My first post! Woop! Here’s a tiny story (micro-fiction if you prefer) that addresses the popular pastime of self-annihilation. I think it’s in The Hudsucker Proxy that death is euphemised as “merging with the infinite”. I like that way of putting it. So here’s a story about a few people that chose to bring forward their scheduled merging with the infinite.

Human Resources

“Three in one year? That seems like a lot.” DC Williamson wasn’t very clever. Luckily he rarely got assigned to serious cases. And when he was, it was always alongside DC Schmidt, who was clever and good at crime detection.

“One would have been a lot. Three is incredible. Something is very wrong here.” Jackson Drop was the human resources manager for the world’s largest confectionery company.

He was trained to spot troubled staff. The fact that three of his staff had committed suicide was a big red flag, calling out to him through the corporate fog.

“Yes. I suppose something must be wrong. Have there been… problems – with the business?” DC Williamson didn’t really understand the business world. He’d always been a policeman. Business was a whole other world.

“No. We’re having a great run. I mean, prices are rising and the global economy is taking a slight… it’s having a correction… and this presents new challenges for us. But we’re beating the trends. We’re continuing to persuade people to buy our products in spite of health concerns and tightening budgets – people don’t see confectionery as something to give up. It’s a staple. People expect to have it. So no, I don’t think that could have anything to do with it.”

“But are your workers happy? Do people like working for your company?” DC Williamson was only using half his brain to think about the suicides. The other half of his brain was on the snooker tournament he was psychologically preparing himself to win that evening. He could see himself being the winner. See the balls rolling, falling in the holes. Victory was within his sights.

“We get very good results for employee satisfaction. We have an annual conference where representatives get to raise any issues. We always score very highly on staff satisfaction surveys. We invest a lot of money in our staff. Our success depends on them.” Jackson had been in HR his whole life. Sometimes his wife accused him of treating their family as an organisation. She swore blind that he treated the cats like employees and quietly appraised them.

“Well… I just don’t know. I’ve never encountered anything like this before.” DC Williamson had never known so many suicides. Once, just after he joined the force, a man in his thirties was suspected of suicide. Then his wife confirmed that he had been trying to adjust the TV aerial and was only mildly unhappy, so suicide seemed unlikely. “Is there anything you haven’t told me? Any company secrets that might be driving people to take their own lives?”

“Nothing. There’s honestly nothing going on. We’re a thriving company. We’re innovators in confectionery. Our products are everywhere. We’ve achieved total market saturation and sales are up.”