Fiduciary Duty (10 page)

Chapter 6. HR’s World

Once I got home, I called TR2 Nexis, the company that Gordo told me would handle the transfer of my 401-K and help me get into COBRA. TR2 Nexis told me was that they had nothing to do with rolling over 401-Ks into IRAs, and I had to call Bannerman, the company that administered M & O’s 401-K.

However, TR2 Nexis would be happy to help me move from the company’s health insurance to COBRA. COBRA was a legal mandate that allowed people covered by a company’s health insurance policy to stay on that health insurance policy for up to 18 months upon leaving the company. The catch, of course, was that the company no longer paid any part of the insurance costs. That meant insurance for the three of us would run about $1,100 a month, a tough nut to swallow given my new jobless status.

The benefit of COBRA is that you can’t be turned away. You pay the “group rates” that the company has negotiated with insurance providers. A family whose members are all healthy can expect to obtain a similar policy for less on the open market. Our problem was that H had a pre-existing condition: endometriosis. Endometriosis is a very painful condition in which uterine cells begin growing outside the uterus. It had come about as a result of the pregnancy which had been long and difficult, requiring six trips to the emergency room and culminating in 18 hours of labor interrupted by an emergency C-section. It hadn’t been easy on me, so I could only imagine what it felt like for H.

As painful as endometriosis was, whenever H talked about it, she made sure to say it was worth the pain, always glancing at Jeremy as she said it. H was a great mother. We had gotten married late – both of us were in our late thirties when we tied the knot. Getting married that late is difficult. We were both set in our ways, and we had the occasional argument as we learned to merge our individual behaviors and habits. But we were both pragmatic people and we loved each other very much. Marriage was the best thing that happened to me, and H told me it was the best thing that ever happened to her. Until Jeremy arrived, of course. Jeremy had been unexpected but welcome. And the day he was born was the happiest in our lives, even if it caused no end to H’s health problems.

Fortunately, there was something that could be done. A hysterectomy, or removal of the uterus eliminated endometriosis altogether. Not only would it end the pain, but it would also mean none of us had any pre-existing medical conditions any more.

H had been reluctant to take that step at first. Not that we planned on more children, given how difficult the pregnancy with Jeremy had been. I had a harder time imagining precisely how she felt about removing her uterus. The best I could come up with was the loss of a testicle, and that wasn’t exactly something I wanted to contemplate.

Still, during my last week at M & O, her pain had become excruciating. H’s OB-GYN, Dr. Hirawi, told her the time for half measures was over, and it was time to consider the hysterectomy. H was starting to lean in that direction and she had scheduled an appointment with Dr. Hirawi for the Friday two weeks hence.

But in the meantime, COBRA was our best option. The nice lady on the phone from TR2 Nexis told me I couldn’t sign up for COBRA as they hadn’t yet been informed by M & O that I had been separated – that was the euphemism – from the company. That made me an employee as far as they were concerned, and legally an employee couldn’t go on COBRA. She said M & O typically didn’t inform TR2 Nexis of a “separation” until 4 weeks after it had happened and nothing could be done until then.

Once M & O did inform them of the separation, I had 60 days to join COBRA, at which point the insurance would be reinstated retroactively. In the meanwhile, we would have no health insurance.

So we would have to wait. After I hung up, I told H. She wasn’t very happy about the retroactivity, and truth to tell neither was I, but there wasn’t much we could do.

My next call was to Bannerman, the company that handled M & O’s 401-K program. I wanted my 401-K rolled over into an IRA I held at a discount brokerage firm. Bannerman also hadn’t been informed of my separation. That euphemism, apparently, was getting around.

After making those calls, I started looking for jobs. When you’re looking for a job, everyone tells you to network. There is, supposedly, a “hidden job market” where jobs aren’t actually posted but which accounts for the greater part of new hires. That may even be true, but if it is I never found it. And I wasn’t successful a networking either. In the month before my “separation” became effective, I had contacted almost everyone I could think of, even people I hadn’t heard from in years. H had contacted even more people on my behalf. I got a fair amount of commiseration, and some less-than-useful tips, but not one pointer in the direction of anything that might be a real, honest to goodness job.

