Bad Friday

     Murray Stinson didn't like Fridays. Mondays were better–he never had to lay anyone off on a Monday.

     Layoffs at MultiCorp happened on Fridays. The meetings were quick and soul crushing, usually scheduled for the end of the day, involved a fair amount of crying, the occasional flurry of invective, and left him feeling like a destroyer of worlds. It was for that reason that Bill Morris, Analyst, would be his final layoff. Ever. After nearly thirty years with the company, the destroyer of worlds would retire.

     Murray pressed the call button for the elevator and studied the poster on the wall next to the doors. LEE WILSON. MISSING. IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING HIS WHEREABOUTS, PLEASE CALL 917-555-9495. Beneath the text, the smiling, stubbled face of Lee Wilson, mail clerk, stared back at him. The poster had been up for a week. Lee had gone out for lunch and never returned, and Murray's favorite theory was that Lee had simply walked away and started a new life somewhere. Murray wished he'd had the guts to do that, to walk out into the sunshine, throw his tie in the garbage can, and drop off the face of the earth. He'd fantasized about opening up a little bar on a beach somewhere, where he would serve happiness to sunburned tourists instead of grief to overstressed, pasty-faced cubicle dwellers.

     The elevator doors opened, and Jim McKittrick, Vice-President of Sales, flashed a smile. "Murray."

     "Jim."

     "What floor?"

     "Ten."

     Jim pressed the button for ten, and the doors slid shut.

     "Bill Morris, huh?" Jim asked.

     Murray nodded.

     "He's going to play the discrimination card."

     "Probably. I can handle it."

     "Better you than me. I can't stop looking at it when I'm around him."

     "It wouldn't be a problem if he kept that sack on, but he won't."

     The elevator slowed and a chime sounded. A glowing red 8 filled the readout.

     "Good luck," Jim said and exited the car.

     The doors slid shut, and the elevator resumed its slow, rumbling climb. Luck, Murray thought. If he'd been lucky, Lewis Pike, who was barely thirty and had been stuck with Bill's portfolio because nobody else in human resources wanted it, wouldn't have called in sick, and he'd be down at his desk planning his retirement. Lewis was probably faking; kids had no work ethic, these days.

     The elevator chimed and the number 10 popped onto the readout. Murray turned left out of the elevator and walked down a row of empty offices. Most of the staff had been relocated to the lower floors when it was announced that the company would lease its upper floors as part of its Right Sizing Program. Only Bill Morris remained on ten: a hermit who needed to be kicked off his mountain.

     Murray reached the end of the hall and stopped in front of a closed door. It was strange that Bill kept his door closed when he was the only person on the entire floor, but then Bill was a bit of an anomaly. He knocked.

     "Come in."

     Murray turned the handle. The door opened with a click, and Bill Morris, seated behind a desk overloaded with thick binders and stacks of paper, frowned at him. "I've seen you around. HR?"

     "Yes."

     "On a Friday afternoon."

     "I'm afraid so."