Friday, April 16, 2021 Beulah’s Journal, Part 1

From the journal of Beulah Bartimaeus.

One of the things I like about my job is that people pretty much keep to themselves there. I mean, it’s practically company policy not to fraternize with the co-workers much (something to do with proprietary information being kept in bounds). This suits me fine. The last place I worked people were everlastingly doing office parties, taking up money for someone’s birthday gift, going out as a group for lunches, putting on silent auctions to raise money for something or other. It’s not that I’m antisocial – well, maybe I am a little – but I feel so crushingly out of place in social settings. Mom always warned me that if I didn’t get my face out of my books and do more things with friends that eventually I’d be like…well, like what I am.

Ironically, since I work in the Human Resources department, I have a lot of interaction with the humans that work there. I wonder who thought up that soulless term, Human Resources, anyway? If it were up to me, the department would be named something like “We’re Here to Cover Our Asses – We Don’t Really Care About You.” Or maybe “We Make You Sign Forms…Lots of Them.” New employees always look vaguely ill at ease when I drag out the three confidentiality clauses that they have to sign to work within these very secretive halls. One guy actually read them over carefully and decided this wasn’t the place for him. Part of me wanted to say to him, “I’m sorry, Mr. Dearborn, now that you’ve read the forms, you already know too much – I’m afraid I’m just going to have to kill you.” I stifled it and sent him off to live another day.

The funny thing is, I’m actually not even sure what all the secrecy is about. You’d think I’d know, being in the HR department, but the inner workings of the company are pretty thickly veiled. I’ve tried doing a little research surreptitiously, but I don’t dare do it at work because I’m not sure how secure the computers are. Here’s what I know: we have about 35 employees that work in the building compartmentalized into different sections, each of which operates more or less independently of the others in terms of how much specific information is shared. The Research department is the largest section and they do a lot of traveling. There’s the Finance department, composed of Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable people. We also have the bogus sounding “Strategies for Success” section – I dislike them on principle. My section, HR, is the smallest, composed of my boss, Mr. Jandrich, and me. The company president, Mortimer Pressman, has a big important office, but is hardly ever there. I think the section heads report to him regularly.

Okay, now for the weirdest part. I recently got an email from some entity called “BOII,” an acronym with which I am not familiar, nor could I find any explanation for it. They claimed to be a covert part of the company and their existence is to be kept strictly confidential. What? Secrets within secrets? The BOII communication was short – basically just said that I would receive assignments from them occasionally, but nothing that would cause me to break the confidentiality agreements. They didn’t mention whether or not these “assignments” would cause me to go against my own moral code, but maybe they don’t think I have one. Confidentiality or not, I couldn’t just assume this was a valid communication, so I asked Mr. Jandrich about it. He said the name sounded familiar to him – he thought it was one of our international affiliates. It didn’t seem to bother him that I had gotten something from them, nor that they might be giving me independent assignments. “Let me know if you get a request from them that you feel you cannot fulfill as part of the performance of your job here,” is all he said.

So far, though, I haven’t heard anything else from BOII, although it’s been less than a week since I got that first email.

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Those of you who have been following the Martin Chronicles may remember the name Beulah Bartimaeus from Part 4, published last week. The plot thickens!

I’ll probably delete this over the weekend. Have a good one!