I had also posted my resume on a number of job boards. That resulted in a lot of calls. Unfortunately, none of the calls I got were useful. In the month since I turned down the company’s offer for reassignment, I had gotten twelve calls from insurance companies who thought I would make a great candidate to sell insurance. Eight calls offered me the opportunity to sell financial advice. Three companies contacted me about open secretarial positions. Additionally, a fellow with a strong Indian accent had called three times in the past week to confirm that I had no experience drilling for natural gas. Each time I told him that I did not, in fact, have experience drilling for natural gas, and each time he assured me he would pass on the information to his manager for a job that they were supposedly trying to fill in Cleveland.

But the real time drain was the process of applying for jobs itself. The modern, second decade in the new millennium way to apply for jobs is through online “applicant tracking” software. While the software purportedly “helps” you by reading information off of your resume, my experience was that one could spend as long correcting the software’s errors as it would take to enter all the information manually. And of course, if one’s history included more than one job, more than one degree, more than one skill set and more than one language, it could take forty five minutes to an hour per form.

Worse, the software had a tendency to be buggy. I noticed that on about ten percent of the applications something went wrong. The software refused to accept a key piece of information, did not allow the user to submit the application, or simply froze up altogether. In the first month, I had applied – or rather, started filling out applications – for 106 jobs. Fourteen of them crashed before the end of the application, resulting in a complete loss of the information I had submitted. Worse, eleven of the fourteen crashes occurred literally on the last page of the application.

Of course, even when one filled out the forms in full, there was no guarantee that anyone would even look at one’s resume and cover letter. I had filled out two applications for positions literally straight out of my resume: a Master’s degree in electrical engineering, experience with both ATMs and telecom switches, fluency in Portuguese and Spanish, and in one case, they even asked for an MBA as well. All in all, the positions called for what I happened to know was a very rare combination of skills and experience, and one that I happened to have. So I was surprised that I didn’t get a call or even an e-mail. I was even more surprised to see the positions reposted a few weeks later. I applied for both a second time. A month later, both positions were reposted again. I would never get a response from either company about my application.

At the time, stories about the job market in the news tended to follow one of two memes. According to one of them, hundreds of people were applying to every open job. The other meme said that companies were having a tough time finding qualified candidates for open positions. I concluded both memes were probably true but that the news was missing a key part of the story, namely that companies, or their HR departments at least, were incapable of recognizing qualified applicants when such applicants came in the door, or through their web portals.

Some friends suggested one could bypass the whole system by getting a headhunter. But I wasn’t having much more luck with headhunters either. Headhunters, aka, executive recruiters, get paid by companies looking for employees, but in the end, they, too, bring the applicants back to HR. A few of them called me back after I submitted a resume to discuss my background, but the simple fact is that the job market was very slow. For jobs mid-way up the corporate chain of command and higher/above, which is where I was looking, companies often move slowly even in the best of times.

At the time, I had concluded part of the problem was that while some companies I had dealt with had very strong HR departments, other companies used their HR departments as a dumping ground for incompetent or dishonest people such as Greg Farmer at M & O. When people like him were in charge of the first screen of job seekers, not to mention doing background checks and advising harried hiring managers about the relative quality of potential candidates, bad hiring decisions and poor morale were inevitable. Over time, an entire organization could be poisoned.

I wondered how much of an advantage start-ups had over established companies relative to the poor hiring practices at the HR department of larger companies. Part of me went so far as to wonder whether this might have anything to do with the United States’ loss of prominence over the last few decades.

But that was idle speculation. No matter what was happening with HR, I had to crack the code and find a job. And sooner was clearly better than later. I went back to filling out applications.

Chapter 7. Passing Time

A week later I called TR2 Nexis again. I was still an M & O employee according to their records, which meant that I still couldn’t sign up for health insurance. A call to Bannerman produced the same result: their records also indicated I was still working at M & O. Both companies were expecting M & O to update my status in about three weeks, and that no changes could be made until then.

A week later, I called again. There was no change in my status during that time.

I didn’t think much of it for a few days until H had the appointment with the surgeon about endometriosis. I went with her. At first everything was routine. The receptionist took our insurance card. I explained our COBRA situation. The receptionist said it would probably be OK, but that we should be prepared to cover the cost of the visit ourselves at least until COBRA kicked in, retroactively.

Then we saw the doctor. At the end of the session, we had agreed that H should have surgery three weeks later. We all felt that by then the insurance situation should be cleared up. The surgeon said he would have preferred to do the surgery sooner, but he had dealt with COBRA purgatory before. Six months earlier, he had done surgery on a patient in the same transition period, and the insurance company was still insisting they weren’t going to pay.

