Inhuman Resources

by Pierre Lemaitre, Sam Gordon

Genres: Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

When Alain Delambre lost his job four years ago, he lost everything. Now he's breaking all the rules for one last shot at the life he thinks he deserves.

Alain Delambre is a fifty-seven-year-old former HR executive, drained by four years of hopeless unemployment. The only job offers he gets are for low-level, demoralizing positions. He has reached rock bottom and can see no way out.

So when a major company finally invites him in for an interview, Alain is ready to do anything--borrow money, shame his wife and his daughters, and even participate in the ultimate recruitment test: a role-playing game that involves taking hostages.

Alain vows to commit body and soul in this struggle to regain his dignity. But if he had realized that the odds were stacked against him from the beginning, he never would have tried to land the position. Now, his fury is limitless. And what began as a role-playing game could quickly become a bloodbath.

Release date: September 6, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

I’ve never been a violent man. For as long as I can remember, I have never wanted to kill anyone. The odd flare of the temper, sure, but never any desire to inflict proper pain. To destroy. So, when it did happen, I suppose it took me by surprise. Violence is like drinking or sex – it’s a process, not an isolated phenomenon. We barely notice it set in, quite simply because we are ready for it, because it arrives at precisely the right moment. I was perfectly aware that I was angry, but I never expected it to turn to cold fury. That’s what scares me.

And to take it out on Mehmet, of all people . . .

Mehmet Pehlivan.

The guy’s a Turk. He’s been in France for ten years, but his vocabulary is worse than a ten-year-old’s. He has only two settings: either he’s shouting his head off, or he’s sulking. When he’s angry, he lets rip in a mixture of French and Turkish. You can’t understand a word, but you never doubt for a second what he means. Mehmet is a supervisor at Pharmaceutical Logistics, my place of work. Following his own version of Darwin’s theory, the moment he gets promoted he starts disparaging his former colleagues, treating them like slithering earthworms. I’ve come across people like him throughout my career, and not just migrant workers. No, it happens with lots of people who start out at the bottom. As soon as they begin climbing the ladder, they align themselves wholeheartedly with their superiors, and even surpass them in terms of sheer determination. The world of work’s answer to Stockholm Syndrome. The thing is, Mehmet doesn’t just think he’s a boss. He becomes the boss incarnate. He is the boss as soon as the boss is out the door. Of course, at this company, which must employ two hundred staff, there’s not a big boss as such, just managers. But Mehmet is far too important to be a humble manager. No, he subscribes to an altogether loftier, more intangible concept that he calls “Senior Management”, a notion devoid of meaning (round here, no-one even knows who the senior managers are) yet heavy with innuendo: the Way, the Light, the Senior Management. In his own way, by scaling the ladder of responsibility, Mehmet is moving closer to God.

I start at 5.00 a.m. It’s an odd job (when the salary is this low, you have to say it’s “odd”). My role involves sorting cardboard boxes of medication that are then sent off to far-flung pharmacies. I wasn’t around to see it, but apparently Mehmet did this for eight years before he was made “supervisor”. Now he is in the proud position of heading up a team of three office drones, which is not to be sniffed at.

The first drone is called Charles. Funny name for a guy of no fixed abode. He is one year younger than me, thin as a rake and thirsty as a fish. I say “of no fixed abode” to keep things simple, but he does actually have an abode. An extremely fixed one. He lives in his car, which hasn’t moved for five years. He calls it his “immobile home”. That’s typical of Charles’ sense of humour. He wears a diving watch the size of a satellite dish, with dials all over the place, and a fluorescent green bracelet. I haven’t got a clue where he’s from or how he ended up in these dire straits. He’s a funny one, Charles. For instance, he has no idea how long he’s been on the social housing waiting list, but he does keep a precise tally of the time that has passed since he gave up renewing his application. Five years, seven months and seventeen days at the last count. Charles counts the time that has elapsed since he lost any hope of being rehoused. “Hope,” he says, as he raises his index finger, “is a pack of lies invented by the Devil to reconcile men with their lot.” That’s not one of his, I’ve heard it before somewhere else. I’ve searched for the quote but never managed to track it down. Just goes to show that behind his veneer of drunkenness, he is a man of culture.

