The Corporate Devil You Know

Employees from directors to new hires all run for cover when they hear the clacking of her heels. Like some colossal WWII machine gun:

TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPPYTAPTAPTAPATATTAPTAPTAPTTAPTAP

CLICKCLICKTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP…TAPTAP

The concussions resound through the entire floor, not just from the executive wing to the break room, the entire floor. If the right doors were open it would echo throughout the whole building. She does not simply walk these floors, she punishes them. One could easily picture the path from the offices to the coffee pot in the break room riddled with little pot marks like Captain Ahab’s decking. But old Ahab had not an iota of the same vitriol for his chosen enemy, even if he had lost both legs he could still not come close to the hatred in her heart. Behold the unholy terror that is Dotty from Accounts Payable. 

Unfortunately, Dotty’s chosen enemy is my department, more specifically my boss, Dave. I’m not sure why she loathes him so much. They have both been with the company for over twenty years and I’ve heard that Dotty used to be in my department before moving up the corporate ladder, but I’ve not heard of a scandalous affair between them nor the need to avenge a murdered sensei that could only justify this level of hatred. She pummels him with emails and meetings calling him out on our people’s logs and reports. You see, I am in a department that has to log each incoming or outgoing call for transparency’s sake and we get calls all day. Dotty scours these entries for any crossed i, or dotted t and God help the poor bastard (Dave) if she finds one.

Like most folks I work for a company. Like most companies ours has been bought out by a bigger company and that company will be bought out by an even bigger company until one day we are all working for a cartoon mouse. When companies get bought out the biggest fear for an employee is losing their job due to redundancy. Now most non salaried workers don’t have much to worry about. It’s the big cheeses that have to sweat it for once. Somebody like Dotty from Accounts Payable would usually be on the chopping block for sure. An established company already has a well-entrenched cadre of Corporate Accountants. Dave saw a ray of hope the last time we were assimilated but this is Dotty the Unclean we are talking about here. Obviously she was not let go, no, no she was promoted not once but thrice, my good friends. She went from supervisor to manager to director to freakin’ VP in a matter of months. The company being swallowed by a bigger fish was the best thing that ever happened to Dotty and the worst to ever happen to Dave. He was once two levels above her boss wise so she was a mere annoyance but now he is a level below her and she has become a menace.

I can tell it’s taking its toll on my guy. He was the one that loved his job, he inspired me to take this place seriously and encouraged me move up in the company. Now I’m a manager and subject to the whiff of grapeshot that Dotty fires off daily, but again Dave takes the brunt of it. He used to tell jokes now he just smiles and gives the requisite laugh. The light has dulled in his eyes and maybe a few more hairs have made that long walk from the front of his head to the back of it. Everything he has left is used to fend off the flurry of body blows delivered from Dotty “Boom Boom” Mancini.

So, when he got the call from Dotty I shook my head as usual for the poor SOB but it turns out that poor SOB was me this time. Dave told me Dotty wanted to see me in her office STAT. I asked him what for but he just shook his head and offered me his crucifix. And here I am sitting in her office, surprised the decor of an actual office chair, bright hanging flowers, and empowering kitten posters as opposed to a throne of sculls, an array of pitch forks and hanging cages with dead things in them. Here I sit with a thin line of sweat on my brow, tapping my foot in anticipation. When I hear that TAPTAPTAPPING coming down the hall my stomach drops, it’s not normal to be this nervous. It’s silly, really. I mean despite all I’ve said Dotty is not a real demon spawn. It is warm in here, though. But she’s not the devil, she’s just a person. A horrible, rotten, no good, very bad person but still just a person so why I am I filled with dread?

I turn around to look and when I turn back she is sitting behind her desk. Just one minute she’s not there and the next she sitting there staring at me with those shark eyes. She leans forward and I involuntarily lean back.

“Hello, Mr. Benjamin. May I call you Andrew?” It was a rhetorical question. “Andrew how are you today?” another rhetorical question. “Let’s cut right to the chase. I need you to tell me everything about David.”

“What do you mean?”

“The dirt, Andy, I want the dirt. What about his family? Has he told any off color jokes or made inappropriate comments about fellow employees? Does he cheat on his taxes? I’m tired of playing around with this man. I need him to suffer now and for that I need you to give me every dirty little deed he has done. I know the two of you are friends.”

“You need him to suffer… now.” I repeat, barely comprehending. This is weird. “What is your deal, lady?”

“Glad you asked.”

The lights go out and come back red instead of the usual humming florescent and all that stuff decorating her office, the pretty flowers and the kitty posters? Yep, they have been replaced with pitch forks and hanging cages full of dead things. She laughs at my face from atop her throne of skulls.

