Manumission

“Manumission,” said Jeremy Diseased-Rat, CEO of Data Analytic Marketetic Normalisations.  The various employees sat in the conference room with him all looked first at one another and then at him.

“Bless you?” suggested Margoyle, a slight smile tweaking her thin, blue lips.

“I think that might be the name of the new Head of Suffocating Relationships,” said Stephanotte, her eyes not quite meeting Margoyles.  “He’s arriving sometime this week with a mandate to look over out ex-Soviet portfolio.”

“Dimitrion has taken over Suffocating Relationships already,” said Margoyle, her eyes staring at the top of Stephanotte’s head as though wishing her gaze could trepan.  “That does leave some room in Textiles and Bad Potteries, though I would have expected anyone taking them to want to take Soft Furnishing and Pillow Politics too.  Which are your remit, are they not?”

“Manumission is the practice of freeing slaves,” said Jeronica.  Sitting down she wasn’t noticeably taller than the men around the table, though when she’d come in her eighteen inch designer stilettos had left her towering over everybody and left small holes in the carpet wherever she walked.  “It sounds like something many of our clients would be disinterested in.”

Jeremy Diseased-Rat, a fresh bruise on his left cheek-bone and a small cut weeping on his chin, nodded.  “Much of what you all say is true,” he said.  His voice was even and carefully modulated to get people to listen to him, and his voice coach was rumoured to spend hours teaching him to undo what alcohol and nicotine did in the first place.  “We were hiring someone called Manumission, but that has been indefinitely suspended thanks to the reshuffle.  There is an opening for Textiles and Bad Potteries, and…..”  He paused for a moment, steepling fat, coarse fingers in front of his face while he looked over at Stephanotte.  “And,” he concluded, leaving no-one around the table in any doubt that she was in trouble.  “But more importantly, it is the code name for a new project that we will be starting in 2014 that I have high hopes for.  As you are all undoubtedly aware, there is much political tension in the Americas at the moment, with the concepts of universal health-care being a rallying point for various factions.  We have been retained to conduct a study of such health-care initiatives and produce a report on how ineffective they are, and their contribution to overall economic decay.  We will be focusing on the private health-care sector and the efficiencies that a market economy brings, how it improves health-care in the long term, and how competitiveness can result in a patient not being tied into a single primary care-provider, but instead travelling the country and seeing new sights as they are shipped from one expert to another to resolve their issues.  Considering the blind solely as outliers in this scenario of course.”

“Do people actually use public health care?” asked Margoyle.  She made a face. “Can that really be sensible?  Or healthy?  You might have to sit in a waiting room with ill people, for goodness’ sake!”

“Poor people,” said Jeronica.  Her tone of voice suggested that she was speaking from theory rather than experience.  “I think my last cleaner might have seen a government-sponsored doctor about something.  Possibly when her leg fell off.”

“People do,” said Manguy.  He was near the end of the table and had been playing with his pen the whole time Jeremy had been speaking.  “And some of them feel that they have no choice about this either, that they cannot afford private health care or the insurance that would get them access to it.  Part of what we’ll be doing in this study is showing that their estimations of this are actually a false economy.  They would do better, for example, if they abandoned eating fresh vegetables and instead used their health-care insurance to book themselves into hospital twice a year for liposuction and a crash diet.  This, in turn, would then increase the amount of produce available to restaurateurs and stock farmers, which in turn brings down the cost of fast food production and so the consumer benefits all the more by being able to eat more burgers, fried chicken-like protein and faux-fish fillets.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” said Jeronica.  Her eyes fixed on Manguy, who squirmed a little.

“Manguy will be heading this up,” said Jeremy, ignoring the speed at which Jeronica’s head snapped round to look at him.  “He’ll be taking on the Lead Product Owner role initially until we hire someone suitable, and then they will report into him in his capacity as Product Director.  I’m very pleased that he’s been willing to step forward and pick this up, as I’m expecting it to be high profile for this year.”

The other employees, all very much aware of this, glared at Manguy, who smirked back.  He set the pen down, now perfectly at ease and comfortable with his victory.

Healthcare solutions

“Promotion?” asked Manguy.  He was walking past Katalysta’s office and had stopped in the doorway to watch as she slid the brass nameplate out of the triangular block on her desk.  Another one, ready to be slid into place, was lying face down on the desk.

