A Cause for Abuse

Gerry received the call from Teresa Shea from Corporate head quarters. He had just managed to get his computer restarted after a weekend of glitches and viruses. Teresa's tone was calm, but cautious as she asked Gerry how everything was going in the call center.

"It's going alright now. It's just been a very frustrating morning. You know, one of those mornings where you could just kill some one." Gerry laughs to himself while only silence greets him from the phone.
"But you wouldn't kill someone in the company, right?" Gerry misread the comment as dry humor.
"Not if they don't cross me today." Again, Gerry chuckles with no response from the phone. He was beginning to think he was the only one in this company that understand work banter.
"Mr. Warren, would you be open to speaking to our job counselor today at one o'clock. I will be there also. It's very important to your future here."
"Well, if it's important to my career, I'll come unarmed." Gerry was beginning to see a pattern with his jokes today. He sat quietly in a corner by himself at lunch that day instead of with his coworkers as he tried to figure out what he had done to garner so much attention today. Teresa would give him the evil eye as she wondered through the cafeteria with her lunch and decide to eat in her office instead.

That afternoon, Gerry walked to the job counselor's office to find Teresa sitting in a chair behind the desk with the counselor. He couldn't help but think back to the time in junior high when he got caught forging his father's name on his most recent report card and found them both standing behind the principal's desk staring at him accusingly.

"Mr. Warren..." The counselor spoke first.
"Call me, Gerry. Mr. Warren is my father, but he'll tell you the same thing."
"Sure. Gerry. What makes you so angry and what can we do to make your work life a happier and more enjoyable one?" Finally, Gerry thought, some is willing to make the effort to talk to the people and fix the everyday frustrations.
"Well, I could do without talking to people all of the time. I'll they ever do is complain about what's wrong like it's my fault. I've started to mentally send tiny assassins through the phone line to stop the calls, but they seem to be ineffective." Again, Gerry finds himself the only one chuckling.
"Mr. Warre...Gerry. Miss Shea brought me into this... situation to find out if there was any way we could appeal to your reasonable nature. We've all had bad days at work, but most of us have the ability to keep perspective on it all. As much as I may be frustrated when some employees come to me about wanting higher pay and less hours of work, I keep my cool and tell them that pay is based on merit and value to the company which will not come without hard work. As much as I want to, I would never tell them that they would need plastic surgery and quality madame prostituting them out to wealthy government officials for that kind of hour to pay ratio." This time Gerry doesn't laugh and gets a questioning eyebrow from the counselor.
"That was a joke, Gerry."
"Oh. Sorry."
"Anyways, let's get to the point. We are willing to increase your vacation time to 5 weeks this year and 6 weeks for the following years to keep you happy and working with us. We hope this will keep the employees in this company in your kind regards. Of course, we would request you get yourself into an anger management program and maybe a sex addict program." Now Gerry had the questioning eyebrows.
"Granted, Mr. Warren. Sorry. Gerry. Granted I don't know if they have programs for your specific type of anger, but the general programs are built to handle the root cause of rage and should help you greatly." This time Gerry's laugh was greeted with a response something similar to terror. His laughter stopped immediately.
"Can someone please tell me what this is all about? What is this anger and", in a whisper as if embarrassed by the word, "sex addiction you think I have?"
Teresa and the job counselor look at each other and begin giving the "you tell him" "no, you tell him" expressions that end in Teresa apparently losing the battle.
"Gerry. We've spearheaded a program this past week to review random laptop usage for inappropriate abuse of the company internet. This morning we received the log of usage from your laptop. I don't have the exact numbers, but we were able to identify a clear history of violent pornographic sites followed by violent weapon sites and continued downloading of the anarchist cookbook. We at Telecom Enterprises feel there is no place in our company for the kind of employee that would be browsing these sites on the company dime, but you have a long history of quality reviews and value awards within the company and felt it best to try to work it out first." Teresa was wringing her hands like her thumb was on fire.
"When did this happen?" Gerry had been misusing company time and internet bandwidth in a job search in the past for a better position in a similar role, but at no point would he be on a porn or violent site.
"The log of events started at 7 am today and ended at 11 am this morning when the program finished running the search." This morning, of course. The virus on his laptop must have been scouring the internet to drive up traffic and ad revenue for the virus writer. They must have logged his internet activity before he managed to get tech support to reimage his machine.
"So you think I'm a sexual deviant with a violent streak but you value my work history enough to want to work it out and give me extra benefits to keep up my morale?"
"Yes." The two women answered in unison.
"That pretty much sums it up." Teresa takes a deep breath hoping this conversation has ended and will be sure to run the scan again in a week to make sure it's been settled.
Gerry sits quietly staring at the two women that are now obviously disgusted by him and will be for the rest of his career there.
"Where do I sign?" Gerry would go home that night and plan a nice trip to Fiji with his wife.