A few weeks later, his department sent a second report to Human Resources stating that they needed funds for additional lower level employees and that they were overstaffed in Chemical Engineers. Human Resources cogitated on the problem for an additional month before they were able to come up with the solution to the overstaffing problem. Howard’s job was eliminated forthwith in a brilliant stroke of fiduciary responsibility. Two weeks of severance pay, a letter of recommendation in his hand and a check for his retirement fund was all that Howard got for ten years of loyal labor for the company. Employees, even salaried ones, are considered to be disposable non-capital equipment by modern industry. Howard was out the door as fast as they could humanly process the paperwork for his separation.
A month later, the manager who had recommended his termination admitted his error and pleaded with Human Resources to restore the position Howard had occupied. True to form, the Human Resources Department denied his request, citing the stacks of documentation that the managers of several departments had submitted to rid themselves of Howard’s mephitic presence. The manager of Howard’s department made due by forcing several other engineers to take work home to compensate for the lost production time. As salaried workers, the chemical engineers were not entitled to compensation for the extra work at home. They performed their additional duties grudgingly, roundly cursing the day Howard had been born. His colleagues would not have permitted his return if a miracle at Lourdes had made him smell like a field of roses at dawn. Their attitude was similar to the villagers at the fabled Castle Frankenstein, i.e., they would have greeted him with sharpened farm implements and blazing torches had it been within their power. His standing in the company had sunk somewhere between an average axe murderer’s reputation for community service and the Devil incarnate.
Not coincidentally, a few months later the exhausted engineers made a number of disastrous mistakes on their work at home that were not discovered until several worker’s lives were lost. The department who had lost the workers clamored for more accurate engineering reports on their projects before they risked any more personnel. The Human Resources department took a firm stance on hiring another Chemical Engineer. Human Resources maintained that they didn’t need more people; the extensive documentation provided by several departments proved that the affected department had all the engineering help it needed. The fact that lives were lost made no difference to the company’s Personnel department.
The company’s insurance paid the death benefits to the worker’s families and its lawyers successfully fended off multiple negligence lawsuits by the relatives of the deceased workers. The State’s Tort Laws had been recently re-legislated to prevent frivolous litigation against productive corporations by the pubic. The families’ lawyers were hamstrung by the new laws and fell one by one to the company’s skilled counselors as they tried the redress the harm caused by the company’s gross negligence. Upper management took little notice of the legal actions levied against the company. Under the new State laws, there was no possibility of their success. The worker’s deaths didn’t affect the bottom line; the court costs incurred had been proactively budgeted for the quarter in case the need arose. Besides, the company’s lawyers were salaried.
Howard immediately went to the only other waste disposal company in the area and applied for a position. Although they were fully staffed, they were able to find a place in their company for someone of his obvious talents. They hired him as an outside consultant. They needed an idea man to help them hide the illegally dumped waste from their less than totally ethical clients. The management of the company agreed among themselves that it would not be necessary for Howard to interact with their customers since he wasn’t a regular employee. If there was an investigation, it would be easy to conceal his relationship to the company. They would send him out to potential sites and make recommendations on how the site could be best utilized for dumping without laborious and expensive preparation. The company had no interest in constructing high technology multilayered disposal sites that required constant surveillance and maintenance. The company’s specialty was one-shot, quickie in-and-out operations conducted with a maximum of security and a minimum of safety for either the workers or the environment. Once the hazardous materials had been entombed, they were hastily concealed and all evidence of the operation was erased. Howard’s job was to tell them how to exploit the land’s natural features to conceal the illegal waste dump and to maximize the volume of materials that could be hidden. Once he made his report, his involvement with the dump was essentially over. They would bring in their earthmovers manned by illegal immigrants and rapidly excavate a pit. Then the materials would be brought in on trucks with misleading advertising on the sides and emplaced in the pit before the toxin-engorged hole was covered over with the excavated top soil and the bare earth was seeded with a mutated grass that rapidly covered the evidence of their sins. To the casual observer, they were an environmentally conscious landscaping company that had been hired to prepare a site for commercial development. Cleverly designed and attractive wooden signs attested to their fictitious plans and helped maintain the illusion. After a few months, a trusted employee would be sent out to remove the signs as if the deal had fallen through and the proposed commercial development had been canceled.