“Lateral,” she replied with a shrug.  She had honey-coloured hair and skin that was naturally only slightly darker, making her look like she had a year-round tan.  Her face was pixie-shaped and there were rumours around the office that she’d had her ears done to be pointy as well; Manguy hadn’t had the opportunity to smooth her hair back and find out.  “I’m the Zeugmoid Vice President of Soft Power, Furnishing and Fillings.”

“Reporting to Dipali?”

“No, Dipali’s gone.  There was a small incident… well, you either know or you don’t I suppose.”  Manguy nodded; he didn’t know what Dipali had done wrong, but it was a fact of life at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations that any slip could be fatal, and sometimes not only for your career.  In fact, when he thought about it, the word career was exactly the right one to describe the job trajectories here.  And Katalysta was just doing what they all did: hinting at things he perhaps should know about, baiting him to see if he’d admit to not knowing – a cardinal sin – in order to learn what she knew.  He wasn’t about to fall for a ruse as unsubtle as that.

“He was in a precarious position,” said Manguy, nodding.  His black hair fell over his eyes as it did a lot at the moment.  It annoyed him, but the Justin Bieber haircut annoyed many of his colleagues more so he wasn’t going to change it just yet.  “I was expecting him to go a little later though; I’ll have to check who the pool’s paying out.”  It was a little bit of a low blow, as he knew that Katalysta entertained little paranoid fantasies about the office pool on who would be next to go.  Sure enough, she winced.  “Who’s replacing him then?”

“The role’s being split,” said Katalysta.  She slipped the new brass plate in, and adjusted the triangular block to make sure that it was clearly visible to anyone entering her office.  “Tabitha’s taking Global Healthcare solutions, Tapestrisations and the Clotho-problem, while Trepanna’s got Soft Power and Broken Cuddly Things.”

“Makes sense,” said Manguy.  He nodded again after a moment’s silence.  “Trepanna’s got the knack of Broken Cuddly Things.  You must be reporting to Tabitha then.”

Katalysta looked startled, and Manguy controlled a smile.  He’d worked at Data Analytics Marketetic Normalisations longer than Katalysta realised and he knew the basics of how their matrix management filtered through operator algebras to produce an organisation chart that required a research mathematician to draw and an epistemological philosopher to understand.  Pretty much the only thing anyone was sure of most of the time was that Jeremy Diseased-Rat was head of the whole organisation.  That she would be reporting to someone with a distinctly different title was obvious to him, and it helped that he knew a lot about the different divisions of Soft Power, and just how soft power could be.

“Yes,” she said, clearly having trouble deciding what to tell him.

“So, Tabitha’s first focus will be the Tapestrisations,” he continued, enjoying the feeling of control he had.  “So you must be looking at the regional health care solutions.  I suspect you’re analysing how we can make a name for certain centres of excellence that have failed to market themselves adequately, and so acquire a position in the global healthcare markets that are expected to open up after 2025.  I’ve only read a couple of reports, mostly peripheral you understand, but I’d suspect that Texas is likely to be big.  And they’re desperate to get known.”

Katalysta was nodding along, apparently unconsciously, because she smiled with just her teeth and said, “No, it’s not like that at all.  Tabitha’s first focus is the Clotho-problem because of its wider-ranging implications for market inputs in the old Soviet Union and its satellites and my studies are underpinning the solutions she intends to present to the Board.”

Manguy raised an eyebrow politely, and said, “That’s a shame.  There’s a lot of interest in healthcare and I was looking to establish a small trans-departmental study group to determine where strategic acquisition and purchase might drive openings.  I need someone dynamic and flexible to head up the steering committee to make recommendations based on first-hand reportage.  I guess I’ll have to ask Tabitha who she’d recommend then.”

Katalysta flushed a little, and Manguy waved jauntily and walked away from her office.  While he had never had any intention of inviting Katalysta to a co-operation, he did already have inquiries in from two corporate clients regarding the possibility of purchasing large healthcare facilities to reduce insurance costs, and there were a number of significant grey-market opportunities for the essentially-private facilities that these would become.  Perhaps, he mused, Katalysta could play a role as a first-hand front-line reporter.  Obviously she’d need a reason for being treated at one of these facilities, but that wouldn’t be too hard to arrange for….