Seniority

“There’s something wrong here.”

Mitch looked up from his phone. “You’re going to have to be more specific,” he told the auditor. 

“This says you’ve been issuing payroll checks to an employee for a hundred and eight years.”

“Oh.” Mitch nodded. “You’re talking about Chauncey.”

“Chauncey Bledsoe, yes.” The auditor pointed at a line on the screen of the computer in the human resources office. “His hire date is listed as August 13, 1914.”

Mitch nodded. “Yeah. Just after the Wharf Street power station opened. When they closed that down in ’38 he moved to the Central station. He’s been there ever since.”

“A hundred and eight years?” The auditor grinned like he was waiting for the punchline. “What’s the story? Is this some kind of test data you leave in the files?”

“No, he’s real. Kind of screws up the seniority. I mean, by now he should have more vacation days than there are in a year, but he almost never takes a vacation. We just cut him a big check every August.”

“You’re telling me that you have an employee who’s a hundred and eight years old?”

“Oh, he’s a lot older than that. He came here from from Prussia just before the first world war. He was a doctor before, but he didn’t want the hassle of getting an American license, so he went to work for us. He seems to like it.”

The auditor’s grin was slipping. Now he looked like someone who suspected he was the butt of a practical joke. “You’ve had an employee on the books for a hundred and eight years and nobody’s questioned it? They just accept it?”

“Lots of people have questioned it. The guy who was in this office before me, for example. He was sure he’d uncovered some fraud and went out one night to confront Chauncey and get to the bottom of it.”

A pause.

“And … ?” prompted the auditor. 

“And he never came back. That’s how I got this job. Me, I don’t ask questions, I just do the paperwork.”

“Are you going to tell me next that he’s a vampire?”

Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know what he is. I don’t really want to know. He shows up, does his job, and I pay him. That’s good enough for me.”

“It is, is it?” the auditor was starting to get angry. “You just cut checks for an account that has been active for over a century?”

“That’s right.”

“Well it’s not good enough for me. This has got to be a mistake.”

Mitch waved his hand at the ranks of file cabinets against the wall. “You’re welcome to look for a mistake. Those go back to 1980. The earlier records have been destroyed, except for Chauncey Bledsoe. He’s got the bottom file drawer on the first cabinet. Goes all the way back to his hire date. Copies, now—the originals fell apart years ago.”

The auditor went to the bottom drawer on the first cabinet and opened it cautiously, as if expecting something to jump out at him. Instead it opened smoothly, revealing a line of expansion files. 

Mitch went back to his phone and the game he had been playing. 

The auditor covered the desk with the contents of the file drawer. He sorted through the stacks of paper glowering at Mitch. 

Forty-five minutes passed. Mitch beat his high score on the game, then closed it to check Facebook. 

Eventually the auditor stood. “Look, I don’t know what you people are trying to pull here, but this scam, whatever it is, ends now. I’m going to go see this Bledsoe character.”

Mitch checked the clock on his phone. “He’ll be at Central at 4pm. He’s never late. You can talk to him there. But … I wouldn’t if I were you.”

“That’s obvious,” the auditor said, his voice dripping contempt.

“Just ask for the senior plant engineer.”

“I’ll do that. And if it turns out you had anything to do with this, you can clean out your desk.”

Mitch stood and offered the auditor his hand. “Well, thanks for your time.”

The auditor glared and left without shaking hands. 

Mitch sighed and went to his desk to put the Bledsoe file back in order. The other man, he knew, wouldn’t be coming back.