Two weeks later, I called Bannerman and was told that yes, they had been notified that I was no longer an employee. Thus, I was free to close out my M & O 401-K and roll my money into an IRA which I did.

Then I called TR2 Nexis to see about transferring my family into COBRA. They too had been informed that I was no longer an employee. However, according to the records M & O had provided them, I had not availed myself of the company’s health insurance and thus was ineligible for COBRA. When I insisted the information was incorrect, TR2 Nexis “opened up a ticket” and told me they’d call M & O to clear things up.

A few days later, I got a call from TR2 Nexis. They had gotten confirmation from the benefits department of M & O that I had, indeed, been an employee and had, indeed, availed myself of health insurance. But the records M & O had provided indicated that I had no dependents, and thus, my wife and son weren’t eligible for COBRA. I called, and two days later the issue was cleared up, except that according to information that M & O had provided them, neither of my dependents had availed themselves of health insurance which made them ineligible for COBRA. The back and forth went on for two weeks. Every time one error was corrected, another surfaced, and each time it was enough to prevent me from insuring my family. Sometimes the mistake was just bizarre: in one case, M & O claimed I had two spouses and no son.

Meanwhile, H’s surgery had to be postponed, first for a week, and then again as the insurance wasn’t available. By then, H was in terrible pain, but she was doing her best to keep a brave face. Still, every so often I could see her shaking.

The pain eventually proved to be too much and H decided to do something about the insurance situation herself. She just didn’t tell me about it. So that morning, as I was applying for jobs, H walked into the room holding Jeremy and said, “I have a couple errands to run. Why don’t we have the leftover lasagna when I get back?”

I responded, “In restaurants they call it twice baked. They charge extra for it like that.” I grinned, thinking of Jeremy’s tendency to end up with strings of tomato sauce-covered cheese hanging from his chin.

H put Jeremy down, and they walk toward the door. For an instant, before they walked out, both of them turned around and smiled at me. Jeremy said, “Bye-bye, Daddy.”

I smiled back, and say “Bye-bye, Jeremy. Bye-bye, H.”

That was it. The last time I saw them alive. Later that day, after the policeman came and asked me to identify their bodies at the morgue, I learned H had gone to M & O to insist they clear up matters once and for all. The letter, the first one telling me telling me I had to remit half of the severance payment, came later that day, though I wouldn’t see it for about a week.

Between M & O’s security personnel, a UPS driver who happened to be delivering packages at the time, Gordo’s own confession, and M & O’s internal surveillance tapes, the police easily pieced together what happened. It was the sort of thing dreamed up by a Hollywood scriptwriter, just one step removed from a character walking into an empty elevator shaft. But in the real world, every so often someone does step into an empty elevator shaft, and in the real world, my wife and son died a clichéd death.

Somehow – perhaps because the guards manning the front desk recognized her, perhaps because she just looked like she knew where she was going, or perhaps because she was carrying a child and looked determined, she was able to walk right past security and up the elevator to Gordo’s office on the third floor. When she introduced herself, apparently intending to get the COBRA issue straightened out, Gordo laid into her, calling her a thief and demanding we return the company’s money.

There was no common ground, no room for discussion. H had no idea what Gordo was talking about and Gordo, well, Gordo was desperate. As he later told the cops, this wasn’t the first time, or the second, that he’d made the same mistake and his boss had made it clear that Gordo’s job was on the line if a he didn’t “fix” the problem.

Whether Gordo was actually expecting H to write out a check to the company at that very moment, or simply to hand over wads of cash wasn’t clear. Even Gordo couldn’t explain what he was thinking when questioned by the police a few hours later. What is clear is that after about half a minute of abuse, H got up and walked out of his office, toward the stairs. Now, the bottom four floors of the M & O building resemble nothing so much as a mid-range hotel, though there is no swimming pool smelling of chlorine in the central atrium. All the offices on those floors are along the walls. Above the remaining ten floors have the more standard office building – cubicle farm configuration.

As H and Jeremy fled Gordo’s office for the elevator, he followed, bellowing for security. In response to his yelling, two security guards headed up, one by stairs and one by elevator. Twenty or thirty seconds later, H and Jeremy found themselves surrounded.

“Detain them,” Gordo yelled. All the witnesses agree he actually used the word “detain.”

