Page 53 of Rich and Bossy

“Damn it,” I whisper, looking at the list of missed calls and text messages.

Most of them are from Campbell, asking to confirm times and stuff. She’d kill me if she knew where I am now. Not only that, she’d lose respect for me. I’m not sure which bothers me more.

The sound of Paxton’s happy humming drifts out from the shower. I’m so torn, looking down at my phone, wanting nothing more than to be with him right now. But one of us has to be the bigger person. One of us has to be an actual adult. If he can’t make the smart decisions, looks like it’s up to me.

Which is why I get dressed as fast as I can and run out of the apartment before he’s done showering.

It sucks.

Like literally sucks, because holy hell, we just work together in the bedroom.

But I have responsibilities. He has to understand that.

CHAPTER 13

Paxton

I’m at my desk,but I might as well be miles away. I haven’t stopped grinning like an idiot all morning, and I really need to stop before people around here get suspicious.

I don’t think they’d deduce who I’m smiling about, but they don’t need to know anything about my personal life.

I’m not surprised she decided to leave. A shower would be great, but I’m sure she had things to do today, the same way I did.

What a fucking shame this all has to be so complicated. Then again, I’d probably have never met her if she hadn’t ambushed me in that elevator. There are thousands of employees at that one warehouse. She could work here for forty years and there’s a good chance I’d have never met her.

If it were up to me, I would fix everything. I’d restructure the entire operations department, put an end to some of this. Everybody would get a raise, they’d stop being monitored, everybody would get more than enough time for breaks, extended maternity leave. I’d love to be able to go through each and every employee’s file and make sure they have everything they need, within reason, to make them happy.

It just doesn’t work that way. Especially now. The Minnesota warehouse is kind of like a test warehouse, where they try out new policies, and from what I hear, they’re really happy about the productivity there.

I asked around, and it’s getting ten percent more packages in and out, with a twenty percent reduction in staff to do it, with all the automation and the new robot tech. It’s great for shareholders, investors, executives. Fucking amazing, actually.

If those numbers are replicated across the whole company, it will make us unstoppable. The stock price will go through the roof, there will be gigantic dividends and bonuses. I will be out the fucking door the second I say, “Well, hold up guys. Maybe this isn’t so great after all.” Large investors don’t see our workers as people, no matter what our core values and PR statements say. We hired someone to come in and design the website and make us sound all family friendly, paint a good image. We give to charities around the area, but it’s all calculated just to make peoplethinkwe’re a good company, for tax write offs. Everyone does this. That’s how the game is played.

At the end of the day, it’s about numbers. Profit, stock prices, and if those don’t keep going up, they replace John and I with someone who makes those numbers go up. The board is so happy with the results from the Minnesota warehouse experiments, already, they will not tolerate any pushback on it whatsoever.

I wish I could get Hazel to understand. I actually don’t agree with a lot of this. I think it’s too far. My hands are tied. But at least I can still have some control, can attempt to steer things as lightly as possible, if I maintain the reins. They will hire a literal dictator to replace me.

Her and the other people over there aren’t thinking about this. All they think about is how bad it sucks now, and not how bad it will suck if John and I are forced out. It’s not like thedays when we controlled everything and we were private. We’re public, and a lot of the reason we are as big as we are, is because of the same people who want a return on their investment now.

It’s a fucking balancing act trying to keep everyone happy. It’s an impossible thing to do. I’m going to piss people off no matter what, but how could they expect me to give up control of something I started in a dorm room? It’s my life.

This was so much easier when those workers were just numbers on a spreadsheet. When you analyze numbers, it doesn’t tell you shit like, “Hey, this lady has a kid in the hospital. She’s struggling to put food on the table and her husband just got laid off. This guy is taking care of two disabled parents and has a chronically sick kid.”

No, the numbers just say, hey, this person produces x resources, and consumes y resources, and then it gives you a green or a red light. Asset or liability. Then you slowly shed the liabilities.

But now? Hazel’s humanizing everyone. I mean, I know they’re real people, but when you’re as big as we are, you have to make tough choices. Choices that are good for the company as a whole, not one small speck of sand on a beach.

Can you just ignore the shit we’re doing at that warehouse, though?

I asked around a little, and it’s true. They are having employees wear monitoring bracelets. IT fucking loves it. They’re getting all kinds of data to analyze about how people move through the warehouse. They make logistics flow better and they’re updating procedures to make us more productive.

It doesn’t seem as bad as Hazel made it out to be.

They said management gets sent the information, but it’s just to help them improve, not to discipline anyone. I don’t know. This shit makes my head hurt, thinking about it.

HR didn’t have any reports of people pissing into containers to help keep their numbers on par with what’s expected. Maybe they’re hiding them from me though?

Is Hazel just exaggerating things?

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