| The Dinosaur Club
Little did I know this would be a good diversion from my usual mystery stories. This is about corporate America from which I happily retired over five years ago. Jack Fallon’s wife of twenty-four years is divorcing him, and his employer, Waters Cable, is trying to rid the payroll of the ‘older’, high salaried employees. Charlie Waters hired Jack when the company was just starting up; Charlie is still the CEO and Chairman and has pretty much forgotten Jack’s efforts the past twenty–some years. Carter Bennett (born to wealth and snobbery) is the CFO and a smarmy, self-righteous prick who Charlie has hired to get rid of the alleged dead weight, while covering up the blatant age discrimination as best he can. Jack’s entire marketing division has been targeted, so his band of not-so-merry cohorts form The Dinosaur Club and put up a fight to expose Charlie and Carter’s ulterior motives. This book was written in 1997 when ‘workforce imbalance corrections’ (a/k/a downsizing) was one of the many corporate games played. The tactics used by management are somewhat true and the targeted employees’ reactions are real. If you’ve ever worked in a large corporation, you’ll get a kick out of this story. |