Faster on My Own: Chapter 9
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Steven found himself sitting at a different table, well lit and surrounded by colleagues. Oblong and obdurate, the minds that kept the behemoth lurching forward glanced at each other. A particular kind of wisdom, distilled into just a sentence, can become a virus. By sneeze and handshake and gestures of deep intimacy or simple friendship, it can spread and make its home in countless minds. One such aphorism had grabbed hold of everyone in the room: he who speaks first demonstrates weakness. Everyone at that table, behind their ties and lingering coughs, was a warrior. Each closed his eyes and felt a warrior's heartbeat reverberating, shaking his bones and vibrating through his neck rolls.
Mr. Williams sat at the head of the table. His thin hand tapped a gold-trim pen against the wood. No, it would not be him. Everyone else had to feel the pressure. His subordinates fidgeted and glanced around the table, hoping a colleague would make the ultimate sacrifice. But in a group of twenty people, the pressure is diffused. No one would claim Steven obstructed business by refusing to speak. Nor would they accuse Randolph from Sales, nor Ericksen, VP of Operations. No, the only person who would suffer by the end of the meeting was the one who broke the silence at the beginning. After all, he was the weakest.
Steven hadn't given in once, and he wasn't going to. His father, who imparted precious few lessons, was a carrier for this particular bit of wisdom, and Steven had more to lose than anyone at that table by speaking. Certain that he wouldn’t speak, he could scan around the table and predict who might be the first to crack. No one sent such obvious signals as excessive sweating, or murmuring to themselves. The most reliable sign Steven had been able to discern was eye movement. Any gaze darting back and forth across the table was not just curiosity at who might speak, but desperation for someone else to break. After the first time Steven caught on, it became the wooden beam cracking apart before the house comes down. That day, Steven saw it on the face of J.J. Mancini. An idiosyncratic version at least, where he would glimpse at one person, then run a finger under his collar to try to win a centimeter of space between the fabric and neck. But any wisps of calming air that stole their way into his shirt didn't help him.
"Um..." Mancini looked around the table, hoping someone else would burst forth now that he'd made a speech-like noise, but it was too late. Unable to meet the eyes of his relieved and judgmental colleagues, he said, "First thing on the agenda, sales aren't growing along with projects. The question: is this a result of unanticipated factors external to our process, or has our marketing strategy hit a point of diminishing returns?"
The VP of Marketing, whose name Steven didn't know, leaned forward and smiled yellow. "It's my department's belief that our methods are fine. Our strategies are industry standard. Maybe we're not gaining any ground with them—I'll admit that, we're not taking any big risks—but we're not losing out in any way. Maybe it's just noise from an outlying number of people who haven't come down with any of our diseases. In that case, our customer base should normalize in time."
While another VP went through some statistics that, as Steven half-listened, appeared to back up Marketing's view, Steven wondered how helpful he should be. To some degree, he had to be in order to work his way up the ranks. But should he focus on being helpful only in ways that increased his reputation out of proportion to how much it helped the company? Certainly, their business was immoral. And the better their business operated, the less moral it was. On the other hand, the worse they were, the worse medicine would be. Sickness bubbling up to consume more and more people while the cure sat locked away in a gilded box made the world so much more hellish. So he waited for a break in the conversation, and said, "I was just thinking. You said we're not doing anything novel with our marketing, yes?"
"Of course not. The dangers are–"
"Yes, I understand that there's risk. If a company that sells medicine does something that looks foolish, the costs are greater than if a beer company releases a stupid commercial." Steven had employed interruption, an advanced move in the martial art of business communication. "But what if it didn't look like we were doing anything?"
The VP of Marketing said, "I don't see what you're saying." He probably did, but he had to cover for the wound out of which a bit of his reputation trickled.
"Social media influencers are posting about the food they eat, the tech they use, the shoes they wear, their favorite sex toys. Why not the medication they're on? With a few well placed Instagram posts, we could capture an entire generation of Crohn's Disease customers. Kids on TikTok or whatever are always talking about having ADHD, right? Why not get some to recommend our medications?” The language of the company had taken root in Steven over the course of just a few months. Previously, he had to force himself to speak in terms of customers instead of sufferers, in product growth instead of disease spread. Now, it flowed with no effort.
Bergewicz, seated far enough down the table that Steven couldn't see him, but could identify the damaged bugle of his voice, said, "We're not paying any damn teenagers to take pills. That'll fuck us."
A murmur of agreement went around the table. A bad idea during a meeting could go one of two ways. If it was from someone that everyone liked, it vanished in the wind. But if you're unpopular or the boss's son who everyone thinks is an incompetent nepotism hire, they would strap that bad idea to your back and bind your hands against the rough wood. You could walk, arms stiffened and shoulders on fire, for a thousand miles, and they would never let you out. Trying his hardest not to smile, so as not to affront the ceremonial dignity of the business meeting, Steven said, “Diseases spready virally, why shouldn’t the cure?”
Mr. Williams again tapped the pen against the table. Everyone stopped talking. "Steven, that's an interesting idea. Hampel," he said, turning his head slightly toward the VP of Marketing, "investigate how other operations use these social media people, and see if it's viable. Roberts, make sure it's legal. We should know our risks."
