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“Going Through the motions ” 

Christmas 1995-2000

By Charles Moon

     My training was complete. I had been successfully taught what was acceptable behavior at Christmas and what the consequences would be should I cross that imaginary line. Except for Sam Miller, no one else ever again heard me utter anything other than a small sarcastic remark about the Christmas hypocrisies I perceived to be everywhere. I dutifully hung the lights on the house, expertly balanced the tree in the stand, and wrapped brightly colored boxes of appropriate gifts for Elizabeth to open. I attended Christmas Mass and family gatherings, and watched the inevitable television broadcasts of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and at least four adaptations of Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” without my usual acerbic commentary. I baked cookies, addressed greeting cards, visited with friends and made every attempt to pretend that the season had meaning to me. It didn’t.

      I was approaching 40 years on this planet and only had a handful of fond Christmas memories to look back on. The scales were tipped much too far to the other side for me to believe that there was any hope of the holidays meaning anything more to me than a seasonal farce in which I was forced to partake.

      My annual gift to Elizabeth became my willing participation in the Christmas Holiday, not the things that I bought and placed under the tree. Each year I would try and focus on something unusual or silly to distract me from the onslaught of emotions with varying degrees of success. Each year the season would end with me feeling like a survivor rather than a participant. I came to the conclusion that nothing was going to change.

      The irony is that this was exactly the moment things started to change. I left my job at Stevens and Lee to open my own drafting firm. Business was sporadic initially, but after a year of earning enough to survive, I had picked up so many new customers that I was now working steadily without a break. The money and the work grew exponentially and each passing year saw longer days and heightened responsibilities. What had started as an exciting effort to build something that was satisfying and productive had become this oppressive entity that wouldn’t leave me alone.

      The death of my beloved grandfather in May of 1998 was not unexpected, but it had a profound effect on me nonetheless. It was one of those “stop and smell the roses” moments when you reflect on what you had accomplished with your life and what you had missed in the process.

      A month earlier, The Cassidy Corporation, developers of industrial warehouses and one of my largest customers, had offered me an opportunity to become the head of a new drafting division within their company. It meant I could work shorter hours and have the administrative responsibilities of running a business lifted from my shoulders. I thanked them for the offer, but refused it.  The following year, the person who they had hired in my place moved on to bigger and better things. Once again they approached me to join their team. By this time the prospect of giving up the 60 hour weeks, the headaches of managing the work as well as doing it, and the feeling that everyone with the authority to tax me had their hand in my pocket was much more attractive to me. The negotiation was short. I gave them a figure that I thought would compensate me for abandoning, what was at this point, a five year old business and they countered with an offer that was higher. The Director of Operations said he wanted to convince me that they were serious about wanting me. They did, and I closed my doors almost five years to the day of opening them.

      During those five years, Christmas had become just another deadline. December 25th was the day the project was due and I completed it with a little more effort and a little less enthusiasm than the drafting projects my customers gave me. Christmas 1999 saw me celebrating the return to a more structured way of life with a steady income and even steadier schedule.

      The first year of the new millennium at Cassidy saw a radical push for growth and expansion. I found myself still working 60 hours a week and travelling more than when I was in business for myself. Satellite offices were opened in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Minneapolis. Each new office added another layer of complexity to my responsibilities but even with the increased workload, the people at Cassidy kept our spirits high and made the effort seem worthwhile. 

      The people there were beyond reproach. It was a major factor in me accepting the position at all. Their strong commitment to their jobs and each other on both a business and a human scale was something I rarely had seen in the corporate world. Where there typically would be sloth and greed and backstabbing were honesty enthusiasm and camaraderie. The management was both fair and understanding in almost every circumstance.

      They were understanding when I took a week off in March to bury my father and they were again understanding in August when my grandmother’s funeral kept me away a few additional days. The upcoming season of family gatherings made me realize that most of my family was now gone.

      I evaded the company Christmas party with a contrived excuse about prior commitments and did not sign up for the voluntary office gift exchange. Every day at lunch starting the first week of December I drove two miles to the local supermarket to avoid the break room where some of the secretaries had decorated the vending machines with ribbons and garlands. Christmas carols played over the intercom system from the time I arrived in the morning until long after the cleaning crew had gone for the night. Everyone was walking around with a smile on their face in anticipation of a generous bonus that reflected the prosperity the company had enjoyed for the last 12 months.

      Three days before Christmas, and the last day of work until the holidays were over, I arrived feeling happier than I normally would have at this time of the year. The business of architecture had ground to a halt as all of our clients had either shut down for the season or delayed their projects so they could become part of the next fiscal year’s budget. My gift shopping responsibilities were also done and all the presents wrapped. The only thing left to do was to wait for the 26th so I could put another Yuletide behind me.

      I got back from my daily trip to the market a few minutes before one o’clock and stopped at the front desk to see if there was any new mail in my bin.

      “Mr. Cassidy has called a meeting for 2:00,” the receptionist called out from behind the pyramid of “suitable-for-business” Christmas cards on the counter.

      “For me?”

      “For everybody.”

      “Conference room, as usual, I guess.”

      “No, in the training room, the conference room is not big enough.”

      Jean Kelley, administrative assistant to Mr. Cassidy, walked through the lobby with three girls from accounting. The girls were all wearing red felt Santa hats trimmed with cotton balls. They were all dressed in red or green and each had a small cardboard snowman covered in glitter hanging from their name tags. Everyone was smiling that broad innocent smile of naïve Christmas expectations except for Jean. She had a stern and serious expression on her face. I assumed Mr. Cassidy had her assigned to a big project that had to be done by the end of the day. I thought that was what had been stealing her attention from the holiday spirit being expressed by her coworkers.

