Page 20 of A Light in the Dark

TWENTY

We chose poorly.

The rest of the week blitzed by in a blur, and by Friday morning, I held more than a few regrets. Had I been wise, I wouldn’t have worn my work clothes to the job fair. Within ten minutes of our arrival, hopeful people swarmed me and my boss, and they came armed with enthusiasm and resumes. Some were refugees, some weren’t, but they shared painful levels of desperation. When I had come to Stonecreek, I had been worried about my ability to secure work.

Luck had been with me. I’d spent less than a week submitting resumes and babysitting my landline waiting for a call. My firm had been the third to call me, and as it had been my favorite of the lot, I’d prioritized my interview with them. The shift from janitor to paper shuffler still amazed me at times.

As I understood their desperation, I set up a simple system for myself and my boss. I reviewed the resumes, confirmed their phone numbers or other contact information with the potential employee, and asked three questions.

Their expectations for pay, what their ideal job was, and what they had liked most about their previous job told me a great deal of things about if they’d fit in with our company. Their skills, experience, and drive would make the most difference for us when determining who we hired.

I marked the resumes for refugees with an R while the locals were labeled with an L, and if I didn’t know, I labeled them with a U. If I thought someone might be a good fit, I added a dash while those I was uncertain of received a period. When I thought we needed to have a discussion over the resume for any reason, I whipped out a question mark.

While I got to take some pictures of the booths and the crowd, we’d drawn enough attention we would need to store the resumes in boxes if we wanted to get them out of my boss’s vehicle, a smaller SUV.

During one of the lags in hopefuls, I regarded Mr. Accor with wide eyes. “We chose poorly.”

“At the start, I thought it was going well, but then I realized I was wrong. We’re going to have to return to the SUV to drop the first batch off. Can you take photographs of the cover pages of the ones you think are promising? Include all the refugees.”

That would eat up a few minutes. “I’ll take the pictures in the parking garage. I’m concerned about the number of people in this crowd.”

“Stonecreek always has an unemployment problem after the floods. Some businesses close due to flood damage. Some companies take advantage of the flood damage to do their reorganization work. Our company tends to hire, as there are a lot of strong candidates this time of year.”

I’d applied several months after the floods, as I’d refused to move into the area until the city had been declared safe from the yearly storms. “And when I’d applied?”

“That was just luck for all of us. The person you replaced had decided to retire. Of course, that didn’t help us with that problem, but we appreciate where you’re at now. Your education grant is what caught our attention. And you don’t need a piece of paper to do your job. You need intellect, which you have. Madeline just needs to have common sense, which she seems to have in copious amounts.”

I nodded. “She’s going to save me a lot of time in the grunt work department, and even if she does get something wrong, it’ll be a lot less time for me to move stray stuff to a new pile than it is to do all the sorting on my own. She’s happy with her season tickets?”

“I even made use of a contact to get her a nice upgrade for a little extra. Her energy is refreshing. Also, her ability to use a sewing machine is insane. She made a dress in a single night, Valerie. And if any of the local seamstresses or tailors discover her, they’ll try to poach her from us!”

That I could believe. A lot of people in Stonecreek owned at least a few pieces of custom clothing. I made my own, as I enjoyed the challenge and the ability to adjust designs to my preferences without having to deal with the exhausting process of explaining what I wanted to someone else.

My current stash of silk meant I could make my own clothes for a while, and my new sewing machine would simplify the process for me. I doubted any seamstress or tailor would try to poach me, but I wouldn’t be advertising my enjoyment of most crafts. “Reminders our company pays sufficiently for her to purchase season tickets should be sufficient to keep her around.”

“With how much she likes hockey? We might just start issuing a yearly bonus in the form of hockey tickets. She’d be the happiest person employed by our company with no contest.”

I could believe that, too. “Let’s get this taken to your vehicle, and then I’ll photograph everything. I hadn’t expected to be ambushed on grounds of dressing nicely.”

“We look like we’re in business, and we’re at a job fair. Stonecreek doesn’t host job fairs often, which I feel does more harm than good.”

We worked our way through the crowd to the parking garage, and after he unlocked the SUV, I dumped the first load of papers onto the seat and went to work taking a picture of the front pages I’d marked as belonging to a refugee.

I would send a digital copy to my boss, and upon going home, I would send the same information to the Hunters, hoping they might be able to safeguard the refugees who weren’t safely employed or housed. My doubts remained and ate away at me, but I did my best to hide my feelings.