The other drone is Romain, a young guy from Narbonne. Following a few prominent turns in his school drama club, he dreamed of becoming an actor and, straight after passing his baccalaureate, moved to Paris. But he failed to make even the smallest of splashes, not least because of his Gascon accent. Like a true young D’Artagnan, or Henri IV arriving at court, his provincial drawl – all r’s and ang’s – prompted sniggers among the drama school elite with all its urbane courtiers. It amuses us all no end, too. He had elocution lessons for it, but to no avail. He took on a series of part-time jobs, which kept a roof over his head while he attended castings for roles he never had a hope in hell of landing. One day, he understood that his fantasy would never come true. Red-carpet Romain was done. What was more, Narbonne had been the biggest city he had known. It didn’t take long for Paris to flatten him, to crush him to dust. He grew homesick, yearning for the familiar surroundings of his childhood. Problem was that he couldn’t face going back empty-handed. Now he works hard to pay his way, and the only role he aspires to is that of the prodigal son. With this aim in mind, he does any piecemeal job he can find. An ant’s vocation. He spends the rest of his time on Second Life, Twitter, Facebook and a whole load of other networks – places where no-one can hear his accent, I suppose. According to Charles, he’s a tech wizard.

I work for three hours every morning, which brings in 585 euros gross (whenever you talk of a part-time salary, you have to add the word “gross”, because of the tax). I get home around 9.00 a.m. If Nicole is out the door a bit late, we might run into each other. Whenever that happens, she says “I’m late” before giving me a peck on the nose and closing the door behind her.

This morning, Mehmet was seething. Like a pressure cooker. I suppose his wife had been giving him grief, or something. He was pacing angrily up and down the aisle where all the crates and cardboard boxes are stacked, clutching his clipboard so tightly his knuckles had turned white. He gives the impression of being burdened with major responsibilities, exacerbated by personal strife. I was bang on time, but the moment he set eyes on me he yelled out a stream of his gibberish. Being on time, apparently, is not sufficient to prove your motivation. He arrives an hour early at least. His tirade was fairly unintelligible, but I got the gist, namely that he thinks I’m a lazy arsehole.

Although Mehmet makes such a song and dance about it, the job itself is not very complicated. We sort packets, we put them in cardboard boxes, we lay them on a palette. Normally, the pharmacy codes are written on the packets in large type, but sometimes – don’t ask me why – the number is missing. Romain reckons the settings on one of the printers must be wrong. If this does happen, the correct code can be found among a long series of tiny characters on a printed label. The numbers you want are the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth. It’s a real hassle for me because I need my glasses for this. I have to fish them out of my pocket, put them on, lower my head, count the characters . . . A loss of precious time. And if Senior Management were to catch me doing this, it would annoy them greatly. Typical, then, that the first packet I picked up this morning didn’t have a code. Mehmet started screaming. I leaned over. And at that precise moment, he kicked me right in the arse.

It was just after five in the morning.

My name is Alain Delambre. I am fifty-seven years old. And four years ago, I was made redundant.

Initially, I took the morning job at Pharmaceutical Logistics as a way of keeping myself occupied. At least that’s what I told Nicole, but neither she nor the girls fell for it. At my age, you don’t wake up at 4.00 a.m. for 45% of the minimum wage just to get your endorphins going. It’s all a bit more complicated. Well, actually it’s not that complicated. At first, we didn’t need the money – now we do.

I have been unemployed for four years. Four years in May (May 24, to be exact).

This job doesn’t really make ends meet, so I do a few other bits and bobs too. For a couple of hours here and there, I lug crates, bubble-wrap things, hand out fliers. A spot of night-time industrial cleaning in offices. A few seasonal jobs, too. For the past two years, I’ve been Father Christmas at a discount store specialising in household appliances. I don’t always give Nicole the full picture of my activities, since it would only upset her. I use a range of excuses to justify my absences. As this is harder for the night jobs, I have magicked up a group of unemployed friends with whom I supposedly play poker. I tell Nicole that it relaxes me.

