The Two Lives of Jay Santos

1. Jay

It was a Tuesday that was like all others, except that for one Jay Santos he simply had had too much. For one, the foreign market trade he'd conducted just a couple of hours ago had not gone quite well. What was to have been a quick profit of a couple of thousands for a swaps trade on a popular kitchen brand yielded barely a few cents (exclusive of fees). And he had a gnawing suspicion that it was those darned high frequency traders again, overtaking his executions by tenths of a millisecond.

For another, he was not feeling very excited about opening up shop today. Not that business had been particularly hot on any given day for the past fifteen years or so. In fact it had never been. But for some strange reason, this past year, it seemed to finally be starting to make sense to him why his parents had been so vehemently against him selling all his assets to open up a furniture repair shop.

And now this. Maybe it wouldn't have been particularly bad if this was the first time it happened. But the fiftieth? Yes, Jay Santos was counting. It was the fiftieth time in recent memory that his morning bowl of goto came to him without the extra garlic.

This happened in A&A Eatery, a mid-priced establishment catering to the middle- to lower-middle class. Prior to this particular morning, its claim to fame was a five minute feature on an afternoon lifestyle TV show five years ago when a co-host sampled its famed bistek Tagalog. (That was back when it still had its highly skilled head chef, who had since left to be a restaurant owner himself.)

This Tuesday, of course, would be remembered in the town's history as the day most people perished inside an eatery, and all through violent means. And it was to be because one patron had less garlic in his goto as he would have desired.

2. Jay

Jay Santos wasn't a bad employee. Sure, in an entire utilities sales firm's population of around fourteen thousand, he would barely be ranked among its top 10% of good performers, but he could say in all modesty—and his seven years' worth of good and documented supervisor feedback attested to this—that he was above average. If there was anything he expected the least to read first thing in the morning, upon turning on his company-provided iPed and launching his Thunderbird email application, it was a memo from HR informing him that he needed to undergo PIP.

PIP, to the uninitiated, means Personnel Improvement Plan. Taken by its name's context, it is a positive thing, something an employee can wish to undergo not once or twice, but continuously all throughout his or her professional life. Taken by its name's context, it holds promises of a fruitful career, increased productivity, satisfied bosses, instinctive good performance, and overall happiness among everyone concerned.

In the context of the country's Labor Laws, however, the PIP is the vehicle by which an employer can safely escort a presumably low performer out of their employ without the risk of violating its Unlawful Termination clauses. The PIP is the legal means by which an employer can tell the employee: "shape up or ship out", practically meaning they have the rights to terminate under Lawful Grounds—Gross Habitual Neglect—should the employee fail to "Improve" despite the "Plan".

In this context, the PIP can be taken as another way of pointing out that the employee has been under performing, that he has been a lazy slob, and is one Bad Move away from getting sacked.

Jay Santos, naturally, upon reading the full memo, was taken aback. How could he be getting a PIP, he never missed his sales quotas? Sure he didn't exceed a hundred percent of his targets like some of his colleagues did, but he was always well clear of the required numbers. Surely, there could be a mistake!

He was about to tap his supervisor's contact icon for a VoIP call to get a clarification, when he saw reflected in his terminal's glare, behind him, his supervisor, accompanied by a much higher senior manager, and two members of HR-Legal.

"Mr. Santos," his supervisor began. "I'm sure you have read our email to you by now."

"Why, yes..." Jay began apprehensively. "Yes, in fact I've just finished reading the full memo. I'm sure there's been some kind of mistake. I do appreciate it that you took the trouble of coming all the way here to tell me to disregard it. I assure you it's perfectly fine, I haven't told anyone yet about the misdirected ma—"

"We did indeed take the trouble of personally coming to you," one of the members of HR-Legal did not allow him to even finish his last sentence, "but it is not to correct any type of—what did you call it?—mistake. Or any misdirected mail."

Even before Jay could start his response, the second member of HR-Legal quickly continued after her colleague. "There were no missent email. The memo you've just read is meant for you. You are the intended recipient of the PIP mail."

