“Change is fun! We want everyone to see RDC as a welcoming, exciting, fun company. Therefore, we’re going to schedule company events, like a kickball game and a picnic. Shoot, you guys don’t even have a holiday party. The best part of a corporate job is the Christmas extravaganza.”
No one on the Zoom call or in front of me is smiling.
The doughnut guy raises his hand. “Is this a mandatory picnic?”
“Well, uh…”
Unicorn Girl cuts in. “McCarthy, are you selling the company? Because this isn’t what I signed up for. This is some corporate BS.”
That sets off everyone.
Isaac tries frantically to mute the video call as people start yelling.
“No one is selling!” I try to shout over the din.
“I can’t believe I drove in for this shit,” one man complains.
“I thought we were having pizza.”
“I want chicken wings.”
“I have a certain way that I like to work.”
McCarthy’s employees crowd around me, yelling.
“Where’s this money coming from?”
“I thought we were getting a pay raise.”
“If I have to drive in, that sounds like a pay cut.”
“You MBA stooges, you’re all the same!” Doughnut Guy yells around a Boston cream.
“It’s that consultant,” one lady says in a rage, pointing at me. “They ruin everything.”
A head above the crowd, McCarthy is smug as he watches the carnage. He raises an eyebrow in my direction.
I give him a pleading look.
He finally has mercy on me.
“No one”—he grabs the microphone—“has to return to the office if they don’t want to. You know how I run my company. I let people work how they want to work and when they want to work. I don’t need my employees to stroke my ego. I need them to be productive. And I give bonuses instead of buying a bunch of plants that are going to die. We are not family. We are a team. You are paid to be here. I trust that you can act like adults.”
His employees nod.
“David.” He addresses the rude doughnut guy. “You like to work seventy-two hours then crash.”
“That—”
McCarthy shushes me.
“Carla, you like to come in early and leave at lunchtime.”
“I have a parrot.”
“You see? I’m here to make sure that you all have the working environment you need to be successful and use all of your brainpower. And I’ll go to bat for you. My philosophy is that the CEO is a glorified manager, and a good manager is a bulldozer who clears the road so you can do your work. And of course, no mandatory social events, or even optional ones.”
His employees still seem suspicious, and they grumble as McCarthy hands out doughnuts and offers encouraging words, asking his employees for project updates.