Before, I was H.R. manager at a company with almost two-hundred employees. I was in charge of staff and training, overseeing salaries and representing the management at the works council. I worked at Bercaud, which sold costume jewellery. Seventeen years casting pearls before swine. That was everyone’s favourite gag. There was a whole load of extremely witty jokes that went around about pearls, family jewels, etc. Corporate banter, if you like. The laughter stopped in March, when it was announced that Bercaud had been bought out by the Belgians. I might have been in with a shout against the Belgian H.R. manager, but when I found out that he was thirty-eight, I mentally started to clear my desk. I say “mentally” because, deep down, I know I wasn’t at all ready to do it for real. But that was what I had to do – they didn’t hang about. The takeover was announced on March 4. The first round of redundancies took place six weeks later, and I was part of the second.

In the space of four years, as my income evaporated, I passed from incredulity to doubt, then to guilt, and finally to a sense of injustice. Now, I feel anger. It’s not a very positive emotion, anger. When I arrive at Logistics, and I see Mehmet’s bushy eyebrows and Charles’ long, rickety silhouette, and I think about everything I’ve had to endure, a terrible rage thunders inside me. Most of all, I have to avoid thinking about the years I have left, about the pension payments I’ll never receive, about the allowances that are withering away, or about the despair that sometimes grips Nicole and me. I have to avoid those thoughts because – in spite of my sciatica – they put me in the mood for terrorism.

In the four years we have known each other, I have come to count my job centre adviser as one of my closest friends. Not long ago, he told me, with a degree of admiration in his voice, that I was an example. What he means is that I might have given up on the idea of finding a job, but I haven’t given up looking for one. He thinks that shows strength of character. I don’t want to tell him he’s wrong; he is thirty-seven and he needs to hang on to his illusions for as long as possible. The truth is I’ve actually surrendered to a sort of innate reflex. Looking for work is like working, and since that is all I have done my whole life, it is ingrained in my nervous system; something that drives me out of necessity, but without direction. I look for work like a dog sniffs a lamp post. No illusions, but I can’t help it.

And so it was that I responded to an advertisement a few days ago. A headhunting firm looking to recruit an H.R. assistant for a big company. The role involves hiring staff at executive level, formulating job descriptions, carrying out assessments, writing up appraisals, processing social audits, etc., which is all right up my street, exactly what I did for years at Bercaud. “Versatile, methodical and rigorous, the candidate will be equipped with excellent interpersonal skills.” My professional profile in a nutshell.

The moment I read it, I compiled my documents and attached my C.V. Needless to say, it all hangs on whether they are willing to take on a man of my age.

The answer to which is perfectly obvious: it’ll be a “no”.

So what? I sent off my application anyway. I wonder whether it was just a way of honouring my job centre adviser’s admiration.

*

When Mehmet kicked me in the arse, I let out a yelp. Everyone turned around. First Romain, then Charles, who did so with greater difficulty as he was already a couple of sheets to the wind. I straightened up like a young man. That’s when I realised that I was almost a head taller than Mehmet. Up to now, he had been the big boss. I’d never really noticed his size. Mehmet himself was struggling to come to terms with kicking me in the arse. His anger seemed to have abated entirely, I could see his lips trembling and he was blinking as he tried to find the words, I’m not sure in which language. That was when I did something for the first time in my life: I tilted my head back, very slowly, as though I were admiring the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and then whipped it forward with a sharp motion. Just like I’d seen on television. A head-butt, they call it. Charles, being homeless, gets beaten up a lot, and knows all about it. “Nice technique,” he told me. For a first-timer, it seemed a very decent effort.

My forehead broke Mehmet’s nose. Before feeling the impact on my skull, I heard a sinister crack. Mehmet howled (in Turkish this time, no doubt about it), but I couldn’t ram home my advantage because he immediately took his head in his hands and sank to his knees. If I had been in a film, I almost certainly would have taken a run-up and laid him out with an almighty kick in the face, but my skull was aching so much that I also took my head in my hands and fell to the ground. Both of us were on our knees, facing each other, heads in hands. Tragedy in the workplace. A dramatic scene worthy of an Old Master.

Romain started flapping around, no idea what to do with himself. Mehmet was bleeding everywhere. The ambulance arrived within a few minutes. We gave statements. Romain told me that he’d seen Mehmet kick me in the arse, that he would be a witness and that I had nothing to worry about. I kept silent, but my experience led me to believe that it definitely wouldn’t be as simple as all that. I wanted to be sick. I went to the toilets, but in vain.

