cocked her head. “Thank you for speaking up, Lennox. For once I’m grateful that you’re not the ‘eyes forward, don’t rock the boat’ type of employee.”

My cheeks heated. “I don’t like bullies. And that’s what this feels like. We know our worth. It isn’t that I resent us having to prove it, but no one in Legal, Acquisitions or Finance would allow those parameters.”

“True.” Lola looked around the room. “No external gossip on this. If I’m taking a stand on the privacy side, I’d better not hear a whisper that this was discussed elsewhere. Understood?”