Linda did not like this female employee Sanae from the beginning. Yes, from the very beginning. It was an instinctive dislike. This woman had so much of what Linda disliked. Of course, Linda did not show any sign of her true hostile emotions, thanks to her state-of-the-art acting and manipulation. Linda approached Sanae friendly as she would always do for her hunting target to gather information for plotting. Thanks to Linda’s perfect acting, Sanae even thought that Linda was her friend. Linda, on the other hand, had never thought of her as a friend. In fact, Linda had never thought of anyone in her life as a friend. Linda was able to imitate natural human emotions such as sympathy, friendship and affection, by moving facial muscles and mimicking smiles. However, in her heart, she never felt those real emotions at all. It was like a vast desert in Linda’s heart, but she never felt any inconvenience. Although Linda felt cold and distant toward people around her, she did occasionally have interest in others. Linda’s interest in others depended solely on one criteria: whether or not the person was of any use to Linda, whether or not they seemed interesting as prey.
After the mass layoffs and after cleaning up the case of Stefanie, Linda was being busy with recruiting. Bob’s reorganization of the company had created several new positions in the company’s Strategy Department. One of them was a position of Customer Research Manager. There were many applications for the position, and among them was Sanae’s resume. She was Japanese and had an MBA from a prestigious management school in Switzerland, the same university as Emma studied. She had a good work history, having held similar positions in several very well-known global companies, including Apple. She was from outside of the EU, but was married to a Swiss citizen. That meant she was eligible to work in Switzerland even if she was a non-Swiss or non-EU citizen. Her resume lined up a number of accomplishments. In a word, her resume looked good by the standard HR criteria. At first glance, Linda made up her mind. She must not share this application with the hiring manager. She looked through the other applications and narrowed them down to ten which she should show to the hiring manager. That consisted of eight applications from men and two applications from women. Men’s applications were all good, showing relevant experiences in the same or a similar industry.
Linda had to have a few more applications from women at least, as that was a general mandate in the company for promoting gender equality in the recruitment process. She needed to avoid coming across as unnatural by having only male applications for the customer research position. So Linda selected two “medium” ranked applications from the application pool. She eliminated applications from women ranked “good, or “very good” including Sanae’s. The two female applicants selected were “safe” enough from Linda’s perspective, to share with the hiring manager. They were clearly lackluster in terms of work performance and education, plus they were not very young or pretty in their pictures. The criteria of paramount importance was whether or not they were worse than Linda. Linda forwarded the 10 selected resumes to Greg, the hiring manager, with her comment that she had received good applications. Greg was also German, and one of those who survived the massive layoffs, at the mercy of Linda. Actually he was even promoted to a Director position as this new Strategy Department was created.
Things didn’t go as Linda had planned. A few weeks later, Greg called Linda. Greg said he still hadn’t found a good candidate. With characteristic German impatience, Greg said. “We need to fill the position as soon as possible, so send me all the applications you’ve received so far. I would need to review them all, please.” Another German’s request should be supported. Linda sent all the applications to Greg, being unaware of the threat this action would bring her in the future. She had forgotten about the applications she had intentionally excluded.
A few days later, Linda received a call from Greg. To her surprise, Greg said that he would set up an interview with a new applicant who he thought was worth a try from those who had not been invited to an interview. He had already emailed that applicant without noticing Linda and set up a date and time for the interview. The application was Sanae’s that Linda had dropped a few weeks ago. Linda clicked her tongue and thought, “What a mess. Why did you contact her in person without going through me? Certainly, I will disqualify her in the interview. That woman was once “disqualified” by me.” Cursing Greg from the bottom of her heart, Linda said to him in a cheerful voice, “Oh, that’s nice. That’s a great initiative from your side. I’ll be happy to sit with you in the interview.”
