"John said that he wants to have your babies."
"What?" Dexter asked.
Dexter had just stepped into the office. That was not the kind greeting he had been expecting. Of course, hearing that some man wanted to have his babies, was a little out of the ordinary. Even at the best of times, he'd have had problems with that kind of greeting.
"John is a very happy man, and he owes it all to you," Eric said.
That was a bit of good news. Dexter had hoped to help John and he assumed that John had been hired at Daimler Plastics. It would be six months of double employment. There was even a chance of getting a follow up job doing something similar at another company.
Dexter said, "I think he'll enjoy it out there."
"Do you mean at Daimler?" Eric asked.
"Yes," Dexter said.
Eric said, "I figure he'll save them more in software licenses, than we're getting paid to identify the problems in the company. He really did a good job at the old company. He single-handedly saved them three million dollars a year, on licenses for software that wasn't used. I'm sure he'll do just as well at Daimler."
It was amazing how many pieces of software had been purchased with annual licenses and maintenance fees. While most of the software packages were used, there were quite a few that weren't. In some cases they had bought licenses for fifty people, only to discover that no more five people ever used it. They had even replaced some Legacy systems, and were still paying licenses on software that had been part of them.
The most amazing thing, was that no one had a list of all of the software licenses and maintenance fees that were being paid. The automated systems just generated payments, because they were scheduled annually to be sent to corporation XYZ, without explanation. Some of the companies didn't even exist. John had found the company was paying seventy-five thousand dollars a year on a license for software that hadn't been used since 1992.
"I figured he would be good at that when I gave him that job. I know Ed Daimler will appreciate any savings that John manages to dig up," Dexter said. "I'm happy for him."
"I'll let John know that he can have your babies," Eric said.
"Please don't," Dexter said rolling his eyes.
"I'm glad to hear that. I would have been jealous if you had said yes, since I want to have your babies," Eric said with a smile.
"What are you talking about?" Dexter asked.
Grinning broadly, Eric said, "Oh, boy! You don't know, do you?"
Somehow or another, Dexter felt like he was the last one to know anything, anymore. Eric was in too good of a mood. One of these days, Dexter wanted to be the one in the know.
"Know what?" Dexter asked.
Eric said, "The lawsuit was settled this morning."
"What lawsuit?" Dexter asked.
"The class action lawsuit regarding the hostile workplace. Your copies of the memos between Mr. Morris and the ever lovable V.P. of Engineering, blew them out of the water. It proved a high level corporate policy of intentionally lying to employees about their chances of promotion. It effectively said to promise us anything, but give us nothing," Eric said.
"That's nice," Dexter said.
Dexter remembered finding that memo. He had handed it to Mark with the comment that it would win the case. Mark's only response was a smile that would have put a man-eating cartoon shark to shame.
He felt good at getting another shot in at the old place. He hoped that Mark was able to get a good settlement. After all, Dexter had been promised five percent of the award. Of course, he wondered why they had settled so quickly.
Dexter asked, "So how much did you get?"
"A million for each person," Eric said.
"That's some big money," Dexter said as he considered that there were over three hundred people involved in the lawsuit.
Eric said, "You should have heard them complaining about not getting big bonuses this year. I heard the CEO was only getting twenty million in cash and ten million in stock options."
"What was he expecting?" Dexter asked wondering how anyone could be disappointed with that kind of bonus, considering the losses the company had taken over the past year.
"Quadruple that," Eric said. "It seems that the board decided that the money to pay for the lawsuit should come out of the bonuses of the executive staff. There are lots of unhappy campers there."
"That's good to hear," Dexter said smiling.
Eric said, "It gets even better. There are now criminal charges being filed."
"What for?" Dexter asked.
"I'm not sure what the specifics are, but apparently it is illegal to lie to employees about their conditions of work. You see, they were knowingly telling us things that were false," Eric said.
"That might explain why they wanted the civil suits resolved. One of the conditions might be to not talk about the case," Dexter said while scratching his chin thoughtfully.
He wished he knew more about all of this legal stuff than he did.
Eric said, "I heard that the board of directors was pretty irritated at the men running the company. Rumor has it that the CEO, CFO, and CIO are all going to be let go, as a sign that the board didn't know about this stuff. Once the courts start indicting everyone, the company stock is going to take a swim in the sewer, unless they can put the proper spin-control on it."
"I wonder why the prosecutor chose to pursue the 'lying to employees' route. I figured he would go after the fraudulent charges on federal contracts," Dexter said frowning.
"Fraudulent charges?" Eric asked. "I hadn't heard anything about that."
Dexter said, "You know, come to think of it ... I haven't delivered that paperwork to the Federal DA. Maybe I should give him a call."
"Are you telling me that they've been ripping off the federal government?" Eric asked looking at Dexter wide-eyed.
"Yes," Dexter said. "They were billing for overtime on cost-plus contracts without paying any overtime. That's a big no-no."
"Shit, you're going to own that company by the time you're done with them," Eric said.
"That's the plan," Dexter said. "I was kind of hoping to get to the federal offenses after getting a little more blood out of them before sending them to jail."
"Jesus," Eric said.
He had known that Dexter was angry at the old company and wanted a bit of revenge, but he couldn't imagine the lengths that Dexter had gone.
"You sound a little vindictive," Eric said.
"Maybe I am," Dexter said. "But I believe that I'm justified."
