Frank finished College in 1998, having been part of the first batch to benefit from free University Fees. He didn’t know it then but he would be a pioneer in the rise of Ireland’s lower middle class. The people who would later paddle in the shallowness of the Celtic Tiger and measure their worth and the value of others in property and fast cars.
Frank didn’t put a lot of thought into picking his first job. The big American banks had toured his College the previous March and dangled dollar bills in front of the hungover students. Newly emboldened with his degree and surfing the wave of the emerging Irish economy, Frank simply chose the biggest bank and before his feet hit the ground he was sitting behind a desk in Dublin’s gleaming Financial Services Centre, wearing an ill-fitting suit and trying not to be too obvious when eyeing up his new female colleagues.
Those first few months were easy. Frank was smart and realised that he could have his work done by 10.30am but he could skilfully stretch it out till 6pm to demonstrate to his supervisor Eimear that he was a committed soul willing to put in half an hour of unpaid overtime each day. He remembered one word from his initiation course that seemed to by-pass his fellow new hires. They were more interested in the free coffee and muffins. But Frank heard the word “meritocracy” and he was determined to make them live up to it.
The HR woman explained that the bank was proudly American. “We reward individual effort, if you do a good job, it doesn’t matter what the rest of your team, the department or the overall company does. You will be rewarded. We don’t recognise Unions here because we don’t need them. Hard work brings its own rewards”.
These words brought a cold shiver down Frank’s spine. It was the first of many times he would feel that shiver in the years to come. His favourite subject at school was History but his ambitious mother had pushed him in the direction of Commerce so that he would get himself a “good” job. Nevertheless, Frank hankered for the summer he spent back-packing around the World War II sites of Eastern Europe. As he sat listening to the hectoring tones of the woman from HR, he was reminded of the hot day he stood outside Auschwitz and listened to the tour guide translate the sign on the front gate. “Hard work makes you free”. The link between concentration camps and the bureaucrats in Human Resources had been fused in Frank’s mind and the events of the coming years would do little to dispel it.
Frank went into his first staff appraisal in a confident mood. He’d put in six months of deception but had met every target Eimear set him and had skilfully spotted opportunities to do extra tasks if they involved little effort but were highly visible. One of these was to put in half an hour each Friday talking to Eimear in the pub. Frank would have preferred to be talking to the lads about Football, but 30 minutes of chat about bastard boyfriends and the problems of being a female manager in a macho culture was a small price to pay.
But as soon as he walked into the room he could tell from Eimear’s face that the news wasn’t good. “I won’t beat around the bush” she said. “Your performance has been excellent. But we’ve a problem with this year’s pay increases. It’s Argentina you see”.
“What’s Argentina got to do with me”, Frank said. “I’ve never even been there”.
Eimear squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. The management courses she fought so hard to go on didn’t prepare her for times like this. Those courses taught her how to deal with difficult staff. But Frank wasn’t being difficult, he was correct. The company had sold him a lie when it talked about meritocracy and senior management were too chicken to deliver the news themselves. So all around the world on that fateful appraisal day, they left it to junior managers like Eimear to deliver the company message.
“You see Argentina is just the tip of the ice-berg Frank, they’re talking about a global crisis. It seems that we were like, more exposed or something to Argentina than anyone else.”
Frank was enjoying it up to this point. Something in Eimear’s discomfort made him feel powerful and in control. But then he thought of the skiing holiday he’d planned in February and how he was hoping to pay for it with his year end bonus. The prospects of receiving that were melting like the spring snow.
“But I thought we were a global bank, sufficiently diversified to ride a crisis in an individual country? Didn’t we just announce massive profits and say that transactions were at an all time high.”
Eimear paused. The briefing note she got from HR didn’t anticipate staff spotting the fatal flaw in the company’s message. “But they burned down our branch in Buenos Aires” she mumbled, her voice fading with each sentence. “And little old ladies are protesting about us outside the US embassy, saying they’ve lost all their savings”.
Frank leaned across the desk and stared directly at Eimear. “Let me get this straight. I work in Dublin and I’ve worked bloody hard. My team have worked hard and we’re busier than ever. The department is twice the size that it was when I started. And you’re telling me that I’m not getting a pay increase because some old dear in South America has lost her pension”?
“It’s a global financial crisis Frank. If it’s not now it will be in six months. The company has to provide for that. But if you stick around I’m sure we can do something for you next year”.
Frank sat back and sighed. Little did he know that this was just the first excuse of many. The company would continue to make massive profits but conveniently find a crisis every time his pay review came around. He shuffled out and headed to the pub. In future his Friday nights would be spent talking football with the boys.
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