A sorbet affair

Each of us has an embarrassing incident in our past that haunts us forever. I have a list of them, and the memory of such events comes back at odd times with no apparent connection to current experiences.  The sorbet affair is a case in point.

When I was a college student I worked one summer as a waitress in a weekend resort outside Cleveland. It was a big sprawling place with several restaurants, a banquet hall, and multiple bars. The main dining room featured an extensive menu which was a challenge for new employees to master. One of the specials was a five course meal with choice of entree which included a palette cleanser course of grapefruit sorbet.

One night as fate would have it, the owner of the resort was seated in my section. I had been working for about two weeks, and was getting my rhythm, but when another server told me who the man was, it shook me up. I worked hard at keeping up with my other tables while lavishing special attention on this one.

A particular challenge in waitressing in those days was complying with the labor laws while insuring that you got good tips. Employees could only work for three hours straight after which they had to take a fifteen minute break. You may never have waited tables, but you have been a customer. Can you imagine being abandoned by your server for fifteen minutes, while you stared at an empty coffee cup or waited for your check? Of course, we punched out, kept right on serving our customers and punched back in so that our tip income was not placed in jeopardy. On busy nights, we sent one waitress to the time clock with several punch cards. This was against the rules and risky, but efficient. The time clock problem was compounded at this particular resort because the device was located at the far end of the complex for the convenience of the cleaning and maintenance staff. I guess this particular business owner was more of a hotel man than a restaurant man, because he was rather inconsiderate of his wait and kitchen staff. It was quite a sprint to the far side of the resort and back.

It was my turn to make the run. I was young and I made good time, but the trip disrupted my concentration on the five course meal I was serving to the big boss and his companion. I forgot his sorbet course.

When the man settled his check, he called me over and pointed out my error. I apologized profusely and asked him if he would like me to bring the sorbet, but he declined. What I really wanted to say was that if he hadn't placed the blasted time clock in the next county, he would have gotten his sorbet at the proper time, but it was an age when you didn't make excuses to your elders. I thought I was going to lose my job.

Perhaps it was remembering the impact the punch clock regulations had on me personally that has brought this incident to mind. We have been hearing a lot about regulations and their unintended consequences in the news lately.  Or perhaps it was the nature of my exchange with the restaurant owner. Several times in the past month I have been the victim of some sort of failure or mistake when I have bought a product or service. In each case there was no apology whatsoever. In one case, the error was a medication error. A pharmacy gave my mother a medication that was not the intended drug and had another person's name on the vial. Mother has macular degeneration, so I check all her medications. When I returned the package to the pharmacy, the drug was exchanged, but despite the fact that four people assisted me, including the chief pharmacist, there was no apology. I guess saying, "Sorry we almost killed your mom," is hard to wrap your mouth around. They all wanted to see whose employee number was on the receipt to learn who was in trouble.

Today as a consumer I feel like I am being treated as a three dimensional statistic rather than a human being. The idea that the pharmacy's mistake had inconvenienced me, since I had to drive across town needlessly, did not even register with the folks at the counter. They did get the part about the drug switch being life threatening, but only to their careers. There was no empathy for a person who might have lost her mother. Somewhere along the line, the relationship between the helper and the helped has evaporated. Is it the 'me' generation? I'm sure modern pharmacies have their version of the punch clock problem, but I still wish people would acknowledge mistakes and apologize. It would make for a better world.

Betrayal in the Workplace

In my mystery, A POINTED DEATH, the heroine, Nola Billingsley, is betrayed by an employee who works in the start-up company she founded. Roger Chen takes advantage of Nola and her colleagues during a time when they are extremely vulnerable. He embezzles from their dwindling reserves of capital when they are distracted by a web developer problem. Taken by surprise, Nola pulls herself together quickly and gets rid of the bad egg before he can do any more damage to her fragile enterprise. Of course, Nola takes Roger's crime personally; she is a founder of the company, and the creep's actions harm the reputation of the firm just as they are beginning to attract significant business.