Hemmed in on all sides, H fumbled in her purse for the mace she always carried. Meanwhile, with all the commotion, and seeing his mother flustered, Jeremy started bawling. As one of the guards reached for him, H snatched him up protectively and yelled, “Don’t you dare touch him!”

At the same moment, Gordo tried to grab H from behind, bumping her off-balance. That pushed Jeremy over H’s head and past the rail. H still had a grip on him, and would have pulled him back to safety but for the fact that between his weight and his desperation, Gordo had a lot of momentum in him and he barreled into H’s back. Had she let go of Jeremy, H wouldn’t have gone over the rails as well, but obviously, she did not. H died when her head hit the polished teak floor three stories below, still protecting Jeremy by shielding his body from the worst of the impact. Jeremy landed on his back, and broke his spine in three places. One piece of his spine went through his left lung. He survived for another forty – two minutes, long enough for the paramedics to get him to the emergency room. Mercifully, he was unconscious for most of those forty-two minutes.

My first instinct, when I saw my beautiful wife and my wonderful baby boy broken and lifeless on a metal table was to go the M & O building and kill everyone. At that moment, I would not have left a person alive in the building. I wanted revenge, an eye for an eye, and then some. My fists clenched. A part of me noticed, as I had that thought, that the coroner was backing away and I took a small amount of satisfaction that a complete stranger was afraid of my rage.

Then, very quickly, it was gone. I calmed down a little bit. Even in my despair, I understood that revenge wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t help H or Jeremy, and it wouldn’t help me. I had lost my wife and my son and nothing I could ever do would bring them back.

Over the next few days, I began to realize that there were specific people at fault for the chain of events that killed my wife and son. Those people should pay a price for their actions. It wasn’t a need for revenge, it wasn’t even anger. It was, however, a realization that a basic, implicit contract between people had been broken. The contract had been broken on purpose, actively rather than passively, by commission as opposed to by omission, and with no thought given to what horrible consequences might result.

Many decisions had to come together for H and Jeremy to lie bloody and broken in M & O’s atrium lobby. First, the company had to have brought me out to Ohio under false pretenses, having made promises it clearly had not intended to fulfill. Later, the company had to avoid allowing me to work, and then punish me for it. Later still, the company had to make it impossible for me to get health insurance. And, of course, there were the events that took place M & O’s headquarters, the events that directly killed H and Jeremy. But not for any of those actions, H and Jeremy would still be here.

But it wasn’t the company that had made those choices. A company is nothing but the people who make it up and the people who own it. A company chooses nothing and does nothing. People make choices and do things. People had made the choices that led to the deaths of my wife and son.

Those who were responsible, who had made those decisions, were unworthy of the power to make choices that could affect other people. If they were so callous with my family, they could, nay, they would be and were just as callous with other people, and with equally tragic results. Destroying their ability to do such damage would be a public service. H had always been a crusader, a pursuer of just causes. Following through on that public service would be my way to honor my wife and on. More than that, it was my fiduciary duty to H and Jeremy.

But who was responsible? Not the guards. They were pulled into a volatile situation too quickly for them to realize what was happening. Gordo clearly bore some responsibility, and my experience with him said he took pleasure in the company’s screwing me over to boot. But Gordo, despite not being a good person, was acting out of desperation – his livelihood was at stake. True, it was partly his own incompetence. The decisions that killed my family may have been precipitated by different people, but in the end, these were people following directives or procedures that came from the same place. The responsibility worked its way up the chain of command, to the CEO who made the decisions, the board of directors that enabled him, and the shareholders who empowered him. But most shareholders were small potatoes. There were only a few very large shareholders whose voices mattered.

But even then, I wasn’t being precise enough. Yes, the company’s officers, the board, and the large shareholders were responsible for the broken promises made to me over the past few years. But the death of my wife and son, that wouldn’t have happened without the merger. The merger, in turn, had required strong support by the CEO, his top officers, and the board. It also required a lot of “aye” votes. Those who cast large blocks of votes in favor of the merger, they had made the chain of events that killed H and Jeremy possible. They had killed my wife and son, as surely as if they had planned it. They did it for profit, and they didn’t much care whom it would affect or how. In fact, that was a generous assessment – the merger, after all, had been justified on the basis of sticking it to the employees. And they had certainly stuck it to my family.

And so I had my targets, the people who directly or indirectly made the decisions that killed my family in order to earn just a little bit more profit. I resolved that those people, those people would pay.