There came a day when a small web-based company of no particular note in a small city of no particular interest found itself on the brink of losing two of its biggest clients. The spark was gone, the work was bland, and the clients were cheap. It was a dangerous combination and the small company could not afford to lose both clients. It couldn’t afford to owe either one, really, but there was a secret contingency plan to lay off half the company and do some anonymous side work for one of the more reputable porn sites until better clients could be landed. The three execs who knew of this plan didn’t ever want to have to implement it, but each one of them had large mortgages and unhappy marriages to support and they were willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary in order to keep that money coming in.
One of the middle managers at the company, a harried man of 40 named Gil, took it upon himself to get an outside perspective. Since he didn’t know about the secret contingency plan he didn’t know that he was one of the lucky ones who would not be laid off. He also didn’t know that this would prove to be a mixed blessing because he was actually a paying customer of the reputable porn site in question and it would have taken no more than three days for this information to work its way through the now much smaller company. But without knowing any of this, he came to the office one day with a plan to fix things and a new consultant to potentially fix more problems in the future.
It soon became obvious that while his coworkers were happy to have the idea that solved the immediate client problem, none of them appreciated that Gil was now bringing in an outsider on a regular basis. Some of them didn’t want the competition and some of them were afraid the consultant would be able to take one look at them and see just his little they did anymore. And others just didn’t want to be bothered learning another name and sharing the office snacks and having another person whose weekend they now had to ask about. And so the first meeting with Lou the consultant went poorly. No ideas were shared and no weekends were laughed about and no plans were made to put together a Happy Hour to welcome the new guy.
Gil felt responsible for this problem, because he was, and so he set out to fix it. Since he’s fixed the original client problem, he thought maybe he was on a roll and it was probably best if he struck now while he was on a hot streak. He set out to gather his brain trust around him to come up with a plan on how to deal with Lou, realized he didn’t have a brain trust, and so he forced the people who reported to him to gather in a room late one afternoon to discuss the situation. Within minutes he learned that while the group had several different reasons for not liking Lou, the one thing they all agreed on was that Lou knew nothing about their business, and possibly knew nothing about any kind of business. Kevin, who’d taken on the role of ringleader at this meeting, kept calling him an idiot savant without the savant, and it only went downhill from there.
“Where did you even find this guy?” Kevin asked.
“I met him at a party,” Gil said. “We got to talking about work and I mentioned some of the problems we were having and he had some good ideas. So good that I asked if he’d be interested in a consulting gig. And he was.”
“You seriously offered him a job after meeting him at a party?” Kevin said.
“Yes.”
“That was a terrible idea.”
“Why?”
“No good has ever come from anyone you meet at a party.”
“I don’t agree,” Gil said.
“I met my wife at a party,” Martin said from his seat at the end of the table.
“There, see?” Gil said with an air of triumph.
“See what? He’s agreeing with me,” Kevin said.
They all looked down the table at Martin. “Who were you agreeing with?” Gil asked. “Me or him?”
“Him.”
“There, see?” Kevin said. “It’s unanimous. Get rid of him.”
“The two of you agreeing doesn’t count as unanimous,” Gil said.
“Then let’s take a vote.”
“No vote.”
“Oppressor.”
“I’m not oppressing anything. It doesn’t matter who wants to get rid of him. The contract is ironclad. If we fire him we still have to pay him everything.”
This was true. What Lou lacked in business acumen he made up for with his uncanny ability to negotiate a good contract. Besides guaranteeing his fee, plus a fat early termination penalty, his contract stipulated he was only required to come to the office once a week, he didn’t have to answer every email he received, and while he was expected to offer advice and solutions, he didn’t have to offer good advice or solutions, or say anything that was remotely helpful. It could be argued that by signing this contract the company was proving it deserved every hit it had taken recently, but Gil refused to consider that possibility.