The last thing I needed was to draw suspicion to myself when my job was to observe and report. My thoughts wandered to the men who’d loitered near my home.

Who were they? Why had they been on a street with homes and shuttered businesses that wouldn’t open again for weeks? Had they really just been potential buyers of businesses closing down? Roger hadn’t replied to my initial query, and I could only assume that he’d tell me something if I needed to know.

I put some serious thought into requesting a week or two off to clear my head. Wondering if such a thing would be possible, I eyed my boss while stacking the resumes into a neat pile. “Let’s say I want to take a week off after we finish onboarding Sampson Sigils.”

“Take a week off after we finish onboarding Sampson Sigils,” my boss replied with laughter in his voice. “You have plenty of time available. Was there any specific week you wanted to take off?”

“No, I just might need some quality rest and relaxation after all this onboarding.”

“A week off won’t hurt anything after they’re onboarded, especially not with Madeline helping. If she doesn’t take the same week off, you’ll return to an office space loaded with papers in penalty boxes, but I doubt you’ll mind that much.”

I wouldn’t. “Okay. I’ll request the week after we finish their onboarding, as I have no idea how long that’ll take.”

“Longer than we appreciate but faster than we imagined possible, I expect. Did you check your bonus?”

I had, but the presence of six figures in my bank account had shocked me enough I kept putting off dealing with it. “Did someone make a typo?”

“Your bonus is not a typo, Valerie.”

“Are you sure? The first bonus about floored me. The second bonus has an extra zero and some other key adjustments.”

“The Sampson Sigils contract is going to bring in an easy hundred thousand a month. That alone justifies the bonus. ”

My eyes widened at the amount the contract would be earning the company. “I’m sorry, but can you repeat that?”

“The contract terms will bring us in a hundred thousand a month.”

“To do their taxes?” I blurted.

“We’ll be handling their taxes, running test audits on their corporation, their real estate efforts, and old contracts, opening their lawyers to work with new contracts. It’s a lot of good work.”

“We do real estate and contracts?” I blurted.

“We do, but our specific office only handles tax work. You’ll be getting their contracts, but all you’ll have to do is organize the files by contract number to pass over to our legal department. We usually don’t need someone to organize our files like that except for onboarding, so someone from our other office will handle that once we have the files situated.”

“Maybe I should take two weeks,” I muttered.

“Two weeks after onboarding is completed is more than reasonable,” he assured me. “We’ll talk more about it at work. And honestly? After seeing this job fair, I might want to request two weeks off for some rest and relaxation, too. Going through all these resumes might do me in, especially if there are hundreds of refugee files as I fear there are.”

I checked my photo gallery and counted images. “A hundred and twelve so far.”

“How did you manage to handle talking with so many at one time? Are you a living, breathing miracle?”

I shook my head. “I’m stubborn and made certain I asked everyone the same questions, which meant some of them came armed with the answers before I even asked. I’m grateful for those people, by the way.”

“I’m stealing that method when we go back there. Also, I have a few tote bags in the back so we can carry more resumes before we have to return here. For some reason, I think we’re going to need them.”

According to the pamphlets and flyers, the job fair should have ended at the same time most businesses closed. With zero regard for time, it remained open, the vendors opted to stay, and the hopefuls prowled and locked onto anyone who remotely appeared to be hiring. Three hours after our work day had ended, I hauled Mr. Accor back to his vehicle, panting over the ridiculous number of resumes we’d packed into the four totes he’d had and the six others we’d scooped up from vendor stalls.

At least half of them belonged to refugees.

I went to work photographing them, muttering profanities under my breath until done. I separated the refugee resumes from the rest, packing them into five of the totes. The number of them staggered me, especially with the understanding that hundreds of men and women hadn’t survived the floods, likely as part of some effort to thin the populations.

Was employment one of the criteria for refugees to survive?

Then, a darker thought crept in.

What if those behind the killings wanted to bleed the refugees dry and earn the bonuses for housing them before solving the problem in a rather permanent fashion? The idea someone would even think of such a thing horrified me. But the truth remained: there were hundreds of corpses proving someone would.

“We will not be coming back tomorrow,” my boss informed me in a solemn tone. “I will dump these resumes in my office, and we will spend half of Monday digging through these. The other half will be spent onboarding Sampson Sigils and the other new contracts. We will do this until we’ve gone through all the resumes. I will do a pass tomorrow to prioritize the ones I think might be the most promising, that way you’re going through less chaff.”