Actually no, not in vain: in the mirror, I saw that I had a gash and a large bruise across my forehead. I was deathly pale and all over the place. Pitiful. For a moment, I thought I was starting to look like Charles.

“Oh my goodness, what have you done to yourself?” Nicole asked as she touched the enormous bruise on my forehead.

I didn’t answer. I handed her the letter in a way that I hoped would seem casual, then went to my study, where I pretended to rummage through my drawers. She looked long and hard at the words: “Further to your letter, I am delighted to inform you that your application for the role of H.R. assistant has been accepted in the first instance. You will shortly be invited to take an aptitude test which, if successful, will be followed by an interview.”

I think she had to read it several times before it registered. She was still wearing her coat when I saw her appear at the door of my study, resting her shoulder against the frame. She was holding the letter in her hand, head tilted to the side. This is one of her classic mannerisms and, along with two or three others, by far my favourite. It’s almost like she knows it. When I see her in that position, I feel comforted by the extreme grace she has. There is something doleful about her, a litheness that’s hard to explain . . . a languor that is extraordinarily sexual. She was holding the letter in her hand and staring at me. I found her extremely beautiful, or extremely desirable, and was overcome by a furious urge to jump her. Sex has always been a powerful antidepressant for me.

At first, when I didn’t regard unemployment as a fatal situation, just a calamitous, worrying one, I was constantly jumping
Nicole. In the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the corridor. Nicole never said no. She is very perceptive, and understood that it was my way of affirming that I was still alive. Since then, anxiety has given way to anguish, and the first visible effect of this is that I’m practically impotent. Our lovemaking has become rare, challenging. Nicole is very kind and patient, which only makes me more unhappy. Our sexual barometer is all over the place. We pretend not to notice or that it’s not important. I know Nicole still loves me, but our life has become much more difficult and I can’t help feeling that it cannot carry on like this for ever.

But back to her clutching the letter from B.L.C. Consulting.

“Sweetheart, this is unbelievable!” she said.

I reminded myself that I really needed to track down the author of Charles’ quotation about the Devil and hope. Because Nicole was right. A letter like this was out of the ordinary, and at my age, having not worked in my field for more than four years, I didn’t have the faintest chance of landing the job. A glimmer of optimism stirred in Nicole and me that very second. As though the months and years that had passed had taught us nothing. As though the two of us could never be cured of our hope.

Nicole moved towards me and gave me one of those wet kisses that make me go wild. She’s brave. There is nothing harder than living with a depressive. Apart from being depressed yourself, of course.

“Do we know who they’re recruiting for?” Nicole asked.

I turned around my screen to show her B.L.C. Consulting’s website. The name comes from its founder, Bertrand Lacoste. Serious pedigree. The type of consultant who charges himself out at 3,500 euros a day. When I first joined Bercaud, with my whole future ahead of me (and even several years later, when I signed up for a lifelong learning course to get a coaching qualification), becoming a high-level consultant like Bertrand Lacoste was exactly what I dreamed of: efficient, always one step ahead of my opposite number, producing lightning-quick analyses and a barrage of managerial solutions whatever the situation. I never finished the course because our girls arrived around then. That’s the official version. Nicole’s version. In reality, I never had the talent for it. Deep down, I have the mindset of an employee: I am the prototypical middle-manager.

I said:

“The ad is vague. They talk about an ‘industry leader with a global presence’. Apart from that . . . the job’s based in Paris.”

Nicole watched me scroll through web pages on employment regulations and new laws on continuing professional development that I had spent the afternoon reading. She smiled. My desk was strewn with Post-its and notes-to-self, and I had taped various sheets of paper to my bookshelves. She seemed to realise at that moment that I had worked relentlessly all day. She is one of those people who immediately picks up on the slightest domestic detail. If I move something, she notices as soon as she enters the room. The only time I’ve been unfaithful, a long time ago (the girls were still very young), she rumbled me that very evening, despite all the precautions I’d taken. At first, she didn’t say anything. It was a tense evening. In bed, she simply said to me in a tired manner:

“Alain, never again . . .”

Then she curled up next to me in bed. We have never exchanged another word on the subject.