"Yes, Jay." His supervisor's expression showed deep concern, but only minimally for Jay, and mostly for himself, as if he feared that it was only a matter of time before he was the recipient of this very thing, this professional death sentence today being served to his subordinate. "We came here to tell you how, now that you are under the PIP, you are to go about your future work."

"Now if you'd be so compliant," said the senior manager, "we have reserved Quiet Room #2 on the other end of the floor so we could all discuss your PIP."

* * *

So to Quiet Room #2 on the other end of the floor they went. Jay knew the reason for the existence of about four or more of these such quiet rooms on each of their operations floors, and why it was called that. It was a place where a stressed out employee could retreat to to slow down and relax a bit lest he or she burned out. The silence, the seclusion, helped someone get into his or her own inner being and all that, re-focus, and ask him- or herself why they were in this job to begin with. And after a few minutes (all of which should be within the 30-minute-a-day approved break), the employee would emerge ready to face the challenges of a highly-skilled utilities sales personnel.

Today, however, Jay learned another reason these rooms were called Quiet Rooms. They were padded and sound-proofed, not only so that those inside would not hear any noise from outside, but also so that whatever yells, screams, and cries of anguish made inside would not be heard by those outside.

Because as the details of his PIP were delivered to him, he made plenty of those noises that if they'd been heard by any of his colleagues outside, would have reduced his dignity so low he might as well have been, well...  something they'd have scraped out of their nostrils, rounded to a small circular ball, and wiped on the underside of their work desks.

"Admittedly, you are well over the minimum sales quota of 85% of your target for the past year," his supervisor began.

Which translates to me practically shovelling bundles of money amounting to 50 million straight to our Owner's pockets. Jay wanted to say, but stopped himself.

"Unfortunately, everyone from your division made more than that amount of sales," said the senior manager. "So if we were to rank you based on the sales every employee contributed, Jay, I'm afraid you are at the bottom."

"That's not the point, is it?" He used a defiant yet still respectful tone. "The PIP is designed to address low performance. I have, as you said, maintained meeting over 85% of my targets each time. How can I be a low performer?"

"Ours is a relative scoring system, Mr. Santos," HR reminded him. "You might be doing a good job by being just above the required quota, but all of your peers are doing better. That puts you at the bottom, and thus require of you improvement."

"Improvement, how?" he was incredulous, slightly mocking. "To beat their 105% sales rates?"

"If possible, yes. The PIP can help you achieve that. In fact"—the HR personnel checked the PIP guidelines printout she carried—"your PIP target is a meager 150% sales rate, or a 100 million in ROI. Whichever is higher."

"Whichever is higher!" A voice raised in indignation this time.

"Ordinary goals do not apply to those undergoing PIP. If someone were to undergo PIP, the measure of success must be extra ordinarily high. Improvement is the end goal."

What a pretty convenient scheme to squeeze free extra work out of somebody for some additional millions to line the Owner's pockets. Jay didn't say these, but they were in his eyes, reddening face, and trembling, fisted hands. Instead of having to say these (and get a Disciplinary Action to go with his PIP), he asked instead, this time in a falsely humble, exasperated tone, "Why ever do we have a relative scoring system? Technically, one could be bringing in a billion in sales, yet still be an under performer, just because everyone of his peers made a billion... and one."

"You very well know that's the rating system all throughout your career, yes? You were fine with it when you were among the relatively good performers."

Jay didn't have anything to say to that. His supervisor was right. After a few seconds of reflection, acknowledging he couldn't do much to reverse HR's decision anyway, he asked, "What then do I do to purge myself of my low performing ways?"

And so the HR explained.

There are targets one would aim for if one wants a good increase next year. There are targets if one is gunning for a promotion to the next level. Then there are targets if, say, a newly hired personnel, straight out of college, wants to skip a few rungs of the corporate ladder and be a CEO of the company the same year he received his diploma and was hired. The PIP targets are more similar to the last example—except that Jay would have to do it in two months.

