Chapter 6: The Laughing Bureaucrats

Chapter 6: The Laughing Bureaucrats

The drive home from the factory was a study in controlled fury. Arthur gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, but his breathing was even and his gaze was fixed. Sterling’s smug, triumphant face was seared into his mind’s eye. The sheer, unadulterated treachery of it was breathtaking. He had been lured back with feigned desperation, used for his unique skills, and then discarded with a smug legalistic flourish. The trap had been perfectly executed.

But Sterling, in his arrogance, had made a critical miscalculation. He believed the OmniCorp employee handbook was the ultimate authority, a sacred text whose scripture he alone could interpret. He failed to realize it was just a flimsy pamphlet in the face of actual law.

Arthur didn't go home. He drove straight to Ben Carter’s small house. He found his friend in the garage, sanding down a piece of wood with a grim, defeated air. He looked up as Arthur entered, his face etched with worry. "What happened? I got your text. You went back in?"

Arthur methodically explained the entire sordid affair—the broken Laminator, the frantic call, the second consultancy, and Sterling's triumphant ambush. Ben’s face paled, then flushed with anger. "That son of a bitch! He can't do that! Can he?"

"He thinks he can," Arthur said, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "He's about to receive an education."

The next morning, Arthur bypassed expensive law firms. This wasn't a case that required silver-tongued orators; it required the simple, brutal clarity of facts. He drove downtown to the State Labor Relations Board, a dreary, beige building that seemed to suck the very life out of the air. The waiting room was filled with the quiet desperation of people chewed up and spit out by the corporate machine. It was a place where hope came to die a slow death by paperwork.

Arthur took a number and waited. When he was finally called to a scratched plexiglass window, he didn't present a rambling, emotional story. He presented a file. Inside, he had placed a few simple documents, each one a nail for Sterling’s coffin:

1. A clean copy of Form 734-C, with the glorious, heavy-handed "APPROVED" stamp from HR.
2. The relevant page from the OmniCorp handbook detailing the "single, continuous block" vacation policy.
3. Bank statements showing the two separate, five-figure wire transfers from OmniCorp, clearly marked as "Consultancy Fees."
4. A concise, one-page, typed statement detailing the sequence of events, including Sterling's final declaration that his vacation was forfeited.

The clerk, a woman with a perpetually tired expression, took the file without interest. She glanced at the first page, then the second. Her eyebrows rose slightly. She flipped to the bank statements, her eyes widening almost imperceptibly. She read his one-page summary, and for the first time that morning, her expression changed. A faint, disbelieving smile touched her lips.

"We'll be in touch," she said, but her tone was different. It held a flicker of something Arthur hadn't expected: intrigue.

He had expected to wait months. He got a call in forty-eight hours.

"Mr. Arthur Vance?" the voice on the phone said. It belonged to a case manager named David Henderson, who sounded less like a droning bureaucrat and more like a man who'd just been told the best joke of his life. "Mr. Henderson, we've reviewed your file. I have to say, in my fifteen years here, I've never seen anything quite like it. The board has granted you an expedited hearing. Can you be here next Tuesday at 2 PM?"

When Tuesday came, Arthur walked into the small, wood-paneled hearing room. On one side of the long table sat a woman in a razor-sharp suit, her briefcase open, a stack of documents at the ready. She exuded an air of expensive, dismissive confidence. She was OmniCorp’s legal counsel. On the other side sat Arthur, with his single, slim folder.

The board consisted of three people. Two looked worn down by an endless parade of petty disputes. The third, the chairwoman, a stern woman named Maria Albright, looked at everyone with an expression of profound impatience.

OmniCorp’s lawyer went first. She was slick, professional, and condescending. "Chairwoman Albright, members of the board, this is a simple matter of contractual obligation. Mr. Vance, an employee of OmniCorp, was made aware of the policy regarding continuous vacation leave. By his own admission, he returned to the company premises to perform work on two separate occasions, thereby breaking that continuity. As per the policy he agreed to, his extended leave was forfeited. We believe this is a frivolous complaint wasting the board’s valuable time."

She sat down, looking pleased with herself.

Chairwoman Albright sighed, the sound of a thousand tedious afternoons. "Mr. Vance, your response?"

Arthur stood. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't plead. He simply told the story, laying out his documents one by one.

"This is the approved leave form," he said, sliding it across the table. "This is the company policy. And these," he continued, placing the bank statements next, "are the payments for my services. I was contacted during my approved leave by management to handle an emergency they were incapable of managing. I agreed to assist not as an employee on the clock, but as a paid, independent consultant."

He looked directly at the lawyer. "Does OmniCorp typically pay its active, salaried employees an extra fifty thousand dollars for eight hours of work? If so, I believe a number of your employees are being severely undercompensated."

One of the board members, a portly man who had been doodling on a notepad, let out a snort of laughter, which he quickly tried to disguise as a cough.

The OmniCorp lawyer stood abruptly. "Objection! His status as a consultant is irrelevant. He was on the premises performing his usual duties!"

"My usual duties," Arthur countered smoothly, "did not include fixing the catastrophic incompetence of the six trainees my boss hired to replace me. That was an extraordinary circumstance. I was not 'at work.' I was performing a specialized, contracted rescue operation at the company's desperate and explicit request. My vacation was paused for the duration of that contract. It was not broken."

He then delivered the final blow, recounting Sterling's trap. "Mr. Sterling waited until after the second repair was complete to inform me my vacation was cancelled. This was not an enforcement of policy. It was a calculated, bad-faith act of retaliation."

Chairwoman Albright leaned forward, her expression no longer bored. It was one of fascinated disbelief. She looked at the OmniCorp lawyer.

"Let me be clear on your company's position, counselor. You believe you can interrupt an employee's legally approved vacation, beg him to come back and save you from a crisis, and then use the fact that he helped you as a legal loophole to punish him by stealing eighty-one weeks of his earned time off?"

The lawyer began to bluster about policy and precedent, but her voice lacked its earlier conviction.

It was then that the portly board member finally lost his battle for composure. A low chuckle escaped him, then a louder one. He slapped his hand on the table, shaking his head. "It's brilliant! I mean, it's egregiously illegal, but the sheer audacity is something to behold!"

The other board member began to smile, and even Chairwoman Albright's stern facade cracked, a grin spreading across her face. The room, once a temple of drab procedure, was filled with the sound of laughter. The lawyer for OmniCorp stood frozen, her face a thunderous shade of crimson.

"Counselor," Albright said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye, "in all my years, I've seen corporations try to pull some fast ones. But this... this takes the cake. You've weaponized your own incompetence. It's almost impressive."

She banged a small gavel. "The verdict is immediate. Mr. Vance’s vacation is to be reinstated in its entirety, effective immediately. Furthermore, OmniCorp is fined ten thousand dollars for retaliatory action and proceeding in bad faith. Now get out of my hearing room."

Arthur calmly collected his papers, gave a slight nod to the board, and walked out. In the hallway, David Henderson, the case manager, caught his eye. He gave Arthur a broad, conspiratorial wink.

Walking out into the bright afternoon sun, Arthur felt the cold fury inside him replaced by a clean, hard resolve. He had won. He had taken their own ridiculous system, held it up to the light of day, and made the world laugh at it. He had his vacation back. Now, he just had to decide how he was going to make Richard Sterling pay for it.