“Face it, Sarah, Gillian’s a real witch.”
I’m sitting in a darkly lit café just down the street from the office with Ramona Duvall, a single, thirty-something editor from Halifax. The small, cozy room, full of wooden shelves displaying colorful tins of gourmet coffees and teas, is almost empty. Nevertheless, I scan the few occupied tables for signs of Gillian, Derek, and their minions. They’re nowhere to be found, thank God.
“I wasn’t happy about the changes to our jobs at first,” I respond, referring to yesterday’s poisonous email from the CEO. “I guess we didn’t see it coming.”
“No,” Ramona says in a wounded voice. She brushes her dark brown hair off her shoulders and sips her coffee, the steam forming tiny clouds above the dark green ceramic mug. “Gillian screwed us, but she took good care of herself, didn’t she?”
Ramona’s bitter words catch me off guard for a second.
“It’s not her fault,” I say, straining to keep my voice calm. “She told me the company changed our jobs, not her. She didn’t have any choice.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Sarah. She had a choice. She could have kept us in our jobs. She could have fought for us.”
You can’t assume that, Ramona. Perhaps Gillian didn’t have the power to make that choice. On the other hand…maybe, just maybe, I’ve been making excuses for her.
“You might be right,” I sigh, “but there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“That’s a bunch of crap! We don’t have to put up with this stupid company!”
“But what can we do? We can look for other jobs, but they’re almost impossible to find right now. Most publishers are getting rid of their editors.”
“Publishers still have work! They’re still publishing books, aren’t they?” she says, her voice brimming with indignation. “And they still need editors to edit those books.” She pauses. “I’m going to become a freelance editor.”
“You mean, you’re going to quit your job?”
“Of course!” she snaps. “Why should I stay in a dead-end job? Lots of other editors make a good living as freelancers. I have years of experience, great skills, contacts with authors.”
I smile and nod, signaling my support, and sip my now-tepid coffee.
“And what about you? Why don’t you try freelance editing? Things aren’t going too well around here.”
“I’ll think about it. Maybe I should try freelancing.”
I don’t want to try freelancing. I don’t want to pound the pavement, beg for gigs, worry constantly about covering next month’s mortgage payment. But…should I try it? No. Our new jobs might be terrible, but we’ll have to put up with them for only a few short months; once the recession ends, we’ll be back at our old jobs. And Ramona is far too hard on Gillian. It wasn’t her decision to demote us.
Ramona doesn’t respond. Her eyes are glued to her always-present phone as it streams some urgent and fascinating text message.
*****
“I’ve been thinking about my future with this company, Steven. I’m not sure I have one.” I pause, almost afraid of what I’m about to say. “Maybe I should quit Quill Pen and start a new career as a freelance editor.”
My husband looks away from the hockey game on our big-screen TV, a horrified expression on his handsome face, now framed by thinning salt-and-pepper hair. Suddenly, he seems much older and grayer than he did this morning.
“But you can’t!” he gasps, ratcheting down the volume with the remote control. “You can’t afford to quit your job. We haven’t paid off the condo.”
It’s true. Our small, cramped apartment condo on the tenth floor of a dull gray concrete block near the CN Tower in downtown Toronto is still far from being paid off. A crushing $700,000 mortgage still hovers over us. Last summer, our air conditioner suddenly broke down and had to be replaced, and two months ago when Steven’s car conked out, he was forced to take out a loan to buy another one from a used car lot in the east end. We still haven’t paid for our trip to France, and we’re forking over $14,000 per year for interest payments on our mortgage and $500 per month for condo fees.
I glance around the cozy room. A sagging couch covered in a scratchy and ugly brown plaid wool-blend fabric, a matching recliner, a light brown wood coffee table etched with scratches. A couple of prints on the wall featuring pale pink and lavender flowers—now faded. Beige wall-to-wall carpeting flecked with brown coffee stains.
“Okay,” I sigh, “the condo hasn’t been paid off. But we have no kids, I don’t have a car, I have years and years of good experience as an editor, and—”
“Look, Sarah, I know you’re not happy with your job. But there’s a recession going on right now. Companies are cutting their budgets.”
“But that has nothing to do with us! You’re a senior programmer!” I protest, my voice now intense.
“You’ve been at the bank for eighteen years. Surely you have the job security to support my career change.”
