Furlough

Dick worked from home. He was a project manager. The dictionary definition of a project manager in corporate speak is someone who has "the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project". In reality, they are people who micromanage the joy out of life. Dick had no joy and he was as sure as be damned going to make sure no one else had any joy.

His day consisted of getting up at 8 am, showering, making coffee, checking twitter, and then logging on to work to see who he could focus his attentions on and make their life his business. This particular morning there was a message in the group channel which got him excited.

"Folks, when I was working on the server last night, the US team made an update and I was unable to complete the job. I know I said I would have it done by COB, yesterday but I'll have to wait until the US come online again to get it sorted out. Sorry! - Paul"

Dick salivated. He could really haul Paul over the coals with this. It didn't matter that the job in hand was so incidental that it would probably only affect three individuals out of the thirteen million users of their systems. This is what Dick lived for; a sense of justification that he could force an issue and let his ego persuade him that he was the bigger person over lackadaisical peers.

If the truth be told, Paul was a good guy. He was continually worried that Dick and his ilk made him look bad in the eyes of management to the point that he had reached nervous exhaustion in the job seven times in the last 5 years. He always delivered yet people always found fault. And then COVID came.

Initially the whole company was put on a half day Furlough. This meant Fridays were half days for everyone, unpaid. Today, when Paul had to wait for America to come online, was a Friday; 5 hours behind. It was the perfect storm for Dick.

Dick started to type into the group chat for all to see . . .

"Paul this is going to have major implications. You agreed it would be delivered yesterday. I'm going to put a meeting in everyone's calendar to see what we can do to get this over the line".

Dick was as obvious as he was maligned. Everyone knew that the only reason they were being dragged into the meeting was because Dick wanted them to see him make a show of Paul.

Because Dick worked from home normally and Paul had been an office worker, Dick spent his life isolated while Paul up until last week had been taking public transport into the office.

The meeting was scheduled for 15 minutes later at 10 am and the whole team was on the call. While people were waiting for everyone to join the call, Dick was waxing lyrical on the meme he had seen on twitter about the first grader who had failed on their deliverables which was their homework. When everyone had joined the call, Dick went over the background of the predicament, which everyone knew anyway, and after 5 minutes of hearing his own voice, Dick asked Paul in round about terms, "well what next?".

It was an online meeting, so everyone could see everyone else's faces, and everyone could see Paul starting to cry. "I'm sorry", he said . . .

"I can't do this anymore. My wife went into hospital yesterday with COVID and our 3 children are going up the walls. I can't get my parents to mind the children because obviously we are high risk and they are in their seventies. I'm at my wits end and I don't know what else I can say at this point"

Then there was silence. Everyone was looking at Dick on their screens. He had micromanaged most of them in much the same way at various times and this was where he had finally crossed the line in a manner that he couldn't weasel out of.

After about 30 seconds of quiet, Dick spoke. "OK, I wasn't aware". He had the compassion and empathy of a brick. "I think we will take this offline as there are obviously some hurdles to overcome. We will wrap up the meeting now and I'll give you all back twenty-five minutes."

There was a chorus of "Thanks! Bye" and a few of the team pinged Paul directly to say words to the effect of, "I'm so sorry you are being put through this" and "the software is a piece of rubbish anyway, why is Dick doing this?"

The answer was simple, Dick was just being Dick in his own bubble while everyone else carried on with life's struggles.

Afterwards Dick coldly delegated the piece of work to someone else on the team and Paul spent Friday afternoon with his children talking about mum. That night just as he put them to bed, he got a call from the hospital. The nurse rang to say that Paul's wife's results had come back and it turned out she had developed a common or garden chest infection and not COVID.

Paul cried for the second time that day, but this time with relief, but then his mind quickly moved on to the prospect of announcing this on the team meeting on Monday morning and having the accusation of being a skiver being passively levelled.