This was nice, he thought. He could get used to this.
He put on the robe that had been provided, walked out into the bedroom. He fell asleep almost immediately after crawling into the soft bed, but his sleep bound imagination was not at all influenced by his surroundings.
He had nightmares.
There were several, but in the only one he could remember, Newman King showed up in class with the instructor. The CEO seemed even stranger and more frightening than before, and Bill could not look at him at first, was forced to focus his attention on the instructor, the chalkboard, the bare walls of the room.
'This will be a short test,' King said. 'I just want to see how you're progressing.' He smiled. 'As a Store manager, you may be called upon to do things that are personally repugnant to you. But it is your duty and your obligation to put the welfare of The Store before any of your own personal concerns. As an example, I will let you watch the termination of one of our employees who has not performed to expectations.'
A black-raincoated man brought out Samantha.
Bill's heart lurched in his chest. 'No!'
'Yes.'
His daughter was squirming and crying, her eyes filled with terror. The man held her firmly while another Store employee in an identical black raincoat carried in a stunned-looking middle-aged man, walked up to the front of the room, and stood on the opposite side of the CEO.
King smiled. 'Now, here's the test. One of these two must be terminated.
Which one should it be?'
Bill shook his head. 'No. I'm not falling for that. I'm not playing this game.'
'Come on. It's your decision.'
'No.'
'Choose.'
'I can't do it.'
King nodded to the other manager, held out a knife. 'Kill her.'
'No!' Bill screamed, jumping up. Hands grabbed him from behind, forced him back down into the chair.
King's smile broadened. 'Very good, Mr. Davis. You've made your first decision. You'll make a manager yet.' He turned toward Sam, handing her the knife. 'Kill him.'
The man in the raincoat let her go; she grabbed the knife and moved past the CEO. She pushed back the other manager's forehead and drew the blade across his throat.
Blood spurted onto her face, onto her clothes, splashed onto the raincoats of the other Store employees. She fell to the floor, dropping the knife, laughing or crying, Bill could not tell which. He wanted to rush to her and hug her, wanted to scream at her and hit her, but he could do nothing, could only sit there, with the strong hands on his shoulders holding him down, and watch as Sam was led out of the room.
King patted Bill on the head on his way out. 'See? That wasn't so hard, was it?'
He was provided with a wake-up call the next morning, and after he finished his breakfast, he was brought back to yesterday's classroom, where his lessons continued.
The real training was nothing like his dream. Despite his prejudice against The Store, despite his animosity toward Newman King, he had to admit that a lot of what he was being taught made sense. There seemed to be a lot of merit in The Store's approach to everything from retail strategies to labor relations, and he found himself understanding and agreeing with a lot of what he was being taught. The knowledge seemed useful to him, the ideas effective. Power might have been misused in the past, but it was not intrinsically bad, and even King could not have total control over everything that went on beneath him. On the surface, at least, King's methods seemed far less extreme than those of his proteges, and while he had absolute power in regard to his empire, he delegated authority and gave each manager complete autonomy over The Store to which he or she was assigned. The CEO wasn't necessarily aware of and didn't necessarily approve of everything that was perpetrated in his name.
As taught by the instructors, King's managerial theories and entrepreneurial goals seemed sound.
Maybe King wasn't the threat after all, Bill thought. Maybe it was the petty bureaucrats under him, the over- zealous managers who misused the power they were granted.
The training went on for several days. In addition to lectures from three separate instructors, he was given readings and worksheets that reinforced the lessons he'd been taught verbally, and tests that measured his retention of that knowledge. He memorized the standard Store layout and the hierarchy of positions within each retail outlet. Eventually, he was brought into another classroom with other management trainees and they all participated in a roundtable discussion of general Store management techniques and addressed specific problems and incidents that were bound to come up during the course of their work. His fellow trainees proved not to be incipient monsters or tyrants in training but merely ordinary men like himself who were trying to make the best of their situation.
He even became friendly with several of them.
Each evening, he was rewarded for a good day's work with a generous present, always accompanied by a humorous card signed by Newman King. One night it was a palm-sized camcorder and a large-screen television, one night it was keys to a new Lexus, one night it was a gift certificate for free ski lessons and a week's stay for him and his family at The Store's executive condo in Aspen, Colorado.
Each evening he was also offered a bath and a massage by the parade of beautiful women who delivered his dinners, and though he always declined the bath, he accepted the massage his second night. His muscles were aching, and the woman said that she was a certified masseuse. The idea of having trained hands relieve the pain and tension in his muscles sounded wonderful. Following her instructions, he undressed in the bathroom, came out with a towel wrapped around his waist, and lay down on the bed. She did his back first, and the massage was indeed fantastic. All pain fled beneath the ministrations of her expert fingers.
She rolled him over and started working on his thigh muscles, and against his will he became aroused. She noticed, slid her hands under the towel and touched him there, but he pushed her away, feeling guilty and embarrassed. Smiling, she continued with the massage.
The ritual was repeated each night.
He began to take all of this luxury for granted. It was not a hard thing to get used to, and he started to feel that he deserved to be pampered after his long day of lessons. Restraint, denial, and asceticism were worthy and noble, all well and good, but there was something to be said for the high life.
As King wrote in _The Manager's Concordance_, rejection of and disdain for the material world were merely ways for the have-nots to make themselves feel morally superior to the haves.
'And in retail,' he wrote, 'we are only concerned with the haves.'
The man was on to something, Bill thought that night as he sipped champagne and received his massage. The man knew what he was talking about.
He closed his eyes, let the beautiful masseuse do her work.
2
Training ended with a daylong practice session in which he acted as manager over a group of employees in a huge Store mock-up.
The week had been building up to this, with an increasing number of tests and quizzes focusing on appropriate reactions to specific in-store situations.
King's rules were harsh, but within his broad boundaries he provided a lot of leeway for individual managers to assert their own personalities, and it was clear that today Bill was supposed to show King and his corporation the stuff he was made of.
There were no other trainees in the classroom today, only himself, and he was issued a black leather uniform and told to put it on. He did so, and was taken by elevator to a gigantic room that was an exact double for the Juniper Store. For all Stores. He walked slowly up the main aisle, marveling at the thoroughness of the illusion, the extent of the make-believe. There were employees and customers, fully stocked shelves, and piped-in Muzak. Everything, down to the last detail, was perfect. This was all located somewhere within the Black Tower, but it was indistinguishable from a real Store.
He was led by the instructor to the manager's office, was given a Xeroxed sheet that described a short history of the 'problems' facing this particular Store, and was left alone to perform his managerial duties.
He loved it.