Steven stares at me, defeated. “I don’t have job security, not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“We got an email today.”
Another nasty email? I haven’t gotten over the poisonous email we got at work yesterday!
“The bank sent an email to all its head office employees this morning. Something about its plans to undergo an organizational redevelopment to strengthen its market position in challenging times.”
“Sounds a lot like the email we got from our CEO. What the hell is going on? Did you—did you lose your job?”
“No.” He pauses. “I’m not exactly sure what the email was talking about. Ella told us that the bank is putting a freeze on new hires and that staff reductions will only happen when employees leave for other jobs or retire.”
Ella is Steven’s boss, a calm, sensible, unflappable woman in her mid-forties, a single mom of two teenage girls.
“So, Ella told you not to worry,” I say in a bright voice. “I’ll bet that the bank is still profitable, even in this economy.”
“The bank is still making obscene amounts of money, if that’s what you mean,” Steven scoffs. “But it’s probably plotting to get rid of people. My job isn’t safe.”
“But Ella said—”
“Screw Ella!” Steven exclaims, staring at me with hard eyes. “She doesn’t know. She’s only guessing.”
But maybe Ella is right, Steven. Maybe your job is safe. And maybe I’m a bit too worried about my own job. My boss seems to be supportive; she told me that I could talk to her if I wasn’t happy with my position. On the other hand…it wouldn’t hurt to start looking for something else.
“I think you’re panicking. You don’t know for sure that your job is in trouble.”
“I KNOW.” Steven’s voice is now full of fear. “I just know that the bank is going to get rid of me. Don’t quit your job. Not now. Please.”
“Okay, Steven, I’ll try to stick it out for a while. I should stop worrying so much—”
“You always worry too much. But you shouldn’t. Your job is a lot more secure than mine.”
“Maybe it is, but it’s a hell of a lot crappier! And you’re the one who worries too much. Stop reading into things and listen to Ella for once.”
“I guess you’re right.” Steven sighs. “I’ve survived other reorganizations at the bank. Anyhow, there’s no point in getting upset over something that might never happen. And you can start looking for another job when the economy picks up.”
I probably will look, Steven. I just have to wait a little while longer.
*****
It’s 4:00 p.m., December 24, 2010, the last working day before Christmas vacation. Better check my messages, tie up a few loose ends before the holidays, perhaps make a tiny dent in my always towering workload.
I click on the email icon, and a new message pops up. It’s from Ramona, my former coworker and another one of Gillian’s demotees. Just the person I was hoping to hear from.
Hi, Sarah. Hard to believe it’s only been two months since I left the company. My new freelance career is going so well! Right away, I picked up a gig as the copy editor of Tim Pryce’s hot new suspense novel, What’s Buried Is Past. Next month, I’ll be editing a fascinating history of High Park, then a biography of a famous 19th century surgeon…
Next month, Ramona, I’ll be tagging reams and reams of boring data, struggling to complete the mountain of work that piled up during the holidays. I’m really looking forward to it!
Anyhow…how are you doing?
I’m doing well, I type back. Keeping busy.
It’s my standard response to Ramona, nice, bland, and reassuring. But it’s a lie. I’ve never been more miserable, more hopeless, more defeated. The time I’ve been spending mired in endless dull grunt work is time—hours, days, weeks, months, possibly years—that’s lost forever. Meanwhile, my editorial skills keep rusting away, the list of books I will never get the chance to edit keeps growing, the list of books I edited in the past is aging rapidly, making me less and less attractive to prospective employers as the minutes of my life tick by…
But it won’t always be like this. The economy is bound to make a comeback next year. And I have the Christmas holidays to look forward to.
A tall shadow suddenly looms over my desk, interrupting my thoughts. I glance up to see Gillian staring down at me with a sour expression.
“Sarah, I have to speak to you in my office. Right now.”
Now? It’s Christmas Eve, for God’s sake!
I hit Send, pry myself off my chair, and trail Gillian into her office. She shuts the door behind me and seats herself on the throne behind her desk, cluttered, as always, with mountains and mountains of paper. Caleb is sitting in a corner, shifting nervously in his chair.
“Is anything wrong?” I ask, sitting down on the hard chair across from her.
“No.” Gillian pauses and then draws a deep breath. “Now that Ramona’s gone, both of you will have to cover her work. We considered hiring a replacement, but we can’t, not right now.”