Jay at this point was depleted of rage—or any other emotion, for that matter. He felt like he was in one of those dreams where he was trying to run, but his movements were in slow-mo, and the harder he tried, the more hopeless moving became.

"And if in those two months, I fail to meet those targets?" Jay finally managed to ask, in a feeble voice, himself close to tears.

"If you fail even one of your fifty PIP targets, the company will terminate your employment without even worrying about violating any Labor Laws."

Hearing this, all that escaped Jay's mouth was but a barely audible, helpless whimper. "I see."

3. Jay

Although what follows are reconstructed partly based on eye witness accounts from the only two survivors, and forensic investigation by the much celebrated Raheem City Police Department, still much liberty is exercised by the Author in telling the events of that fateful Tuesday morning in A&A Eatery... in but one of the series of killings known in popular media as the Who, What, When, Where, and How Massacre of '99. This particular one being known as the A&A Eatery Massacre.

Parents with very young kids, time to ask your children to look away!

* * *

The killer was well armed and had plenty of ammunition. He could fire his guns accurately with both hands. Most importantly, he had fingers that never tired of squeezing the trigger—if that was all he had to do to bring death and destruction to everyone in that eatery the entire morning.

The first casualties, of course, were those seated closest to him. A man who had just scooped his first spoonful of goto for the morning was never able to bring it to his mouth. Unfortunately for him, before the spoon, warmed by his hot soup, touched his lips, an even hotter and entirely different type of metal went through his mouth, shattering his two front teeth, before exiting the back of his neck.

This man had a seatmate, and his initial reaction to seeing blood gushing out of his friend's mouth was: Who puts ketchup in goto? His second thought was: So this is what a bullet speeding towards in between my eyes looks like. Truly, no matter how they say bullets travel fast, neurons on one's brain are even faster, and can process information such as an approaching bullet. If anything can be faulted as being slow, it is the rest of the human body, not quick enough to dodge, when he sees the bullet coming.

On the next table, the patrons had only time enough to cover their heads with their upraised arms. As if those could protect them! And in any case, the Shooter decided the torso was a bigger target than the head and face, while still containing plenty of vital body organs to damage. Three fell from that table, all with gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.

At this time, most of the eatery were becoming aware that at least one of the patrons were opening fire on their co-patrons. They, however, did not know the full background of what the commotion was about, and so decided to stay on for a little while until they understood better. They never got to, as the next spray of bullets went in their direction.

Who knows the mind of a killer? Who can second guess his intentions? But to most everyone who perished that day, it seemed likely that they were all in agreement that to the Killer, nothing about it was personal. He had some issues, obviously, and if opening fire to an eatery-full of customers was his way of dealing with those issues, who's to judge?

The killings were now in earnest. At the first complete revolution of the eatery's clock's second hand around its face, eight already lay dead. The floor was starting to get slick with blood and other human by-products... but not as slick as it would be after all the Killer's ammunition were done hitting their intended targets.

In the meantime, the bullets did go about hitting their intended targets. Be it somebody's head or face, torso, or limb. In the end, all types of bodily damage were made equal by the ceasing of life that resulted as a consequence of them.

Sure, an entry wound on the belly looked small in contrast to the rest of the body, but who knew what internal organs were damaged in the bullet's progress? A wounded liver, a punctured gut, a disturbed pancreas—they brought pain and discomfort to the victim, and if they remained untreated long enough, would cause the victim to die.

Some didn't have to wait that long. Bullets, which naturally didn't have any business in or near a person's cranium, forced their way in via an entry wound, and exited via the same, although on a different side of the head. This brought near instant death to the victims. And where the intrusion of lead in what would have otherwise been strictly the human brain's territory wasn't bad enough, the entry and exit wounds induced deprivation of blood, that fluid so essential to the functioning of the very brain the bullets had violated.

Then there were bullets that attacked the very skelletal integrity of its victims. In one very curious case, two unique bullets happened to hit a common vertebra of a single victim. Backbone broken, the victim landed on the bloodied floor on an unnatural L-shape, bent where his backbone had been shattered.

