Jillian Tailor's Demotion

A short story

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

Harrison Granger opened Microsoft Teams, and with a snap of his thumb and index finger wordlessly summoned Bandi Corp’s senior vice-president, Jillian Tailor, into his office.

From the feigned congenial expression on Granger’s face, she instantly knew what was about to happen.

The shoulder tap tap. He’s not going to fire me; he’s going to demote me to encourage me to quit because that way the company won’t have to pay severance or face a possible lawsuit. Demotion is the easy and safe way to get rid of employees. He’s going to say—

“You’re an exemplary company vice-president, Jillian. The best. You’ve done wonders for Bandi Corp, and because of that, I’m assigning you as Chief Financial Officer. I know, I know, your salary and stock options will be lower and you’re moving from the thirty-third floor to the thirty-second, but we need you there. We absolutely require a CFO with an analytical mind and meticulous attention to detail.”

Granger propped his elbows on the table, and declared, “Well, then, good luck and Godspeed.”

After Jillian organized her significantly smaller space on the thirty-second floor, she circulated to greet the junior executives.

She knocked on Alicia Auvray’s door, the company’s Chief Technology Officer.

“Enter,” Alicia beckoned. She glanced up and said, “Ah, Jillian. I heard about your demotion. Sorry about that, but the company needs a solid CFO.” She then resumed scribbling in her Moleskine notebook as if Jillian didn’t exist. After two minutes, she snapped, “You’re still here? I’m sorry I can’t chat now. Do you mind? If you call my assistant, I’m sure we can find a time for a meeting.”

The other senior-level executives shunned Jillian, as if she bore a contagious, incurable disease.

The blood in Jillian’s veins steamed.

Everyone knows I’m a tap tap employee on her way down until I finally quit out of frustration or because of poverty-level wages. But I’m not going to give in. I’m going to stick it out.

The following day, Human Resources dispatched a terse email to Jillian: Congratulations! You are now Bandi Corp’s Senior Creative Director. The company values your devotion, dedication, hard work, perseverance, and especially your creativity. Please transfer to the thirty-first floor by the end of today. And congratulations again!

The Director of Marketing, Director of Human Resources, Director of Engineering, Director of Products, and Director of Operations occupied the thirty-first floor. As a new director, Jillian thought she’d say a quick hello to everyone, but hollow echoes replied to her knocks.

She circled to the floor’s conference room, where she discovered her fellow directors in a meeting. When she opened the conference room’s door, the voices silenced.

Mark Ellison, Director of Planning, hissed, “This meeting is closed. We’ll invite you to the next one, Jillian, but you’re not on the list for this one. Please close the door from the outside. We have work to do.”

Jillian sulked back to her office. She didn’t feel creative, but put her mind to work and developed an exciting plan for Bandi Corp’s new operations in Estonia.

But why? Why am I bothering to give to this company that no longer gives me anything?

As her finger hovered over the send button to distribute the plan to all appropriate senior-level management, a rap at the door startled her.

Yay, somebody wants to see me!

The Team Leader for Corporate Travel, Chloe Morrison, waltzed in. “Nice office you have here,” Morrison said as she peeked out the window. “You have a view.”

“It’s not much of a view. All I see is the office building next door.”

“Yeah, but you have a window, which is more than we have on the Team Leader floors.”

“Uh huh. And what brings you to me today?”

“I wanted to welcome you as the new Team Leader for Translations.”

“I’m the what? I don’t speak any foreign languages. How could they make me the translation team leader? Who decided that? And—”

“Your new office will be on the nineteenth floor,” Chloe said. “The Teams occupy floors thirty to nineteen, but because you’re a junior team member, your office will naturally be on the lowest floor.”

Last week I was the second highest corporate officer, you fuckhead, Jillian thought.

“I see,” she said. Jillian stiffened her back, took in a long, deep breath, and said to herself, I will beat them. They won’t defeat me, they won’t force me out.