“Thank you for your sacrifice,” I replied, pausing in my work long enough to grin at him. “I hope I don’t seem too angry.”

“You seem tired and ready to go home. I’m tired and ready to go home. I’ll drive you to your place before heading to the office to dump the resumes. I’m also going to propose we give you three extra bonus days off for having subjected you to that job fair. You, apparently, are approachable. The unemployed targeted you. They saw you, and it was as if they somehow knew you were someone to talk to. I checked for a sign that stated you were hiring, but I didn’t see one.”

I regarded my clothes and heaved a sigh. “I look like someone from HR, don’t I?”

“You look more like an attorney about to go to court for the day. Do you think that’s comparable?”

Aware the company had policies about having people dress in comfort while in attire suitable for their position, I said, “In case it matters, I do actually like dressing like this. ”

“I’d figured that out early on. The instant we moved you out of janitorial, which has our laxest dress code, and bumped you to your current domain, you came in with one of your court outfits and floated through your first day. Obviously, we need to change the dress code for the janitors to be anything comfortable but a minimum attire rather than insist on casual clothes. Of course, you would have confused everyone opting to come in as you usually dress.”

“I would wear slacks instead of skirts, but that would have been the only change.” I wore skirts half the time, as I sometimes wanted to wear heels. The days I wore heels, I wanted to feel invincible, something the pretty shoes managed to accomplish more often than not.

In my infinite wisdom, I’d gone with flats and slacks. I lifted a leg and regarded my shoe with open suspicion. “It had to be my shoes. If I’d worn heels and a skirt, they would have congregated on you, as I would have come across more as a secretary than the leading lady.”

My boss joined me in eyeing my footwear. “That is disturbingly plausible. I had no idea shoes had so much power.”

“Remind me to keep a spare outfit at work so I can change into my power clothes at will. Obviously, this is a sacred outfit best used to trick the unwary into believing I’m the boss.”

“With the value of the contracts you brought in, albeit unwittingly, you may as well be the boss this week.”

“I still do not understand how the Sampson Sigils contract is so valuable.” I kept taking photos of all the refugee resumes so I could send the front pages with the key info to my boss. “Am I okay to spend some time tonight sending these to you from my phone?”

“Yes. I’ll make sure your overtime is handled appropriately. Just so you are aware, we will both be paid ten thousand each as bounty for finding suitable employees from the job fair, as we went above and beyond the call of duty seeking out refugees to hire.” He sighed, and he got on the other side of the vehicle, taking the resumes I’d finished photographing and putting them away. “I tried to protest because we’re doing it on work hours, but I was told to can all complaints about it. They aren’t comfortable with keeping the bonuses we get for hiring refugees, so we’re getting ten grand each and the remainder of the funds are going to the refugee.”

“How are we going to verify the eligibility of the refugees for the bonus, though?” As I suspected the bonus was the reason people were being killed off, if I could gain access to the system, I’d be able to get a better idea of who might be targeted.

“We have a database we can reference. I’ll send you the link to the database. If you decide to check refugee eligibility, record it, send an email with what you learn, and so on. We get the bonus even if the refugee isn’t eligible—and honestly, we might specifically hire the ones who aren’t eligible.”

“Less tax ramifications?”

“It also solves the unemployment problem better. Honestly, we’re going to be doing a lot of hiring; they’re going ahead with opening a new location to work on areas outside of Stonecreek. You’ll end up with an entire team, and we’re going to be taking over several more floors of our building. You’re going to be getting an entire floor. ”

I was going to be getting an entire floor of our office building? I stopped what I was doing to stare at him. “Come again?”

“The Sampson Sigils contract alone justifies it and will fund our expansion efforts. I’ve been in meetings with Joel most of the week going over the specifics, and we’ll be finalizing the contract on Monday at the same time the first paperwork delivery gets in. Their paperwork has been holding their expansion plans back, so by moving a lot of the documentation to us, they get to focus on what makes them shine as a company. They’re willing to pay for our expertise. And I did get confirmation that Madeline is eligible for the payout. Her company hadn’t done the paperwork, and she was ultimately burning a hole in their pocket because they didn’t have anyone brave enough to navigate through said paperwork.”

How odd. I resumed taking photographs, and after a batch of twenty, I stared at my boss again. “An entire floor ?”

