Chapter 67 - The People Who Still Needed Their Jobs
The employees’ letter reached me the following day.
Forty-three signatures.
They described contracts I had preserved, staff I had supported, and years when the company had paid people on time while competitors failed around us.
They wanted me back.
For several minutes, I let myself feel grateful without examining why the gratitude felt so much like relief.
Then I read the final paragraph.
They were worried about restructuring.
About jobs.
About an unfamiliar director who had asked difficult questions about costs.
I called Dana.
“Have redundancies been proposed?”
“No.”
“Do people know that?”
“Managers have been told there is no approved plan. That may not have reached everyone clearly.”
“Then they need a clearer answer.”
“I agree.”
I looked at the signatures again.
Some belonged to people who admired me.
Others may simply have believed my return offered the safest route to paying their rent.
The difference mattered.
That afternoon, a woman named Celia Grant requested a conversation through Rebecca.
She was the analyst whose concerns appeared in the report.
I remembered her as younger.
She probably remembered me as less old too.
We met with Rebecca present.
Celia carried no folder.
“I don’t want an apology meeting,” she said.
“All right.”
“I want you to understand something about that letter.”
“The employees’ letter?”
She nodded.
“I signed an earlier one supporting you. Years ago. After an industry dispute.”
I waited.
“I believed you were good at protecting the company.”
“Were you wrong?”
“About some things.”
She looked directly at me.
“I also believed that if you decided I was disloyal, every good thing I’d done here would become irrelevant.”
My throat tightened.
“Did I say that to you?”
“No.”
The answer was immediate.
“You didn’t need to.”
For a while, the only sound came from the corridor.
Then she said, “People can appreciate what you did and still be afraid to tell you what’s wrong.”
I thought about the signatures.
About how eagerly I had accepted them as evidence that someone understood the whole story and had found me worth defending.
“What would help now?” I asked.
“Let them ask questions without having to support you first.”
At the next staff meeting, Dana addressed the employment rumors directly.
I did not attend.
The employees submitted questions anonymously as well as in person.
Some concerned their jobs.
Some concerned my conduct.
Some criticized the review.
Dana answered what she could and committed to following up on the rest.
Later, she sent me the summary.
May you like
The company had held a difficult meeting without needing me to be either its savior or its enemy.
I read every page.