      I buried my head in an unsolicited catalog for drafting supplies that someone had placed in my mailbox so I wouldn’t need to wish the group of passing ladies a “merry Christmas.” Somewhere deep inside of me, I secretly wished for everyone to have a merry Christmas, but I no longer thought a merry Christmas was possible and every time I spoke that particular phrase as a casual greeting I felt like a hypocrite and a liar.

      I took my mail and my neuroses back to my office and waited for the hour to pass until it was time for the big meeting.

      The training room was a large, rarely used space at the end of a long hall on the second floor. I walked down the corridor that was now milling with virtually every person in the building quietly trying to discern the topic of today’s gathering. The general consensus seemed to be it was about the annual bonus.

      Folding tables and chairs had been set up in long rows parallel to the blank wall at the far end that was sometimes used as a screen for projecting slides and presentations. The room was so full, that even with every chair on the second floor crammed into the training room, people still had to stand along the wall. I found an empty seat next to the head of purchasing.

      “Big meeting.” I commented, hoping to start a conversation.

      “Uh-huh.”

      “Know what it’s about?”

      “Nope.”

      “Any guesses?”

      “Nope.”

      I turned to the opposite side where one of the Santa-hatted secretaries was sitting.

      “Is this common?”

      “What?” she replied, wondering why, after a year of working in the same building I finally had something to say to her.

      “This meeting… the whole company.”

      “I’ve never seen one before.”

      “How long have you been working here?”

      “Seven years in March.”

      The noise of a room of people all trying to talk over the din of everyone else’s voices was swept aside to a quiet hush of whispers as Dennis Cassidy pushed his way through the crowd to the portable podium in the front. Jean Kelley followed behind him clutching a stack of freshly copied papers tightly to her chest and sporting the same sour expression that she had an hour earlier.

      “Good afternoon,” he began, “I know everyone is anxious to get out of here for the holidays, so I will make it brief.”

      The majority of the people in the room smiled in agreement and the room became ominously silent.

      “We have decided to sell the company. On January 1st, 2001 we will be a subsidiary of National Warehouse Systems, Inc. We feel it’s a strategic alliance for our mutual benefit and…”

      Dennis Cassidy droned on for five minutes to a stunned room of absolutely silent listeners. As long as I had known about the Cassidy Corporation, NWS had been the enemy. I had heard of the shoddy workmanship, poor designs of their structures, and worse treatment of their subcontractors. Anytime there was an incident involving any warehouse structure in the United States, Dennis Cassidy would always say “it must have been built by NWS.” For years NWS had tried to develop market share in the New England area where Cassidy was firmly entrenched but they were never able to compete effectively against such an upstanding and reputable company as ours.

      Unfortunately, the wonderful people and astute business practices that made the position with Cassidy so attractive to me in the first place, also made them appealing to their competitors. NWS had adopted the philosophy of “If you can’t beat them, buy them” and had the resources and capital of a huge national corporation to carry it out.

      “Here’s Michael Jorgenson, the CEO of National Warehouse to tell you what it means to you.”

      Dennis stepped away from the podium and from the far door came a stocky man in his late 30’s bouncing sprightly across the commercial grade carpet. Michael Jorgenson stood behind the podium a few inches shorter and a few inches wider than Dennis Cassidy, in an oversized expensive suit designed to fit loosely over his barrel-shaped chest perched upon narrow hips and spindly legs. His slicked back hair glistened under the fluorescent lights as he bent over to ask Jean Kelley to begin passing out the papers she had been protecting.

      Jorgenson spoke for almost a half an hour alternately extolling the virtues of merging with NWS and assuring the room that their jobs were safe. He promised over and over, that come the New Year, it would be business as usual. Every word out of his mouth passed through a toothy smile that never changed as if it had been glued to his face. He was as phony as he was slick.

      The meeting ended with Dennis Cassidy returning to the podium to parrot Jorgenson’s assurance of job security. The final insult came as everyone rose to leave, still too shocked to say anything.

      “Merry Christmas everyone.”

      Dennis Cassidy disappeared through the doorway followed by his assistant whose persistent expression was now more understandable.

      In the hallway, small gatherings of people who worked in the same department found quiet corners to speculate on how the sellout would effect them.  It was a gauntlet of coworkers trying to remain in high holiday spirits and reassuring each other that they would be better off because a con man in a fancy suit said they would be.

      Dennis Cassidy was too caring and ethical a person to think that Jorgenson’s agenda was anything less than honorable. I, too, wanted to believe that this move could provide a more structured management layer to help control the company’s rapid expansion. It was, unfortunately, a naïve and unrealistic belief just like I wanted to believe that a merry Christmas should be possible but never would actually happen.

      I had seen too many companies merged, only to be summarily raided for their assets and infrastructure with the employees tossed aside as so much useless furniture. I had seen too many people like Michael Jorgenson who easily broke promises so the bottom line would benefit at the expense of the company.

      Elizabeth didn’t know what to make of my news and I wasn’t going to explain it to her two days before Christmas. I kept my apprehensions about my future to myself while we exchanged gifts and ate turkey and pretended that there was peace on earth and joy to the world.

     Many of the employees did get the big year-end bonuses they were hoping for right before they were let go. The roses that I had stopped to smell began to stink.

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