Chapter 11 – Voice of the department
The few months after asking Cory out had been wonderful. I really enjoyed her and part of me wondered if she was the one. Adrian seemed to like her too. We had gone on a few double dates with her and her new man Jim. He was nice and was one of those fun, outdoorsy people and he made Adrian happy. As for the job, well it was audit and that wasn’t too bad. But I was starting to worry about my job being outsourced. The company said that it wasn’t outsourcing anyone but they had been “leveraging offshore resources”, as they liked to call them, quite heavily. In the end, all we could do was our jobs and hope for the best.
My workload was also starting to pick up. A few months ago the company decided it was time to simplify their forms for audit. This move would have been fine if the forms still asked for all of the information that was needed to conduct an audit but alas, this thought didn’t occur to the corporate masterminds. As a result, the new, easy-to-use audit paperwork that was to make the customer happy did a fantastic job of pissing the customer off…royally. I hung up the phone with a man who just spent ten minutes telling me that my company was horribly disorganized. I had to give him that. As if the new forms weren’t enough, Moleth called this man four times telling him that he needed to send in more information. I don’t think it was the sending in information that irked him, but rather that she kept losing the faxes that he sent and then requesting them again. I could see how that might be annoying.
It was ok; it didn’t bother me that much. Besides, right now she was off in Peru looking for E.T. and she would be there for two whole weeks. Two wonderful weeks! And if I was lucky, she would see E.T. and he would take her home with him. Maybe there was some intergalactic zoo or something. I tried to picture it in my head: Moleth behind glowing bars muttering to herself and a bunch of little aliens that resembled Michael Jackson walking around pointing and snapping pictures.
“Hey dude, stop thinking about Moleth in flying saucers,” Yoda’s voice said.
“Don’t ruin this from me,” I said with my eyes closed.
“I know, I know—I like it too.”
I looked over at him. “So what’s up?”
“Nothing really.”
“Ok,” I said unsure. “So can I help you with anything?”
He looked apprehensive. “Ok here’s the thing. You’ve heard of the Voice of the Department haven’t you?”
“No.”
“Ok, well every year the home office audit department sends out a survey to all of the employees in every audit center asking their opinion about the company.”
“Ok, when do we get this survey?”
“Well later this week.”
“Ok, so what’s the deal?” I could see that he was starting to look a little stressed out.
“Here’s the thing: I’m in charge of coming up with the questions for this year’s survey.”
I smiled, understanding. Not only was Yoda the corporate trainer for this center but he was the all-around slave for home office. I didn’t blame them—he was amazing at most everything. He knew just about everything there was about audit, was a wiz at IT and systems, and was OCD so everything that he did was perfect. I could also see his frustration. This wasn’t the first company survey I’d been asked to take in my time, so I knew the point of them was to get a feel for the employees. This information was important. If you knew how people were then you knew just how hard you could screw them without a lawsuit.
“So why are you here?” I asked truly curious.
“I can’t come up with questions.”
“Look dude, it doesn’t matter anyway. No one takes those things seriously and if we did, it would just get used against us.”
“I’ll give you that.”
“And besides, they’re going to do what they want anyhow. It’s a waste of time. Just ask generic things: do you like your job, how hard do you actually work—that kind of crap. If you’re really stuck go ask Phillip. I’m sure he just read some self-help management book that could tell you everything you need to know.”
He gave me a scowl. “You’re sick. I’m not talking to that freak. There’s something wrong with him.”
“Well, then what do you want from me?”
“I want your help; give me some questions, ideas, anything.”
“I honestly don’t know what to tell you man. Why don’t you just take last year’s and reword the questions?”
He looked at me like I was genius and almost ran back to his desk.
My IM popped up.
horsechick “did you seriously just make it so we have to take the same survey again this year?”
Bmorrison “it’ll be new for me ”
horsechick “don’t smiley me you prick. that thing took an hour last year and we all got reamed for our anonymous answers.”
Bmorrison “for real?”
horsechick “yeah for real. oh well. how is Cory?”
Bmorrison “she’s great—I get to meet her family tonight so I’m excited.”
horsechick “wow getting serious isn’t it?”
Bmorrison “lol yeah I guess so”
I heard her phone ring and then Adrian’s voice as she picked it up.
Yoda took my advice and sure enough the next day at work, I received an email for an online app that was supposedly anonymous. I didn’t buy it for one second and I don’t think anyone else did either. The only person who would be talking about how wonderful and perfect everyone was would be Star Wars. Jedi never complained, you know. It took me around an hour to complete and most of it was pretty generic with a lot of how do you feel questions. The kicker was that almost all of the questions were essay style and that made them hard to BS. It felt like I was writing a book since each essay question had character limits so you couldn’t just write “yeah it rocks here”. You had to come up with reasons why it rocked here. After a few questions, my stock of answers was starting to dwindle. The last question was the best. It was the standard “is there anything else you would like to share with us” question, but you had to type in 1,000 characters. By that point, I was pissed; I had had enough. So I let them have it in that one. I talked about how I was pissed about my job being sent to India and that I didn’t like our QC program. I immediately was sorry after clicking submit. I knew this thing was far from anonymous and I was probably screwed, but oh well.
It wasn’t too long after that Yoda came walking up to my desk.
“So what did you think of the survey?”
“You’re a dick dude. That thing blew. I want to hit you right now.”
“Wh- why? It was almost last year’s verbatim. I just made it so you would have to enter essay answers this year. It was great!”
“Yeah, that was the part that sucked about it man. I was so irritated by the end that I actually told the truth.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what I was going for.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?”
Yoda looked at me like I was missing some grandiose point. “Now everyone said we’re pissed and we don’t want to be laid off. Not just a few people. This way we’ll just have some group meeting about the entire survey instead of one on ones with individuals.”
I didn’t think of that. He had a point. I could hear most of my neighbors grumbling while taking the survey too, so maybe there would just be the group thing. At any rate, I was still peeved about taking the test.
Yoda went on, “Hey have you seen that freaky new guy in the mail room?”
“The wha—?”
“Yeah, you know Collin Earl right?”
“Yeah, he’s that dude who’s way into Anime over in processing, kind of balding right?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. His cousin just started working here. His name is Monson or something.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, you’ll know who I’m talking about. He’s got black hair and he’s all covered in scars and stuff.”
“Oh yeah, I think
I have seen him.”
“Well, do you remember on the news awhile back about that bridge in Washington that blew up or something?”
“Yeah, Baroty Bridge I think.”
“Right, that one. Anyway, he was on that and was like the only survivor.”
“No kidding?” I was shocked. That story was a big deal; I remembered that. People said that it was a terrorist attack but I wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Crazy.”
“I know. so anyway, what are you doing for lunch?”
“I don’t know; where do you want to go?”
After much debate we settled on Good Times because let’s be honest, after a corporate survey you needed a little something extra. Other than that, the rest of my day was relatively uneventful. I did some audits, texted Cory, and was hoping to make it out of the building without a big meeting. To my astonishment, there wasn’t a meeting that day, nor the next, or even the day after that. There was no sign from management that anything was up. No sign that we even took a survey. It was worrisome. What if they were going to wait for our reviews before doing mentioning anything?
Yoda didn’t know what was up either and even Manager-lady didn’t. She was just as concerned as us. What did this mean? Chester thought it meant that we were all going to be fired or at least he was, but I didn’t buy into that. Chester always was thinking that the company was out to get him and they really never were. We all just settled into business as usual and hoped for the best.