“All I want you to do is talk to the guy when he’s here,” Gil said. “He offered me good advice at the party, so he’s not a moron. Maybe he’s just unmotivated. Maybe he just needs to loosen up and feel more comfortable with us.”
“Yes,” said Phil from his seat at the other end of the table.”
“See, Phil knows.”
“No, it’s not that;” Phil said as he held his phone up for all to see. “I knew that advice he gave you sounded familiar.”
“Let me guess, he got it off of one of those motivational poster sites,” Kevin said.
“No, not even close,” Phil said.
“See, give me some credit here,” Gil said.
“He got it off an episode of The Office,” Phil said. “I’ve got it queued up right here if you want to watch it.”
“We’re taking our business advice from episodes of The Office now?” Kevin said. “Is that ironic or pathetic or some new level of bad we’ve never seen before?”
“Was it at least a good episode?” Carol asked. She rarely spoke up at these meetings because she had a hard time masking her contempt for Gil’s management style. In truth, she was usually so quiet Gil would forget she was even present, and today he spun his head around in surprise at the sound of her voice.
“Trick question,” Phil said. “There are no good episodes of The Office.”
“That’s not true,” Carol said. “It was really good for a couple of years.”
“British version was way better,” Kevin said.
The debate continued for the better part of an hour, and only ended when Kevin noticed that it was time to go home. They were unable to agree on the quality of The Office or which version was better. They also realized that the debate about The Office had distracted them completely from the matter at hand, and left them with no strategy on how to handle Lou’s upcoming visit.
“How can I even talk to the guy now that I know his advice came from a TV show?” Gil asked. “You guys are gonna have to talk to him.”
“How can you not talk to him?” Kevin asked. “Will you just hide all day?”
“Maybe I should call out sick.
“If you call out sick I’m calling out sick too,” Phil said.
“How can you do that? You won’t even know if I did it until you come in to the office yourself,” Gil said. “You can’t call out sick once you’re already here.”
“I’ll just say I’ve got whatever you have.”
“Like an epidemic,” Kevin said.
“Don’t say epidemic,” Gil said. “Not after last time.
The last time the office thought there was an epidemic came the day after Karen from Accounting threw a Game of Thrones season finale party that ended in one case of alcohol poisoning, a half dozen sick calls, and a rumored pregnancy scare. Pictures from the first half of the party were featured on the company’s social media page. Pictures from the second half were almost universally deleted upon viewing. Since no one was willing to admit how far things had gotten out of hand, though, everyone claimed to have a virus and the HR department came within an hour of implementing the company’s pandemic plan. This plan involved a contact with a company in Mumbai that promised to seamlessly continue the company’s work with an expansive group of outsourced employees. Ironically, it was later acknowledged that had the pandemic plan actually been implemented, the company would have turned the largest quarterly profit in history. Thus there as an unspoken rule that no more than three employees could call out sick at the same time.
“I’m reserving the right to call out tomorrow,” Gil said. “So you bastards better show up. You too, Carol.”
“You can’t include her in the blanket bastard statement?” Kevin asked.
“I’m just playing it safe. I’m not sure where HR came down on that one,” Gil said. “I failed their last two quizzes so I feel like I’m on very thin ice with them. Best to behave myself.”
“But calling out sick to avoid your contractor is fine?”
“It’s a strategy.” Gil gathered his tablet and his notepad and stood. “I trust you guys to talk to Lou and get something out of him. Then, when I’ve recovered from my 24-hour flu, we can discuss it at length and figure out our next step.” Before anyone could say anything else, he hurried from the room. People could say what they wanted to about Gil, but he could leave a room faster than anyone else in the company when he was motivated.
The rest of them looked at each other, wondering who was going to call out sick tomorrow and help start the next epidemic scare.
“You think this guy watches The Walking Dead too?” Carol asked.
“Why?” Kevin asked.
“Maybe he could offer some advice from that show.”
“Okay, now we’ve got a plan,” Kevin said. “Good meeting, everybody.”