*

“I don’t have a chance in a thousand.”

Nicole places the letter from B.L.C. Consulting on my desk.

“You never know,” she says, taking off her coat.

“Someone my age . . .”

She turns towards me.

“How many applications do you reckon they received?” she says.

“Maybe three hundred and something.”

“And how many do you think have been called up for the test?”

“I’d say . . . around fifteen?”

“So explain to me why they have chosen your application out of more than three hundred. Do you think they didn’t notice your age? Do you think that passed them by?”

Of course not. Nicole is right. I spent half the afternoon turning the theories round in my head. Each time I come up against the same impossible point: my C.V. stinks of “man in his fifties” from a mile off, so if they’re calling me in, there must be something about my age that interests them.

Nicole is very patient. While she peels the onions and potatoes, she listens to me as I detail all the technical reasons they might have for selecting me. She can hear the excitement bubbling up in my voice despite my attempts to contain it. I haven’t received a letter like this for more than two years. At worst, I never hear back; at best, I get told to bugger off. I never get called to interview anymore, because a guy like me is of no interest to anyone. So I’ve come up with all sorts of hypotheses about the response from B.L.C. Consulting, and I reckon I have fallen on the right one.

“I think it’s because of the scheme.”

“What scheme?” Nicole asked.

The rescue plan for seniors. It turns out that seniors are not working long enough anymore. If only the government had got in touch, I could have saved them the expense of some very costly studies. In this case, we’re obviously talking about people who are still in work. It seems they stop working even though the country still needs them. And if that’s not terrible enough, it gets worse. Apparently, there are seniors who want to work, but can’t find a job. Whether they’re not working enough or are no longer working at all, the older generations represent a serious problem to society. The government has therefore agreed to help by providing cash incentives for companies that agree to employ the elderly.

“It isn’t my experience that interests them, it’s because they want tax exemptions and other benefits.”

Sometimes Nicole does this thing with her mouth to feign scepticism, jutting out her chin slightly. I love it when she does that, too.

“The way I see it,” she says, “these sorts of companies have no shortage of cash, so they don’t give a damn about government reward schemes.”

The second part of my afternoon had been dedicated to clarifying this whole reward scheme business. And, once again, Nicole is right – it’s a weak argument. The tax exemptions only last a few months, and the scheme only covers a small part of the salary of an employee at this level. And, what’s more, it’s on a sliding scale.

No, in the space of a couple of minutes Nicole has come to the same conclusion it has taken me a day to reach: if B.L.C. are calling me in, it’s because they are interested in my experience.

For four years I have exhausted myself explaining to employers that a man of my age is just as dynamic as a younger person, and that experience leads to savings. But that’s a journalist’s argument, fine for the “Jobs” supplements in the broadsheets; it just pisses off employers. Now, for the first time, I get the impression that someone has properly read my cover letter and studied my application. This makes me feel like I might have hit a home run.

I want the interview to happen right here, right now. I want to scream.

But I keep it cool.

“Let’s not mention anything to the girls, O.K.?”

Nicole agrees that’s for the best. It has been tough for the girls seeing their parents living hand to mouth. They never say a word, but they can’t help it – the image they have of me has worn away. Not because of unemployment, but because of the effects unemployment has had on me. I have aged, I have shrunk, I have grown gloomy. I’ve become a pain in the arse. They don’t even know about my job at Pharmaceutical Logistics. Raising their hopes that I might have landed something, only to announce later that I have blown it, is another flop I cannot face.

Nicole cuddles up against me. She delicately places a finger on the bump on my forehead.

“Care to explain?”

I do my best to relate the story in a neutral tone. I’m pretty sure I even put a humorous spin on it. But the idea of me being kicked in the arse by Mehmet does not amuse Nicole in the slightest.

“He’s wrong in the head, that bloody Turk!”

“That’s not a very European reaction.”

But again, my attempt at humour falls flat.

Nicole strokes my cheek pensively. I know full well that she feels bad for me. I try to seem philosophical, despite my heavy heart, and despite realising from the mere touch of her hand that we are entering into fragile emotional territory.

“Are you sure this business ends here?” Nicole asks, looking at my forehead.

That’s it: next time I’m marrying an idiot.

But Nicole places her lips on mine.