"Why?"
Dexter answered, "American businesses have shat upon engineers for two decades. They make billions of dollars off our creations, and then they treat us like dirt. Engineering is the most important human activity. Try to think of any industry that doesn't rely upon engineering.
"Film? That's one of the highest tech industries around. Theater? Think of the lucky actor who doesn't have to shout his lungs out on a stage with poor acoustics. Food? Think of all the equipment required to produce, package, and deliver food sufficient to feed three hundred million people every day of the year. Housing? That's just too obvious.
"Engineers create products on which people's lives depend. There aren't many things that you can buy that didn't involve an engineer during its design. Soft drink? Consider the engineers who designed the bottle and the machine that fills it. Everything in the modern world is engineered.
"Engineers make design decisions that can make or break a company. One major design flaw in a critical product can mean the end of a company. People trust that an engineer has done his job whenever they step in an elevator, sit in a car, fly on a plane, or ride a damned bicycle. Their lives depend upon it.
"Look at how upset everyone got when a nuclear facility failed to withstand the third most powerful earthquake in recorded history, followed by a forty foot high tsunami. It should have been rubble, but it wasn't. I can't imagine anything surviving that kind of double whammy. I know the next one built will be able to withstand such an event, because that's what engineers do.
"Ask the CEO of some large corporation to name the most important parts of their business. You'll get finance, marketing, sales, or manufacturing as answers. Then ask about engineering? They'll look at you blankly. Maybe if you're lucky, they might say that engineers are a dime a dozen. They are so fucking wrong.
"Because of that attitude by executives, engineers are working in abysmal conditions. Cubicles? They are the invention of the devil. There are no engineering workspaces anymore. In the old days, we'd create a blue-print. A couple of engineers would gather around the drawing discussing the various implications of every aspect of that design. Now we can't even get a fucking table in our cubicle to gather around.
"We've got viewgraphs projected on a wall ... that's when we can actually get a conference room. Of course, sitting at conference table pointing to spots on a wall twenty feet away isn't the same as putting finger to paper to make a point. Critical elements of a design of any significance, become postage stamps, when projected on the wall and viewed from twenty feet away. If you can't see a problem, then you can't fix it.
"We are rushed through product development, by assholes who have never designed or built a damned thing in their entire lives. They couldn't design a fucking garden shed.
"They've got no understanding of the engineering process. Requirements? Don't worry about requirements. Release the product and the customers will tell us what needs to change about it. Design? Just slap something together that can be built, and we'll make whatever changes are necessary to make it work. Testing? No that's too expensive. Let the customer test our product once they've bought it. Maintenance? They just tell us: 'If you guys did your jobs right then we wouldn't need maintenance.'"
"That's the general attitude among a lot companies," Eric said. "It seems to me that it is getting worse."
Dexter said, "We worked like dogs at our old company. We put in unpaid overtime. They didn't give us raises despite the fact that our work resulted in the products that made the company money or saved it tens of millions of dollars in operating costs. We didn't get bonuses. We didn't get stock options. We didn't get promotions. The marketing folks did, but not the engineers.
"They trust us to create programs that wouldn't ruin the company, but they don't trust us to make decisions about the simplest shit. They didn't trust us with the God Damned office supplies! It's like they expect us to design by pissing on the snow."
"That doesn't mean they should go to jail," Eric said.
"Yes, it does."
"On what grounds?" Eric asked.
Dexter replied, "I say that the executives of our old company, like the executives in many other companies, are guilty of the attempted murder of our profession. They've just about destroyed what it means to engineer. That is a crime against humanity."
"A crime against humanity?" Eric echoed skeptically.
Dexter asked, "What is going happen when we can't build bridges any more because nobody can design one to span the required distance and to support the necessary loads?"
"Dark ages."
Dexter said, "If these assholes get their way, the infrastructure of the industrialized world is going to collapse, because there won't be engineers who can create the products to keep it functional."
"That's a little dire," Eric said.
The problem was that Eric could actually see that it was becoming true. Some of the young engineers couldn't perform the analysis required to validate that a system would function. They relied upon software to do their thinking for them. If the software had an error, so would the product.
Dexter said, "We can't arrest executives for attempted murder of engineering, but they deserve prison. Like Capone, if you can't get him for murder, then you get him for tax evasion."
Dexter's cell phone rang. He checked the caller id and answered. "Hello, Mark."
"Hi, Dexter," Mark said.
"What's up?" Dexter asked.
Mark answered, "The company came to an agreement this morning on the lawsuit."
"I heard that from Eric," Dexter said.
Mark said, "Sorry about that. I've got people calling everyone else involved in the class action suit. I should have called you first, but I just got out of a meeting."
"No problem," Dexter said.
"We got more than three hundred million, plus legal fees. Your share is a little over fifteen million," Mark said.
"That's a nice payday," Dexter said with a grin.
"What are you going to do with it all?" Mark asked.
"I guess I'll invest it," Dexter said.
Considering that he wasn't in this for money, Dexter hadn't given a thought to what he would do with the money. He wondered if it wasn't time for him to think about buying a small house, somewhere. He thought about buying that little cabin he had stayed in, and using it as a vacation home.
"I'd like to take you out to dinner, tonight, to celebrate," Mark said.
"That would be fine," Dexter said. "Oh, by the way, I've got some more memos for you."
"More?" Mark asked.
Edited By TeNderLoin