The spray of bullets came in non-stop fusilade that reached a wide angle from the Shooter's vantage point. And thanks to his ambidextrosity, death was delivered in more or less equal proportions between those in his left and in his right.

Nor was his shooting two-dimensional. He also swayed his gun hands up-and-down, as he did left-to-right. So not even those who ducked for cover under the tables were ever really as protected as they wished to believe.

There were those who attempted to run, but who said the Killer couldn't swivel his body from the waist, and thereby chase with gunfire those escaping, stopping would-be survivors?

At some point, it was known that somebody heard someone yell: "Stop!" It could only be the eatery's manager, since mostly everyone was dead or dying at this point—although there truly was no consensus about this.

The next statements, though, were certifiably verified to have been made by the eatery's manager. "You are killing my customers. You have got to stop." This was bad, because it only managed to call the Killer's attention to him. And a lot agree that he was the one who got the worst of the acts of violence that were perpetrated in the eatery that morning.

To kill the manager, the Killer brought both his shooting hands together to focus his gunfire on him. There was a momentary ceasing of shooting, a few seconds of lull when the only sounds heard were the squirming and gurgling breaths of those dying. But as if sorry that he should have let go of squeezing the triggers even for a while, the Killer immediately resumed the massacre as soon as he had the manager in sight.

When the gunfire resumed, every bullet that left the Killer's high-powered weapons went straight to the manager. Whereas the earlier killings had been made with relatively economical use of ammunition—where it was two bullets per person at least, as long as they found a vital enough body part—this time the Killer liberally consumed bullets on a single person.

Smoking holes instantly appeared on different parts of the manager's body where but a blink of an eye earlier, it was plain, smooth, in-tact human skin. Likewise, the force of the entering bullets caused the manager's body to sway this way and that, as if on a dance. That motion, plus factoring the open bullet wounds in his body, splattered blood in every direction.

Long after the manager's decimated body was no longer able to sustain life, the Killer continued firing at his body.

Finally, the shootings stopped—but not because of the Killer's loss of interest or motivation. It stopped because his bullets had finally run out.

Noting this limitation, he appeared to have snapped out of his violent temperament, shrugged his shoulders, packed his things (including both high-powered guns), and left the A&A Eatery. He would not be seen by anyone for the next six years.

He didn't take with him all his things as he left the eatery  though. Consistent with all the Who, What, When, Where, and How Massacre cases, he left a card. Handwritten on it were the words:

WHO:

WHAT:

WHEN:

WHERE:

HOW:

And on the back of the card was a name and job title:

Jay Santos

Furniture Repair Specialist

4. Jay

"Shape up or ship out." At least he was given a choice. And if he really thought about it, it wasn't a particularly difficult one to make.

How realistically can anyone really pull off all the long list of those "extra ordinarily high" objectives in the PIP checklist? And if anyone did meet those, who benefits? Who ends up with a couple of free extra millions in his bank account and a huge smile on his face? Not the overworked employee, for sure.

On the other hand, the alternative meant saying goodbye to the company he had worked in for nearly the past nine years of his life. He would have to update his CV, upload it, look for work, and go through all the bureaucratic hassles of getting a new employer.

But still, when he came to think of it, the stress of having to meet all the unrealistic demands set by his superiors far outweigh any inconveniences that came with seeking new work. Plus, there was no way he would allow himself to take part in rewarding his employer for a very glaring labor injustice with stacks and stacks of free millions!

And besides, it was not as if there was a shortage of options in the job market for someone with the kind of skills he had. On the contrary, his skills were quite sought after by competing utilities sales companies. Proof of this was the considerable number of junk emails per month he received on his personal email making suggestions to consider applying for a position in their companies.

This might in fact be an opportunity for him to get a better job!