Ants scatter to avoid being stepped on. The smart ones, anyway. Bergewicz said, "Mr. Williams, come on. You want to see our medication in between two pictures of some twenty-year-old's bare ass? It's gonna kill us."
"It's a good idea. That's my decision."
Normally, you'd expect some back and forth. Bergewicz, for the good of the company, planting his flag in the face of powerful opposition. Mr. Williams crushing him after the spirited debate, and scraping what was left of him off. But Mr. Williams had been there a long time. That's a lot of crushing, a lot of scraping. Bergewicz slumped back into his chair. His twenty-odd years at the company earned him one appeal and had no more currency after that denial.
As they moved on to other internal business, Steven lost focus. The minutiae of managing a building full of drones did not interest Steven. No, what his father had just done was much more intriguing. Beyond the vague steps of the Plan, of gaining power in business, Steven began to chart the exact path to Mr. Williams's chair.
#
There was no certain path to ousting his father, of course. Instead, he'd have to nestle himself into the role of his father's right hand man, and wait until Mr. Williams called it quits or died. From there, control of the company would slide down the path of least resistance, right into his hands. But he wasn't the only one angling for that position. Every man in the conference room the day before had the same goal, and each of them had a plan to get there.
A few months at Vita-Tech had given Steven a chance to map out exactly who was actually powerful within the management structure. Hampel had no pull with anyone, but could be counted on to carry out exactly what was asked of him. Getting into the position where you could tell him what to do was beneficial. Ericksen's opinion, on the other hand, carried a lot of weight. The common understanding was that if you wanted to get something done, it was wise to bring it up with Ericksen first. Then, in the larger meeting, he would back you up by explaining the logistics of the idea, as if he developed them on the spot. Everyone knew, of course, that he'd heard the idea in advance, but the price of breaking the illusion was Ericksen branding your idea as impossible, which Mr. Williams took seriously. Steven's biggest obstacle was Bergewicz. Not only was Steven in his department, meaning every success of Steven's washed over onto Bergewicz, but he had Mr. Williams's ear. Steven had no idea how to get above him on the ladder, other than waiting for him to die or retire.
The facts, as Steven knew them, offered no other conclusion. He could not sidestep, nor leapfrog, nor otherwise vault, Bergewicz on the chain of command. So Steven was forced to poke around, hoping his facts were wrong.
His first visit was to the oldest employee of the company. Edward Vigt, age eighty-nine, in human resources. Towers of paper crowded a brand-new laptop on Vigt's desk. As Steven entered the office, Vigt was writing something on a notepad, but flinched and started typing at lightning speed as soon as he noticed Steven. Vigt typed for a few seconds before peeking over the screen and acknowledging Steven, "Yes, what is it?"
"Hi, how's it going?" Steven smiled.
"Yes. What is it?" Vigt's voice came out sharp, absent the usual waver of a voice that had worn itself out with too many words over the years.
"I'm putting together a surprise birthday party for Bergewicz. Some of the guys and I want to do a whole retrospective on his career here, but no one else was around when he first started working here. So we though you might have something we can use." Steven tried to project a casual, well-meaning sort of attitude. He wanted Vigt to think he was the kind of harmless dullard who cruised into the company on the back of his parents' name every year, destined for a middle management position in an unimportant branch of the company.
Vigt sat back in his chair, and stuck his tongue out just past his lips as he sized Steven up. "Not a chance. I only hand out records with a written and authorized request. You have neither. Bring me those and I'll give it to you. If you can get them." With that, Vigt turned his attention back to his notepad, scratching a few figures in with a worn-down yellow pencil.
"Okay. But if Bergewicz hates his party, I'm putting it on your head."
"Please come back with an authorized form to retrieve the records you want," he said, imitating an automated voice message.
But Steven didn't want to leave. There was no way he could get those forms, but the process of digging up dirt to get leverage on Vigt to get leverage on Bergewicz threatened to devolve into an infinite spiral. He needed something he could do right then and there. "Okay, I'll go. But, you know, I like to take a kind of unorthodox route back to my office."
"Sounds great, get out."
"And sometimes, I pass by Sam Levy's office. You know Levy, right? He's in charge of best practices. He's doing that big digitization push, I think?"
Vigt set his notepad down and turned to face Steven again. "I am familiar."
"Great. And, you know, I'm a very descriptive storyteller and your office is so distinctive, certain details are bound to come up."
Vigt grimaced and ducked below his desk, opening a drawer. He came back with a thick folder, held shut by a cord as it burst at the seams. "This is everything Bergewicz has done since he started working here."
Plucking it from Vigt's hands, Steven said, "Thank you. Glad we could find a way to work together."
Vigt didn't say anything, and hid his head behind the screen, the clacking keyboard meant to create an illusion that Steven had no reason to believe. He opened the file as soon as he walked out of the office. There had to be something in there which would help him take down Bergewicz and ascend to the top of the organization. But he never got a chance to find out, because as he tabbed through reports, a hand reached out and snatched the entire file from him. It was Bergewicz, angrier than Steven had ever seen him.