But hands start going up, one by one. Morgan’s and Al’s and Sarah’s. Rebecca’s, tentatively, then Carol’s too. All the accountants, Grace and Sam from Sales, some people on other teams I haven’t seen since school.
I twist backward to look at Greg, who’s been pacing the whole time and is once again hovering by the pies. His hand goes up, reluctantly. There’s something complicated in the wayhe’s staring at me, and I can’t tell if it’s directed at me or himself.
In the end, there’s only a handful of detractors. It almost makes me tear up—a literal vote of confidence.
“The ayes have it,” Sarah says.
Greg lowers his arm. “Okay, I think we’re good here. Ruby, let’s talk? I can fill you in on everything.”
In the time it takes us to get to the playground, an evening fog has rolled in, and the glow of the streetlamps in the distance is all fuzzed out and hazy. You can’t even see the school building on the other side of the field. It’s like Greg and I are in our own little world, pushing ourselves back and forth on the swings, wondering where to start.
“You should break up with him,” he mumbles.
“Excuse me?”
“Just break up with him!” Greg exclaims, an unfamiliar edge in his voice.
A contrary impulse overtakes me. I want to shout,Don’t tell me what to do!
He tugs at his hair with both hands, like he’s losing his mind. “I felt like I needed to defend you back there, but…” His hands drop into his lap. “This is ridiculous. It’s a bad idea.”
I take a deep breath. Maybe we should reset. Find a different way in to talking about this. “How did you even end up organizing a union?”
“Kind of by accident? A bunch of us were talking about how things had been going at work, and I said we should form a union, half as a joke.”
“Nothing like living out your joke suggestion.”
He laughs and shakes his head like it’s the craziest thing. “But Sarah went to college with someone who works for one ofthe big unions who could represent us. We met with her, and I talked to people at work about it, and I started to realize…people wanted to listen to me? And I started to think, the more I talked to everyone…maybe there’s something we can do here.”
“So capitalism isn’t a meritocracy, and we’re not really in control and things don’t make sense—but you believe in the union?”
Greg’s smile gets wider, recognizing his own words thrown back at him. “I like it better than the alternative. Wherever things are going, we’re here in the meantime, with one another—all of us, day to day. We’re all we’ve got. We’d better make the most of it.”
“You said you’re close to going public with it?” I prod. “How close?”
Greg rocks himself back and forth in silence. And then, with a deep sigh, he pulls out his phone.
“You know TKCORP is massive,” he says, tilting the screen horizontally and holding it out in front of me. It looks like he’s pulled up the same spreadsheet Morgan had on her screen earlier.
“Maybe fifty thousand people?”
“Yeah, across all offices. We’re starting by unionizing headquarters first, and hopefully other offices can follow, one by one. But even that’s like five thousand people. Huge. That’s why it’s taken years. Kind of a miracle we’ve managed to keep it a secret this long.”
He scrolls down the spreadsheet with one finger. “We’ve been going around to everyone we can, getting people on our side in different departments.”
Every row in the spreadsheet is a name, and beside each one is a number and some notes. It seems like every single person who works at the main office is in here.
“Can I see?” I ask, and he passes the phone to me.
“The colors show who’s talking to who,” Greg says, leaning closer in his swing and pointing. “Everyone gets a rating based on how likely we think they are to support the union—‘one’ is most likely, ‘five’ is least.”
I scroll down slowly, skimming the notes about conversations the union members had with each person. They really have been busy.
Finally I reach my name, and there’s athreenext to it, with some comments attached.
Five, she’s dating management (Steve)
Two, she’s cool (Greg)
