Civilly Disobedient (Calm Act Genesis Book 1) by Ginger Booth Page A

worth arguing over.
    “Food prices,” I suggested in return, an ambivalent answer to make him think. On the one hand, food prices were skyrocketing. That made the mortgage and salary issue even more compelling. On the other hand, I was sure that panic over food prices was driving the anger of these demonstrations. The cost of living kept spiraling up, while real wages fell.
    Wages fell for most people, that is. Mangal and I were paid very well. We even expected an extra mid-year raise this year to meet the food-fueled cost of living. Our employees wouldn’t receive that bonus raise, though, which irked me. I felt guilty in advance for accepting a benefit my people wouldn’t get, when they needed it more than I did. Mangal knew how much this bothered me.
    “Train,” Mangal replied on his notepad, with finality. We could talk on the train, on our commute home from work.
    “Happy hour @ Public,” I overruled him. He shrugged and nodded agreement.
    The TLA graphs were over, and we received our final exhortation to do…something. Our jobs, perhaps. Mangal and I rose with the rest of the crowd, and shook hands and small-talked our way out of the auditorium. I had high hopes of escaping all the way to my managerial class, higher-walled, one-woman cubicle. But our boss Dan caught us in the hallway. He snagged the other two managers beneath him as well, Trevor and Cheng. He led us all into his even more managerially deluxe office – Dan had walls up to the ceiling, and a real window – to ‘strategize on how to to break the news to the troops.’
    I let the guys brainstorm first. There were plenty of women in tech, but when it was down to just the lead geeks, I was often the only woman in the room. The guys, my fellow section heads, told Dan everything there was to say. Of course we were personally offended by UNC’s new depths of intrusiveness, telling us we couldn’t exert our political will in public. Further, we expected the programmers, graphic designers, copywriters, and systems types who worked for us to scream bloody murder. My colleagues reviewed how just last quarter UNC added nicotine and alcohol to the random drug screenings, despite the fact they were legal. The drug screenings now seemed to occur at least once a month. Weekly if someone came back positive for nicotine. I thought my fellow section managers did a great job covering the bases of our employees’ objections, and our own.
    “Dee Baker?” my boss Dan said. “You’ve been quiet.” He smiled at me hopefully. “Do you have any ideas on how to sell the troops?”
    “I do, Dan,” I shared. “I was thinking that I really, really would rather telecommute.”
    “Uh?” said Dan, perplexed. He half-smiled, and offered, “I tried to warn you about buying a place out past New Haven, Dee.”
    “You did,” I agreed. “That’s not my point, Dan. My point is, that when my employer does something that really – really – pisses me off? It makes me think. You know? What does Dee want in return for putting up with this new…crud. I want to telecommute, Dan. I bet my people want to telecommute, too.”
    Dan shook his head. He splayed his hands on his immaculate desk blotter, his standard laying-down-the-law pose. “Dee, that’s against corporate policy.”
    “Just brainstorming, Dan,” I assured him. “I mean, your question was, how can we make this new…crap…acceptable to our people. Your people. Including us.” I felt that was worth stressing, that he was asking me to foist something on my people that I wasn’t willing to take lying down myself. “This is my suggestion, Dan. Offset the next incremental unit of ‘you-can-take-this-job-and-shove-it,’ with a compensating perk. I like telecommuting, for that compensating perk.”
    “I’d like to telecommute,” Mangal agreed, and led the other two section heads to nod energetically.
    “Gentlemen, Dee, that has nothing to do with the problem at hand!” Dan attempted.
    “But it does,