Unfortunately, crime in the workplace is not an uncommon occurrence. Beyond frank malfeasance, we also face a lot of behaviors that destroy the atmosphere of trust so necessary to a productive work environment or shatter the willingness of employees to work together as a team. It is worthwhile planning in advance what you would do if confronted with a situation like Nola's.

When you first discover that an employee or colleague has betrayed you, you experience shock and disbelief. Nobody wants to accept that they have been working day after day right next to a crook or a liar. It offends our sense of safety and well being. What happens next is akin to what we experience when told we have a terminal disease. We go through the five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining and depression, followed by acceptance. The important thing is that you have to move through this process quickly so that you can get to where you need to be as a responsible employee, supervisor or manager -- the proactive phase where you analyze and act to protect yourself, other employees and the business.

First, it is important to analyze the betrayal and assign it to the right category: 1) law breaking and/or significant damage or threat to the operation of the business; 2) counterproductive behaviors such as acute or chronic petty damage or misappropriation of resources, reducing productivity, ignoring or violating policies and procedures; 3) chronic badmouthing, backstabbing and rumor mongering that destroys trust and undermines teamwork; or 4) personal animosity directed at you.

The first category requires prompt legal action and involves the assistance of various internal professionals, including the security department, and possibly law enforcement. The second and third necessitate the assistance of the human resources department. People in these categories need to be processed out the door, utilizing the proper procedures established by corporate policy. The fourth category might involve the human resources department and your supervisor, or it might be something you can resolve yourself by confronting the individual. It is important to be fact-based and objective. Escalating a personal matter between you and a coworker to business threat status is going to reflect negatively on you. Take a deep breath, step back and take stock.

The purpose of this post is not to provide and HR lecture, but to lay out a playing field for authors who are trying to create authentic workplace plots. The wonderful opportunity for writers presented by the discussion above, is that human beings don't always use their heads. Real people act in haste, blow things out of proportion, get angry, indulge in revenge fantasies and fail to call in the experts. Even the cool-headed folks can be thwarted by other parties to the process who don't follow through or follow their own agendas.

As you create your characters and your plots, you can achieve high drama or hilarious comedy by exploiting the typical betrayals unfolding every day in the modern office. With skill, planning and a little research, you can stir up a cauldron of conflict that will mesmerize your readers.

The Real Thieves in the Workplace

My mystery, A POINTED DEATH, centers on a nefarious creep named Roger Chen, who embezzles from the heroine, Nola Billingsley's startup company. Of course, the theft of money, goods and raw materials from corporations of all sizes is a huge problem. Just ask any insurance agent. But stealing can involve many things that have value to a company. In fact, the theft of intangibles probably has greater impact on businesses than the people with their hands in the cash drawer. While the damage from this type of thievery is harder to gauge, it is nonetheless significant. 

Writers who wish to portray authentic work environments in their books and short stories would do well to weave into their plots some of the following 'theft' behaviors:

1. Time. That guy in the next cubicle who plays Internet poker all day, is stealing time.

2. Information. Companies often pay thousands for subscriptions and industry reports. Copying them for a friend is a no-no.

3. Secrets/Know-how. Competitors would just love to know the formula for Coke, or those special tricks that go into making a perfect surfboard.

4. Strategy/Plans. Product launch strategies involve elements of timing and placement. Letting the cat out of the bag, can reduce effectiveness.

5. Ideas/Creativity. Companies pay for top talent who can dream up fresh approaches from Super Bowl ads to compute software. misappropriating their work product is intellectual property theft and is the same as a writer plagiarizing another writer's work.

6. Expertise. Having a good mentor is one thing. Pestering her for advice every other minute makes you a leach.

7. Resources. All those pads of paper, pens, rulers and coffee cups aren't free. They may be small, but if enough people walk out the door with them, it adds up. And using the copier to print the manuscript of your novel is abusing a privilege.