Having realized this, Jay was glad he had not immediately signed the acceptance of the terms of the PIP when HR served them to him. Because if he had, he would be exiting branded as a poor performer. Instead, a resignation now while his employment record was not tarnished by any acknowledged under performance would be just like any other ordinary resignation.

No sooner had he made this realization than he was typing his brief resignation letter. Quite surprisingly, there was no bitterness in it, no indication at all that its writer was feeling that he was a recipient of injustice.

He printed out the letter at home, not intending to use company resources for it. He printed out four copies. When he came for work the next day, he sent a copy to each of the people he had shared Quiet Room #2 with the previous day.

* * *

After this, things seemed to go smoothly and as planned. People say you know you are making the right decision when nothing seems to hinder the flow of all the good things your way.

He checked his most recent junk mails from the headhunters, and got the top ten most decent enough sounding positions. Of the ten, he did some light research on the company's background, browsing the web forums for any general comments about them.

Of the ten, he decided to send an application to five, and within a week he got calls from three, requesting personal appearance and face-to-face interviews.

By the end of the week, he was within 90% of the pre-employment process of what would be his new employer; he only had to comply with some final official requirements.

That's why Jay found himself one fine August morning in a popular mall, standing in line to apply for an _BI Clearance. The line was long, but as a true testament to how the universe was in favor of his good decision, when the clearance processors decided to divide the lines per each letter of the alphabet, Jay found himself but the fifth on queue under letter "S".

The four people ahead of him were processed all in a matter of seconds! Before he knew it, Jay was in the processing window, face to face with who could only be the happiest government employee he had ever seen in his entire life.

She was a heavyset woman of about mid-forties or early fifties. She was brown-skinned, but with the way her happiness radiated, could very well be one of those glowing models of artificial skin whitening products being peddled all over TV and highway billboards. She had a pink ribbon tied to her short hair, and a smile that wrinkled her eyes and increased the puffiness of her already chubby cheeks. On her desk were potted flowering plants, and on the bronze name tag pinned to her chest was the loveliest name anybody could be named in their local language.

Her smile could only brighten even more as Jay handed her his complete and carefully stapled requirements.

As she shifted her attention to her computer terminal to enter Jay's details, there was an almost apologetic look, as she knew she would momentarily deprive her applicant of the almost intoxicating joviality of her entire being.

Jay felt it too, and he knew that unless "Rumina"—as the name tag identified the government employee—smiled at him that way again, he would never in his entire life truly know happiness again.

SELECT SURNAME, GIVENNAME, CRIME FROM CRIMINALS WHERE SURNAME="SANTOS" AND GIVENNAME="JAY";

Jay didn't know it—didn't even see it. But he would hold on to as fact until the final hours of his life that this was the exact database query that Rumina entered to the _BI system that fine August morning when he was applying for a pre-employment _BI Clearance.

As soon as Rumina hit enter to execute the query, an alarm blared in the entire mall sattelite station. At the same time, red flashing lights not unlike those seen in cop shows began to flash. The entire wall inside the _BI sattelite office changed from being a plain wooden wall with framed pictures of the Director and the President, to a wide LED screen. And on that wide LED screen a single word in all caps and red font color began blinking.

HIT!
HIT!
HIT!
HIT!

Startling as all this was, what devastated Jay the most was the sudden change in Rumina's demeanor. Almost in the blink of an eye, the happy disposition was gone. The smile transformed to a suspicious frown, where the eyes earlier wrinkled in a smile, the brows were now furrowed, the eyes no longer sparkling in mirth but were sharp and alert, as though in a hunt.

Then Jay reminded himself that she was no ordinary government employee: she was an _BI agent!

From behind one of her potted flower plants, she immediately produced a 2-way radio. "We got 'im," she spoke into the unit, not for one moment taking her suspicious eyes off Jay.

"What's wrong?" Jay said. "What's happening here?"

"Sir, I suggest you stay right where you are. And make no sudden movements. You are being arrested for the murder of an entire eatery full of patrons, including their manager."

At that exact moment, law enforcement operatives appeared all around him.

Jay Santos never got his _BI Clearance that day.