Chapter 4: The Architecture of It
I didn't call Patrick Greer into my office that afternoon.
I have found, over the years, that the moment you let someone know they are being looked at, they begin rearranging things.
Files get moved.
Memories get adjusted.
Conversations that happened in private suddenly didn't happen at all.
So instead of calling him in, I let the afternoon pass the way it normally would.
I sat in my meeting with HR and legal.
I listened.
I asked questions.
I said very little about what I already knew.
The HR director, a careful woman named Sandra, laid out the situation with the precision I had come to expect from her.
"Brittany Marsh.
Hired twenty-two days ago for the senior client liaison position.
Two prior complaints, both marked resolved by her reporting manager.
A third incident this morning, witnessed by multiple employees and documented by security." She set her pen down.
"Termination is straightforward.
The more complicated question is Patrick Greer."
"Walk me through it," I said.
"If he buried those complaints deliberately, we have a process failure at minimum.
If there's a personal connection between him and Ms.
Marsh that he failed to disclose during her hiring process, that's a conflict of interest.
Depending on what the prior complaints actually said, it could go further than that."
My legal counsel, a man named Victor who had been with me for seven years and who never used two words when one would do, looked up from the folder in front of him.
"Did he sign off on her hiring?"
"He was on the panel," Sandra said.
Victor wrote something down.
"I want to see the original complaints," I said.
"The full submissions, not the closed summaries."
Sandra nodded.
"I had them pulled this morning.
I can walk you through them now."
The first complaint had been filed by a woman named Rosa, who worked in accounts payable and had been with the company for six years.
Her written account was two paragraphs long, specific, and clearly not easy for her to write.
She described an encounter in the break room in which Brittany had made a comment about the kind of work that was appropriate for people with Rosa's background.
When Rosa responded, Brittany had told her that some people needed to understand where they fit.
The second complaint had come from a young man named Marcus, twenty-four years old, eight months in the mailroom, one of the sharpest hires we had made at entry level that year.
His account described Brittany stopping him in the corridor, looking at the stack of folders he was carrying, and saying that it was nice that the company gave opportunities to people who wouldn't find them elsewhere.
I read both accounts twice.
"Neither of them was contacted after Greer marked the complaints resolved," I said.
"Correct," Sandra said.
"There's no record of any follow-up conversation.
No signatures.
No email confirmation.
Nothing."
Victor set his pen flat on the table.
"So either he addressed it verbally and kept no record, which would itself be a procedural failure —"
"Or he didn't address it at all," I said.
"He just closed the file."
The room was quiet.
"I want to speak with Rosa and Marcus personally," I said.
"Before anything else moves forward.
They filed those reports in good faith.
They deserve to hear from someone that it was taken seriously."
Sandra looked slightly surprised.
Not unhappily so.
"I'll arrange it," she said.
"This afternoon if possible," I said.
"And Sandra — make sure they know they're not in any trouble.
Make that clear before they walk in."
She nodded and wrote it down.
Victor waited until she had left the room.
Then he turned to face me directly.
"How far do you want to take the Greer piece?"
"As far as the facts support," I said.
"That could be termination for cause.
Depending on what the connection looks like on paper, it could also trigger a review of every hire he touched in the past two years."
"Then we review them."
Victor nodded slowly.
He picked up his pen again.
"One more thing," he said.
"Brittany Marsh has already contacted an outside attorney.
As of about an hour ago."
I looked at him.
"She's claiming wrongful treatment," he said.
"Her attorney sent a preliminary letter to our HR inbox.
They're suggesting the incident this morning was a misunderstanding and that any termination would be retaliatory."
I sat with that for a moment.
"She ordered the owner of the company to get on his knees and clean the floor," I said.
"In front of nine witnesses," Victor said.
"Yes." He almost smiled.
"I've seen worse arguments.
Not many."
He closed his folder and stood.
"I'll have a response drafted by end of day."
After he left, I stayed at the table for a while.
Outside the conference room window, the city moved at its usual pace.
Deliveries, pedestrians, the ordinary machinery of a Tuesday.
Rosa and Marcus had filed their reports and trusted the system to do something with them.
Patrick Greer had decided, for reasons I did not yet fully understand, that the system should do nothing.
I thought about that for a long time.
May you like
Then I picked up my phone and called Carol.
"Find out," I said, "what Patrick Greer was promised."