Jillian found her new office, a five-by-eight-foot rectangle bordered by a faux-wood-panel door on one side, a wall with an unopenable twelve-inch square window on the other, a particle-board bookcase along the long wall, and two four-drawer metal filing cabinets covering the remaining wall.

As she slumped into her chair, an existential question wafted through her brain: In the age of AI and instant translations, why does the company need a translation team at all?

An unseen hand slipped an envelope under her door.

She read, The Translation Team has been disbanded. You are hereby transferred to the marketing group on the third floor, where you will be an associate.

Jillian stepped into a brightly lit, frenetic space occupied by a dozen flat tables covered with papers, laptops, coffee cups, and mobile phones. She headed to the only available seat at a table with six Gen Z associates, each of whom sat in front of two laptops, which they operated simultaneously with lightning speed. Merely watching them exhausted Jillian.

“You ate that slide deck,” Alberto told Emily.

“This is my productivity era,” Emily replied, high-fiving him.

Jillian furrowed her brow.

I would never have been good as Team Leader for Translations. I’m glad that didn’t last.

Before Jillian had a chance to introduce herself, a tap tap pricked her shoulder.

A blonde man, older than Gen Z—Jillian guessed maybe thirty-two or thirty-three—towered over her. “Are you Jillian Tailor?” he asked, his expression blank, like a robot that had just rolled off the assembly line.

“I am.”

“I am here to inform you that you are the company’s new janitor. Please report to Room B3-001 immediately. That’s the lowest subbasement. Take the main elevator to—” He scrunched his face and shook his head. “The janitor can’t use the same elevator as regular staff because that would be gross. Take the service elevator to B3.”

Jillian’s jaw slackened, and her eyes drooped. Her legs wobbled.

“Now!” He spun toward the large service elevator at the far end of the floor and pointed. “Go!”

Jillian balled her hands into fists, straightened her back so much that she seemed to grow an inch, and said under her breath, “They can demote me to guardian of Hades, but I’m not giving in. Not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow.”

A dark, dank, dreary third subbasement welcomed Jillian like a haunted house welcomes its victims. Mold stung Jillian’s nostrils, and the astringent air made her cough. She navigated to the janitor’s closet, a small space filled with plastic bottles that bore ominous poison symbols.

In the closet’s corner stood a broom so filthy that not even the most reprehensible witch would ride it. A single old-style forty-watt incandescent bulb flickered and buzzed on a wire that hung from the ceiling.

A large spider skittered in pursuit of a cockroach.

As the spider closed its fangs around the roach, the building shook violently, and a ferociously loud boom ruptured Jillian’s eardrums. Chunks of wall tumbled onto the floor.

Jillian dropped into the room’s only corner devoid of cleaning supplies, covered her head with her hands, held her breath, and hoped.

A blast of heat seared her skin like an instant sunburn.

More shaking, followed by what Jillian thought must’ve been artillery and bombs.

She shrieked out of pain and fear.

When the tremors and booms stopped, she yanked the emergency flashlight from its holder and crawled to the stairwell. It took over an hour for Jillian to ascend the three flights to the first floor because of the boulder-sized debris and ruins that littered the stairs and the thick clouds of dust that the flashlight’s beam could barely penetrate.

When she arrived in the sunlight, she gasped at a building in ruins, nearly flattened, black smoke wafting up and spinning all around, flakes of ash falling like malevolent snow, as if—

A firefighter sprinted to her. Grime coated his yellow uniform and helmet. His oxygen face mask dangled to the side. His eyes went wide and he spoke with breathless, staccato urgency. “Were you in the building?”

“Yes. What happened?”

“Hey, you!” he shouted to one of the paramedics. “Get over here. We have a survivor.”

The firefighter turned back to Jillian. “A meteor. Everyone’s dead except you. I’m so sorry about your colleagues. How did you survive? It doesn’t seem possible.”

“I was in the sub-sub-basement. I’m the janitor.”

---

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If you enjoyed this story, I think you’ll also like The Confession.