“We’re expecting a lot of paperwork coming in, and your job will be to review everything your army of minions will organize for you. Every sheet of paper will go through you, but the piles will be presorted to your specifications before you get a hold of it. You don’t really review anything during the initial pass, correct?”

I nodded. “I don’t. I just put everything in the correct pile and then review groups based on type. It allows me to look for oddities within the group. And I want to be fresh when I’m doing my reviews, so the sorting involves a basic glance. I’ll train Madeline to put sticky notes on things she thinks are questionable at a glance. That’ll let me take a closer look at it out of the gate. ”

There would be a lot of changes, but since the first pass tended to eat up half my time, I would be able to handle a great deal more paperwork and focus on the truly interesting stuff. I’d enjoy the challenge, although there would be days I’d want to be sorting papers so my brain could rest. On those days, I likely would join the sorting phase for an hour or two.

Returning to photographing the refugee resumes bought me time to think. “Are the performance bonuses normal?”

“Ah. You aren’t sure if you got preferential treatment. The company retains twenty percent of profits for performance bonuses. Reliability, long-term contributions, and so on all factor into the performance reviews. Because you were the only person in the firm with your position, the position got missed in the yearly performance reviews, so the company retroactively applied your bonuses. You didn’t have a department. This year, you will, and you’ll receive your bonus yearly moving forward. As a general rule, department leads get double bonus compared to the rest of the department, but the leads also have more stress and general responsibilities. In the future, your entire team will have a pooled bonus, you’ll get two shares of it, and everyone else will get one share of it. We’ve found that helps motivate entire departments, and nobody typically begrudges the department heads for getting a larger bonus. They’re the first to have to pull overtime so the rest of their staff does not.”

“But aren’t you my department head?” I asked.

Mr. Accor shook his head. “I am pooled with general managers, and we have our own share program. Department heads are one step below the general managers, and our pool is based on the performance of all departments we’re ultimately responsible for. We have the potential to have even larger shares than the departments below us, but it’s also easier for us to have a department drag us all down. It helps encourage all managers to keep their departments working well. But essentially, fifteen percent of the year’s bonuses are divided by the number of departments. Three shares of every department are assigned to the manager pool, but those shares are pooled and split into one share per manager. The upper managers receive a set percentage of the company’s profits, which are shared equally among them. If your department does well, the three shares I contribute are high. If all our departments do well, we’ll get three lucrative shares. If our departments don’t do well, we get three lackluster shares. So far, the system has worked well for us. The company’s owner feels if he’s in the business of making his employees all rich, then he’ll have better workers striving to make him even richer.”

I understood that; I’d walked in those shoes myself. “And so, by grabbing up refugees, eligible or ineligible for the bonus, he’s put in a position where the employees have gratitude towards him in addition to opportunity and cause to work harder.”

“Exactly. And I’m sure the boss is going to have more audits done since you’ve started working with us, as he’s going on a bit of a rampage about it. But this is also why he retains five percent of the employee bonus a year. It lets him correct stuff like this immediately without screwing the company budget. He also issues special bonuses at employment landmarks. Five and ten years employed with the company, for example. You’ll be coming up on your fifth year soon enough, so you’ll get that bonus. ”

Before the bonuses, I’d been able to live my life comfortably. After the bonuses, I had no idea what I would do with myself. I wouldn’t buy a car; I had nowhere to park it and no desire to pay a monthly bill to make use of one of the garages up the hill from me.

While I could buy more of Shifter Five’s sinful silks, I needed to use what I had first. That would eat away time.

Filling my empty bookshelves, eventually buying a computer for myself, and planning a vacation around future possible schooling would spend some of the money. The rest would go to upgrading my house, transforming the basement into more living space, and renovating my kitchen, which was dated but functional. New appliances would be on the agenda, too.

“Where does someone buy a laptop?” I asked. “I think I’m going to need one.”

“You don’t own a computer?”

I shook my head.

“We’ll get one for work on the way home. That’s a phone call away to authorize. With the number of resumes we have to go through and the onboarding, you’ll need it. And you’ll want it for schooling.”

“Joel offered to let me use his computer for schooling,” I admitted.

“You can still use his computer for schooling if you want, but you’ll need that laptop. You finish getting that photographed, and I’ll take care of talking to the boss about getting you a work machine.”

I returned to work, snapping pictures with my phone and marveling at the sharp left turn my life had taken in the past week.