Things got worse. During the interview, Sanae spoke well, and impressed Greg. Greg told her, right in front of Linda, that he could imagine Sanae working in his team. It was not common sense to say something like this to a candidate in the interview without Linda’s consent. Linda’s eyes flashed with anger and her hands jerked. Sanae, an Asian woman who was far ahead of Linda in terms of work experience, could be a threat to Linda. She must not let her join the company. How could she prevent it? Should she pull others into this game?
Linda encouraged Greg to set up the next interview. That was an additional step especially for this position, Linda said. When Greg filled in positions at the same level as Sanae’s, hiring decisions were made after the first round interviews between Greg and Linda. They were a German male applicant with long industry experience and a British male also with long experience in their competitor. After all, Sanae had had no industry experience, which was clearly her weak point. It should be easy to attack this point and let her fall. Linda decided to bring two more people to the game, hoping that they would crush Sanae’s candidacy. One was Greg’s boss, Carl, the famous coward, and the other, Max, a German guy recently appointed to lead the Strategy and Controlling unit in the Strategy Department.
Linda should let them know that Sanae had absolutely no experience in the industry and that would be a strong concern, even though Greg thought she was a good fit. Linda should remind them that the other candidates for the position had years of experience in the industry. Why would they hire an Asian woman who had no industry experience for this job? Carl himself had been in the company for over 30 years and would prefer someone who had the experience in the industry. Linda was hoping this additional round would finish Sanae. But the result was again disappointing. To the point that Sanae didn’t have industry experience, Greg and Carl didn’t easily agree, saying that Sanae worked at a great company that everybody envied, Apple, and could bring experience and skills from other high-tech industries including Apple.
Sanae again did well in front of the two interviewers, and they said ‘yes’ to hire her. To make matters worse, one of the interviewers, Max, was connected well to the CEO, Ben, being the son of his current wife. As even Max was positive to hire Sanae, it was difficult for Linda to overturn the situation even with her outstanding manipulation skills. It would be too risky to invade into the proximity of Ben.
The last card Linda had was to offer Sanae a lower salary than she wanted and to make her turn down the job offer. Linda did create a job offer with an annual salary lower than what Sanae mentioned as the desired range. As expected, Sanae insisted on a raise and said she had received another offer from another company. Greg was surprised by this and asked Linda to offer Sanae a much higher annual salary than she had originally mentioned in the interview. In addition to this, Max was also informed about the progress and Linda had no choice but to accept it and to make the change.
If Linda ever had communicated directly with Sanae, she could have manipulated between Sanae and Greg as much as she wanted. For instance, when Sanae requested for a raise, she could have said that she could not give her any more raises and a few days later, Linda could have informed her that there was another candidate who accepted a job offer with a lower salary. At the same time, Linda should tell Greg that Sanae declined the offer, dissatisfied with the conditions of the offer other than salary itself, so that they should offer the position to another candidate. As the final step, if Linda mentioned to them that Sanae was really mad at Greg, he would have never attempted to contact her again any more. This way, Sanae wouldn’t be able to have another touchpoint with the company and would not have invaded Linda’s territory. It was really a mistake to let Greg have direct contact with Sanae. Linda was furious. She felt as if she was defeated by this cunning Asian woman.
As was always the case, the miserable feeling gave Linda a strong drive to go wild with crashing her enemy. This time, her enemy should be Sanae and those people who supported her, Greg, Carl and Max. She should create distrust and resentment among them. Linda vowed,
“Watch this, Sanae and Greg. I’ll make sure you pay for what they did.” Greg and Carl had no idea what happened to all those people who stood in Linda’s way so far. What’s the matter with Apple?”
Linda should make them understand there should be no other “better” career than Linda’s career. Linda should give Sanae apples with poison, disguised as gifts, to bring her to a painful death. After all, Linda was the Head of HR. If they misbehaved in front of Linda, they should be punished. Linda started laughing in her office, looking at the green river flowing in front of her in her office. Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke… The eerie sound, like an old chair creaking, was actually Linda’s laughter.
This story is fictitious and is not based on any real persons or organizations. Copyright: Kunoichi4You 2024
Psychopath in the Next Office 