“But Gillian, I can’t. I can barely cover all my work now.”
“I can’t either,” Caleb adds. “It’s already hard to keep up.”
“You have no choice,” Gillian says in a cold voice. “The work has to get done.”
“I really can’t!” I protest, sharp knots forming and twisting in my stomach. “I need help. We need help. We can’t do all of it by ourselves.”
“You have to. There’s no money in the budget to hire a replacement for Ramona.”
“What about Derek? Maybe he could help out a little,” I say in a small voice.
Gillian glares at me, her brilliant blue eyes burning with hostility. “Derek has more important things to do,” she sniffs. Translation: Why should Derek waste his valuable time on a menial task like tagging? How silly of me to ask for his help!
“We’re also eliminating paid overtime, effective immediately. The company can’t afford it anymore.”
That’s not true, Gillian. This company can afford to pay overtime; it’s just too damn cheap to pay it. After all, it’s saving a ton of money by not replacing Ramona.
“I’ll do what I can,” I mutter, staring out the window at the slate-gray sky and the carpet of blindingly white snow on the front lawn.
“That’s not good enough, Sarah. You must continue to meet your deadlines. Both of you have to meet them. Our customers expect great service. Anyhow, I’ll be adding the requirement to meet all your deadlines as a goal to your upcoming performance reviews.” She ushers us out of the office and shuts the door.
“Don’t worry, Sarah,” Caleb says as we head back down the hall toward our desks. “We’ll get it all done. We always have.”
“Yeah, but we always had a third person to help us get it done. Why the hell is Gillian dumping on us?”
“She’s not dumping on anyone,” Caleb responds, smirking. “She’s just getting into the holiday spirit.”
“I suppose this is her idea of a Christmas present to us underlings?”
“Best gift we ever got. Hey, enjoy it!” he says. “The creative art of cutting and pasting!”
*****
That evening, alone in the condo with only a small fake Christmas tree covered in brilliant blue ornaments and twinkly white lights for company—which I picked up last January at half price—I drift off to sleep on the brown plaid couch.
The turning of the front door lock, jerky and loud, startles me. Steven shakes the snow off his black leather jacket and tosses his keys onto the hall table.
I peer at my watch. It’s almost 9:00 p.m. “Where were you?” I ask, trying to focus my blurry eyes.
“At a bar,” he responds, stuffing his coat into a closet.
“Why didn’t you call to tell me you were coming home late?”
He sinks down on the recliner, a worried expression on his face. “Look, something came up.” He pauses. “The bank got rid of six of its managers today. Ella lost her job—”
“On Christmas Eve!” I gasp. “How could they?”
“Part of its organizational redevelopment plan. I guess they decided to do it at the end of the year for budgetary reasons. Anyhow, the bank wasn’t giving Ella a goodbye party, so our department took her out for a drink and drove her home.”
“How did she handle it?”
“Not well. She broke down at her desk and cried.” He pauses again. “I can’t blame her for getting upset. She’s over forty. Who wants to hire someone her age for a management job?”
“And she’s got two kids to support.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. The whole business world has turned against working people like us, and I have no idea why. “She didn’t deserve to lose her job.
She worked her ass off for them. What the hell do they want?”
“I’m next,” Steven declares in a flat monotone. “They’re going to get rid of our whole department.”
“Don’t worry. A lot of companies are getting rid of their managers, but they still need good people like you to carry out the day-to-day work. Even if you lose your job, you should be able to find something else.”
“I hope I don’t have to,” Steven says, snatching the TV remote off the coffee table. “The economy really sucks right now. It’s almost impossible to find a decent job, even for someone with my skills and experience.”
He’s panicking. And he’s making me panic.
“Look, Steven, you have every right to be upset about Ella. I don’t blame you. But you still have a job, and so does everyone else in your department. You don’t have any reason to believe that the bank will get rid of all of you. Do you?”
“Sarah, you don’t understand—”
“Do you?”
Steven opens his mouth to speak then pauses. “No,” he says in a sheepish voice.
“And it might never happen. Right?”
“Right,” he responds, flopping down onto the couch. “Even if it does, no job is worth worrying myself to death over. Anyhow, I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”
“Chicken chow mein, egg rolls, and stir-fried veggies,” I tell him, picking up the phone. “I’ll order them right now.”
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