8. Reputation. Workers often engage in behaviors that jeopardize their employers good reputation. Being disrespectful to customers is an example. Bad-mouthing the company's products in front of customers is another.

9. Safety. Engaging in unsafe behavior at the workplace put other workers at risk, and can saddle an employer with medical and damages expenses and higher insurance costs.

10. Health/Environment. People who smoke in the building against company policy are exposing other employees to secondhand smoke. Workers who fail to observe recycling practices are costing the company money.

11. Civility/Decorum. Troublemakers create a negative atmosphere that lowers productivity.

12. People. Engaging in behaviors that make other employees want to dust off their resumes and get a job elsewhere, is robbing a business of its most important asset, its people. Workers or supervisors who engage in sexual harassment or discrimination poison the work environment, chase good people away and put their employers in legal jeopardy. Bullies, rumor mongers and back stabbers do so as well.

When you develop a character who is a manager or a supervisor, you might throw employees in her way who are engaging in some of these behaviors. The bad folks become obstacles to her achieving her goals. Good stories are always about conflict, and today's workplace is full of it, both petty and profound.

Related articles

• A Human Resources Guide to Predicting Workplace Deviance (human-resources-management.suite101.com)
• Different Types of Workplace Harassment (brighthub.com)
• 9 reviews of Stealing from the employer (rateitall.com)
• Why Happiness at Work is Declining (psychologytoday.com)

Setting: Dealing With the Modern Office

My new book, A POINTED DEATH, has a biotech consultant for a heroine. Nola Billingsley has to spend a lot of time in the offices of her clients, and, to solve the murder, she has to get around these workplaces with imagination and stealth! While I was writing the book, I had to overcome a problem -- today's places of business, even high tech business, are pretty boring. The cookie cutter sameness of the contemporary workplace presents a challenge for all writers of modern fiction. After hours of trying to enliven a description of that ubiquitous cubicle, with its computer, monitor, keyboard, phone, and file cabinet, any writer can be forgiven for fantasizing about a village smithy or a medieval dungeon. Even if one of your characters works from home, her office in the back bedroom contains pretty much the same equipment. Moreover, whether your characters are supervisors or telemarketers their work process and output looks and sounds much the same.

When your plot involves white collar workers, you are faced with the cubicle dilemma. You can't make everything happen over lunch or while the characters commute on the subway. The action moves forward based on conflicts that arise in the workplace, so you have to spend time there to lend credibility to your story. How can a writer put life into these settings? Here are some suggestions, I came up with while writing A POINTED DEATH:

1. Focus on the details. Every industry has its own artifacts and tschotskes.

2. Develop the culture. Apple and Goldman Sachs have unique corporate cultures.

3. Capture the language. Don't overdo it, but latch on to a little jargon to spruce up you dialog.

4. Goals and norms. Firms have objectives, employees have performance reviews on the horizon. What do the characters 'want' in business terms?

5. Find the special taboos. Every industry has them. In science-based operations, falsifying data is verboten.

6. Play up office politics, gossip and rumors. Each company has a Chicken Little who spreads misinformation about layoffs and changes in the benefits package.

7. Exploit interpersonal relationships. You don't have to write a sexual harassment incident into every chapter, but you do want to reveal interdependences among your characters. Chuck coaches the soccer team and Elise's kid in one of his players. Elise tips Chuck off when their boss is going to be out of the office.

8. Bring the outdoors indoors. Unlike its counterpart in St. Paul, an office building in Pasadena won't have a coat rack jammed with parkas.

9. Let the competition win. Every business has a built-in conflict with the competitor breathing down its neck. Increase the tension by having the rival introduce a hot new product.

10. Exploit individual foibles. Janie's keyboard is encrusted with crumbs and smears because she has a snacking problem, and fastidious Ramona cannot bring herself to touch it. Ah, but the information Ramona needs to expose Brent's treachery is on Janie's computer.

I hope this list helps you on your next project!

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Related articles

• What your cubicle says about you? (cnn.com)