Severance Package Read Online Free PDF Page B

If you do, all of you will be shot. My marksmanship is excellent. Any of you familiar with my operational background will know this to be true.”
    Part of Jamie wanted to believe this was a charade, or a movie, or a bad dream, but all his senses relayed the truth:
This was real.
He also had the feeling that he was really the only one taking David seriously. Everyone else at the table looked like they were still waiting for the punch line, the moral. But Jamie realized: His boss wasn’t telling a joke or a parable. He was offering them a choice.
    Drink poison champagne and die.
    Or get shot in the head.
    Jamie believed it as much as he believed he was sitting in that conference room chair. As much as he believed that outside the sweeping conference room windows, Philadelphia stewed in the humid air of early morning.
    “You’re insane,” Jamie said.
    David looked at him with pity. “I didn’t want to invite you in this morning, Jamie. Swear to God I didn’t. You’re our press guy. I even said to them, Why the press guy? You’re too good a press guy. You approached your job with zeal. But alas, you looked at some things you shouldn’t have seen.”
    “What are you talking about? What things?”
    “Your wife and newborn son will believe you died in an office fire,” David said. “They will be taken care of.”
    “David,
please,”
Amy said. “What are you doing? Does anybody else know you’re doing this?”
    “Yeah this is
so
not funny.”
    “I’m going to find Ethan.”
    The shuffling of chairs.
    The nervous exhalation of air.
    “I’m going with you.”
    “SIT.”
    David, commanding.
    It worked.
    Everyone froze.
    “I’ve given you all a dignified way out,” he said. “I suggest you take it.”
    No one said anything until Stuart, looking around with a goofy smile on his face, stood up.
    “You got it, boss.”
    Stuart knew what this was.
    At a previous job—a few years before he was recruited to work here—the HR department decided it was worth the money to send some of the sales associates on an Outward Bound trip. Three days in the woods, learning to tie knots and trust each other.
    The penultimate activity: backwards free fall. Go ahead, let yourself tilt back. Free yourself from doubt and worry. Your coworkers will catch you.
    Stuart did it, but as he was falling, all he could think about were the times at the Applebee’s, when he would try to make conversational inroads, but everyone would look at him like he had a gushing head wound and they didn’t want to get blood on their suits. But he allowed himself to drop backwards anyway, allowed himself to trust.
    As the Outward Bound leader—a gruff guy who looked like Oliver Stone—had promised, his coworkers had indeed caughthim. When he looked up, Stuart saw that nobody was looking down at him, the human being in their hands. Still, no matter; they had caught him. Stuart received a certificate and a small pin, and he noted the achievement on his résumé.
    So that’s what this was. David’s weird version of a trust game. The gun was a prop—probably a flare gun. Maybe even one of those lighters you find at Spencer’s. The talk about elevators and windows was meant to simulate something … like a hostile environment, just like they’d encountered in Outward Bound. There’s no way out. You have nothing but trust. Trust in your coworkers. Trust in your boss.
    This was a front company for the government, but it was still a company, and the more Stuart thought about it, the more he knew it was a test of trust. To see who was executive material and who wasn’t.
    Stuart took the bottle of champagne and poured three fingers’ full into a clear plastic wineglass.
    “Stu,” Jamie said. “Wait.”
    Stuart waved his hand, as if he were batting away a fly. Jamie was just jealous he hadn’t taken the initiative.
    “Very wise move, Stuart,” David said.
    Stuart splashed in some of the Tropicana, and he couldn’t help himself. He was beaming.