“Screw it,” she says. “I’m sure this is the job for you. I’m certain of it.”

I close my eyes and pray that, with all his talk of hope and the Devil, my friend Charles is just being a tedious piece of shit.

This letter from B.L.C. Consulting has been a real bombshell. I can’t sleep anymore. My mood swings between euphoria and pessimism. Whatever I’m doing, my mind constantly comes back to it and creates all sorts of scenarios. It’s exhausting.

On Friday, Nicole spent part of the day on her resource centre’s website and printed off dozens of pages of legal information. After four years out of the game, I’m badly behind. The regulations in my field have changed a lot, especially regarding dismissals (things have become far more relaxed in that department). As for management, there have been plenty of innovations too. Fashions are changing at breakneck speed. Five years ago, everyone was mad about transactional analysis, but that’s seen as deeply antiquated today. Current trends include “transition management”, “sectorial restructuring”, “corporate identity”, the development of “interpersonal relations”, “benchmarking” and “networking”. But above all, businesses champion their “values”. It’s no longer enough to work . . . now you have to “adhere”. Before you just had to agree with the business, nowadays you have to amalgamate with it. To become one with it. Suits me just fine: they employ me, I amalgamate with them.

Nicole sorted and selected the documents, I did some revision cards, and since this morning she has been firing questions at me. We’re cramming. I am pacing around my study, trying hard to focus. Having composed various mnemonics to help, I’m now muddling them all up.

Nicole makes tea and flops back onto the sofa with papers all around her. She’s still in her dressing gown, as is often the case, especially in winter, when she doesn’t have anything planned for the day. Wearing her old T-shirt and odd woollen socks, Nicole smells of sleep and tea; cosy as a croissant and beautiful as spring. I adore her abandon. If I weren’t so stressed by all this job stuff, I would take her straight back to bed. Given my current performance in the sex stakes, I desist.

“No touching,” Nicole says, on seeing me finger my bruise.

I don’t think about the knock often, but I’m cruelly reminded of its presence the moment I step in front of a mirror. This morning it turned a ghastly colour. Mauve in the middle and yellow on the sides. I’d hoped it would make me look manly, but the effect is more grubby. The paramedic told me I would have it for about a week. As for Mehmet, he’s off for ten days with his broken nose.

The teams for day-night shifts were swiftly reshuffled to compensate for our absences. I pick up the phone and call my colleague Romain. I get Charles.

“The shifts are a mess,” he explains. “Romain did the night and I’m on afternoons for two or three days.”

A supervisor is doing overtime to stand in for Mehmet, who has already informed the company that he would like to get back to work sooner. Now there’s someone who doesn’t need management seminars to learn about adhering to values. The overseer who has temporarily replaced him told Charles that Senior Management cannot tolerate brawling in the workplace. “What is the world coming to when team leaders wind up in hospital for reprimanding a subordinate?” the guy would have said. I don’t know the significance of that, but it’s of no value to me. I decide not to say anything to Nicole so as not to worry her: if I get lucky with the job through B.L.C. Consulting, I can deal with all the crap from before with a big grin on my face.

“I’ll put some foundation on you tomorrow,” Nicole jokes as she inspects my forehead. “No, seriously! Just a bit, you’ll see.”

We’ll see. I tell myself that tomorrow is just an aptitude test, not an interview, by which point the bruise will have more or less disappeared. If I make it that far, of course.

“Well of course you’ll make it that far,” Nicole assures me.

True faith is confusing.

I try to hide it, but my excitement is sky high. It’s not the same as yesterday or the day before: the closer the test gets, the more my nerves overwhelm me. On Friday, when we started revising, I had no idea how badly behind I was. When I did realise, it sent me into a panic. All of a sudden, the girls coming round doesn’t seem like such a welcome distraction. The thought of losing prep time sends me into a fluster.

As soon as he enters, Gregory points at my forehead and says, “What happened here, Grandpa? Starting to get a bit wobbly on your feet?”

The “grandpa” is his in-joke. In these cases, Mathilde, my elder daughter, usually digs an elbow into his ribs, because she thinks I’m touchy about it. In my opinion, she’d do better to smack him in the fucking face. I say this because she has been married to him for four years, and for four . . .