“Surprised?” she asks, sipping coffee from her Satan Rules coffee mug.

“Not really,” I feel strangely OK, like this is the either a dream or reality has just gone dream like. I’m FUBAR or I’ll wake up traumatized, either way it’s going down now so why not say what I really feel for once. “You are the Devil and you act like it. Hate to break this to you, but you’re not really a people person, Dotty.”

“I’m not The Devil…yet,” she said, blowing smoke from her nostrils. “But like every job there is a lot of room for aggressive expansion,” apparently Dotty is a Heath Ledger fan on top of being Beelzebub. “I’m what can be called mid-level, no upper mid-level Hell Spawn. I am David Rhodes’s Personal Demon. A lot of people believe in Guardian Angels but what they don’t know or don’t choose to believe is that are also Personal Demons. That’s where I come in and I can’t move on until I destroy David’s will to live. So you’re going to help me.”

“Tempting but no,” I bat my eyes and give her my fakest smile. 

“But you haven’t heard what I have to offer,” she says raising a perfectly trimmed eyebrow. “I can give you his job if you help me destroy him. I’ll triple your salary. Think about it. You won’t have to work that second job at the Big Box Store. I know you hate it.”

“How did you know about that,” I ask. I do have to work a second job to make ends meet and I do hate it but that’s another story.

“Where do you think I go after I get done here?” she replies, rolling her eyes. “That place is my Shangri-La. Everybody is so surly and defeated. I know you hate it because it was designed to be that way. Help me help you, Andy. With the money you will be making you can quit that job, take that long overdue honeymoon, get out of debt and live the sweet life you have been dreaming of. Just tell me something I can use.”

Now, I am of two minds or if you will an Angel on one shoulder and the Devil on the other. Take the deal, the Devil side says. This is some biblical shit happening here. Best stay out of the way and make that money, man. The Angel side says think about it, why would she need you to tell her the dirt on Dave? She already knows about all of what we have going on, she obviously has some sort of supernatural search engine. She knows everything she needs to take Dave down except maybe… she needs you to tell her, to betray your friendship so she can tape that to her shoe and kick him in the balls with it. Betrayed by the person he went out on a limb to help, the nail in the coffin. Well F that noise.

“How did you get this way, D-Ranger?” I can tell she is losing patience but what the hell? “You’ve been at this company for years. You couldn’t have always been in league with Old Scratch. Did you die and nobody noticed? Are you like his long-lost daughter or something?”

“This may help you make the right decision, actually.” She tells me. “How do you think I got promoted so high so fast? I met this guy at a self-help seminar, and he gave me sweet heart of a deal. Work for him, bringing people down (so to speak) and I’d get that promotion and that paycheck, and I’d finally be able to shove it my enemy’s face! I love it. You will, too. Come on. We have full coverage dental.”

“Nope,” I lean back in my chair. “I’m not the smartest guy in the world… yet,” I say this last part with a wink. Now she’s really getting mad. “But I know better than to make a deal with Hell Corp. It always ends badly like my head will turn into a giant doughnut or I’ll have to keep some freaky painting in my attic. You may as well call me a Saint as in Saint Happening, lady.”

Dotty lets out a frustrated growl and leaps off her throne. Her fists pound on her desk and now she is really hulking out! Her skin turns red and she grows three times bigger with muscles bulging out of other muscles. She looms over me. A hairless red gorilla in a Prada pants suit. Perhaps I’ve gone too far.

She reaches out with one of her taloned mitts and grabs my shirt, easily hoisting me up to eye level. Yeah, I've definitely gone too far.

“How dare you talk to me like that!” Her breath smells like she’s been drinking onion flavored coffee. “I could have you stocking groceries in Hell seven days a week. Last chance, Andy. Give me what I want.”

“I won’t do it,” I say with a lot less bravado.

“Fine,” she says like a toddler that’s been told there are no more cookies. She drops me into my chair and as soon as my butt hits the cushion everything flashes and goes back to normal. I’ve never been so thrilled to see a “Hang in there, baby” kitty poster. Dotty is back to her usual self, brushing an errant hair out of her face. “That concludes our business, Mr. Benjamin. You may go.”

I’m outta there like a bat out of, well you know. Dotty left the company not long after that. Maybe she got promoted in Hell or got demoted and has to clean out Hitler's litter box. Maybe she's stocking groceries seven days a week! Any way, Dave is looking much better, now. He jokes and laughs for real again and I think a see a few new hairs growing in. Personal Demons are no joke, but neither are Guardian Angels and if Dotty was Dave’s demon maybe I was his angel.