The Company Man, part 17

Henry did not know who he was anymore. He still got up at the same time, watched the weather channel, ate his breakfast, and went to work. But that work changed from day to day. Jonathan rotated him through two dozen different positions. In some, he’d done quite well, such as janitorial duty. In others. like answering the phones at the front desk, he’d not done so well. They seemed to be testing him to see what things he could do. After a day or two, they’d move him somewhere else and replace him with a clone. A lot of employees had already been let go from Privex. He could tell based on how fewer cars were in the parking lot after just a month or so.

A phone message from Jonah at home revealed to him that the entire accounting department had been let go. Henry felt awful. He went to bed early but found he could not sleep, so he tossed and turned and imagined his coworkers out of  a job, and Jonah standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign reading, “Will work for food.”

He’d tried calling Jonah back, but the caller ID did not reveal the number, and it saddened Henry to realize that he could not remember Jonah’s last name to look him up in the phone book.

Every time Jonathan appeared, Henry now cringed, as it meant some new change.

The paychecks were still coming in strong, but Henry did not care much about the money anymore. When he finally did build up the courage to tell Jonathan that he did not want to do this anymore, Jonathan reminded him of a document he’d signed with Lenny the lawyer, committing himself to remain with the project. Otherwise, he’d have to give up the money he’d made since the project began, and likely face a lawsuit from the company for breach of contract. That made him so nervous, he threw up shortly thereafter. Fortunately, he was working as a janitor at the time, and so was able to quickly clean it up.

People in the company no longer looked at him. They knew that if they saw him coming, it meant he was coming to take their job. He was ostracized by everyone outside of the R&D lab, and those inside did not seem to care enough about him to show any compassion.

Not even his mother could cheer him up.

Henry tried different restaurants, even really expensive ones, but the food had gone bland. He’d had no idea how much he missed the few friends he had until they were gone. Jonathan did not care about him. Jonah did. When he’d been out sick months back, Jonah arranged for a card to be passed around the office, and took the time to mail it to him. He’d even invited him out to lunch a few times. Now Henry just wanted things to go back to the way they were, back when he worked in accounting, making his meager 4% merit raises, but it was far too late for that.

At three months, Henry found himself having a hard time getting out of bed. He thrived on consistency, but had none of that for quite some time. As such, he overslept and ended up coming to work late. When he arrived, there were several police cars at the front entrance.