Chapter 6: The Survey Gambit

Chapter 6: The Survey Gambit

The email arrived on a Tuesday morning, nestled between a memo about a new brand of power tools and a store-wide reminder about proper lifting techniques. It was bland, formatted in the sterile blues and greys of corporate communication, and most employees would have deleted it without a second thought. The subject line read: ACTION REQUIRED: Annual Anonymous Manager Review Survey.

To Alex, it was as if a sniper rifle, fully loaded and zeroed in, had just fallen from the heavens into his lap. He read the email twice in the flickering light of the breakroom’s aging computer, a cold, predatory smile touching his lips for the first time in weeks. An anonymous survey, processed by a third-party HR analytics firm. It was the perfect weapon. It was untraceable, official, and it bypassed the store’s internal politics entirely, sending its payload directly into the heart of the corporate machine.

This was his desire made manifest: a way to deliver a killing blow without ever showing his hand. The obstacle was making it count. A single scathing review would be dismissed as a disgruntled outlier. He needed a chorus. He needed to create an undeniable, multifaceted portrait of incompetence, a data set so damning that no algorithm or HR drone could ignore it.

That night, Alex told the closing manager he needed to stay late to finish a quarterly inventory reconciliation in Hardware. It was a plausible lie, and no one questioned it. As the last employee clocked out and the heavy security gate rattled shut, the vast store fell into an eerie silence. The familiar hum of the fluorescent lights seemed amplified, the long aisles stretching into shadowy canyons.

He stood for a moment, simply listening. These were the same hours he and Clara had once filled with whispered collaboration and the quiet sounds of creation, building their beautiful vignette from the store’s cast-offs. Tonight, the purpose was the opposite. He was alone, and he was here not to build, but to dismantle a man’s career, piece by meticulous piece.

His campaign began at the Pro Desk, a high-traffic area with its own dedicated computer terminal. He logged in as a guest, the system’s backdoor for contractors checking on special orders. His fingers flew across the keyboard, his posture relaxed, his mind a razor. He was channeling an older, cynical employee, someone from the Lumber department who’d seen a dozen managers like Devin come and go.

“Devin’s management style is hands-off to the point of negligence,” he typed. The tone was weary, not angry. “He signs off on safety checklists without leaving his office. We had a hydraulic fluid leak on Forklift 2 last month that he’d supposedly ‘inspected’ that same morning. It was a serious slip hazard. It’s only a matter of time before his inattention gets someone hurt. He’s more concerned with how things look on paper than how they are on the floor.”

He clicked ‘submit’, cleared the browser’s cache, and moved on. A digital phantom, leaving no trace.

His next stop was the Millwork office, tucked away behind the displays of interior doors. This computer was older, slower. Here, he became a young, ambitious sales associate, frustrated by the lack of support. The voice was eager, laced with corporate buzzwords Devin would appreciate, twisted into a critique.

“While I admire Devin’s commitment to driving high-ticket sales, his direct involvement in client consultations can be counterproductive,” he wrote, picturing the Wainwrights’ horrified faces. “We recently lost a potential six-figure kitchen remodel after he took over the meeting. His focus on upselling to industrial-grade appliances and budget laminate alternatives seemed to conflict with the client’s vision for a high-end, cohesive design. The designer had built excellent rapport, but his high-pressure closing tactics alienated the customer. We need leadership that empowers specialists, not undermines them.”

Two reviews. Both negative, but from entirely different perspectives, with different sentence structures, different vocabularies, different pain points. But this was only the first phase. The true genius of the gambit lay in the second.

He moved to the Garden Center’s seasonal office, a small, dusty room that smelled faintly of fertilizer. From here, he would build Devin up to tear him down. He crafted a review from the perspective of a loyal, if simple, team member.

“Devin is a strong leader who is not afraid to make tough calls,” the positive review began. “He recently had to make a personnel change in the Elysian Designs program, and while it was difficult, he showed he’s willing to put the program’s bottom line ahead of everything else. He has a real ‘Always Be Closing’ attitude, which is what this store needs.”

He paused, a cruel smirk playing on his face. He was using Devin’s own pathetic words from the Wainwright meeting against him, framing his heartless firing of Clara as a laudable act of corporate decisiveness. To an HR algorithm scanning for keywords, phrases like “strong leader” and “bottom line” would register as positives. To a human reading the full context of the reviews, it would paint him as a ruthless hatchet man.

The final piece of the puzzle was the most insidious. He sat down at the main design kiosk, at the very desk where Clara had poured her soul into her work. The warm lights he had installed for her now illuminated his dark work. Here, he became the ultimate corporate sycophant.

“Devin Croft’s hands-on approach to logistics is a game-changer,” he typed, the lie tasting like ash in his mouth. “I’ve personally seen him take charge of complicated special orders to ensure every detail is handled. There was a recent large appliance order for a developer that he personally saw was staged in a secure location to await pickup. His intense dedication to accountability for high-value assets is something we can all learn from.”

He had taken the incident of the lost refrigerators—Devin’s most public, humiliating failure—and spun it into a tale of managerial diligence. It was a masterpiece of disinformation. On its own, it was glowing praise. Placed alongside the other reviews, it would create a picture of a manager so polarizing and chaotic that his own staff couldn’t even agree on what he did day-to-day. It screamed of a department in crisis.

Over the course of five hours, Alex visited twelve different computer terminals, from the cash office to the receiving clerk’s desk. He wrote fourteen distinct reviews, each with its own persona, its own voice, its own specific, verifiable anecdotes twisted to his purpose. He mixed scathing critiques with these cleverly poisoned compliments, creating a web of contradictory data that would flag Devin’s file for immediate human review.

As the first grey hints of dawn began to filter through the store’s high windows, Alex submitted the final review. He logged off, wiped his digital tracks, and walked back through the silent store. He paused at the Elysian Designs kiosk, his creation, their creation. He thought of Clara, fired two days before Christmas, her talent discarded by an insecure fool. This was not just revenge. This was justice, delivered through the anonymous, impersonal mechanisms of the very corporation that had wronged her.

He had not merely submitted survey responses. He had meticulously crafted a corporate indictment. The bomb was armed and delivered. All he had to do now was wait for the explosion.