Max Barry

Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged; that is, she is a sales representative.

How she became manager remains a mystery. But there are only two possibilities. One is that Senior Management mistook her tirades for drive and a commitment to excellence. The other is that they knew Sydney was a paranoid psychopath, and that’s exactly the kind of person they want in management.

Like every other department in Zephyr, Training Sales has an open floor plan, which means everyone works in a sprawling cubicle farm except the manager, who has an office with a glass internal wall, across which blinds are permanently drawn. Open-plan seating, it has been explained in company-wide memos, increases teamwork, and boosts productivity. Except in managers, that is, whose productivity tends to be boosted by—and the memos don’t say this, but the conclusion is inescapable—corner offices with excellent views.

“Tough day?” General Li said.

John sighed. “Just a couple of Liaisons making trouble. Things were much simpler when I didn’t have to listen to other people, Li. Democracy is a pain in the ass.”

Li sat. “In the military, we have always had a healthy disrespect for democracy.”

“I can see why,” John said. “All right. Now let’s talk about tanks.”

People talk about bedroom eyes; well, Megan has the whole suite.

She dabs at her eyes. “Jesus, you nearly killed me.” She takes a deep breath. “Whoo. Okay. Tell me how you justify buying a new pair of shoes.”

“What?”

“When there are starving people in Africa, what kind of person spends two hundred bucks on shoes? See, once you buy into that paradigm, it’s a bottomless pit. You can never feel good about yourself while there’s anybody in the world poor or hungry, which there always is, Jones, and has been since the dawn of time, so you feel guilty and hypocritical all the time. I’m consistent. I admit I don’t care. You want me to reassure you that Alpha is ethical, but I’m not going to do it, because ethics is bullshit. It’s the spin we put on our lives to justify what we do. I say, be big enough to live without rationalizations.”

The Infrastructure Control manager is a short, muscular man with a dark beard. He is an oddity in Zephyr Holdings: a person who started on the floor and was promoted through hard work. This makes other managers uncomfortable. The idea that you can get ahead through sheer competence, and not politicking, backstabbing, fleeing impending disasters, and clambering on board imminent successes, undermines everything they know.

“You.” He stares at me for a second, then shakes his head. “You told me the truth.”

I don’t know what to say. “Yeah.”

“Scat,” he says, a pained expression on his face, “haven’t you learned anything?”

mktg case study #13: mktg magazines

GIVE AWAY FREE CRAP (PREFERABLY ADVERTISER-SUPPLIED FREE CRAP). DOESN’T MATTER HOW WORTHLESS OR USELESS IT IS: SALES WILL RISE. STRANGE BUT TRUE.

“We’ll refer the incident to the Government, and they will—”

“The Government? The enemy kicks you in the balls and you want to fill out a complaint form? You think the Government’s even on our side?”

“It’s all responsibility and no control,” 6 says. “The classic path to failure.”

The whole morning feels very strange until I realize that for the first time in a long while, 6 and I don’t have anything to do. We have the whole weekend to kill: no deadlines, no last-minute struggles, no panic. It almost feels illegal.