THE SECRET OF MILTON'S SUCCESS

The situation in the office worsened significantly for Milton. The woman whom he had been hired as a temp to fill in for returned from maternity leave, and there was no word from his supervisor about whether or not they had any more use for him. It was a complicated situation. He had done so poorly at the woman's job that his supervisor had already moved Milton out of her desk weeks ago. So Milton heard about the woman's return while he was busy reorganizing the company files in a remote corner of the office. What did this mean for Milton, now that the woman he had at one time been temporarily hired to replace was back? There were still more files to reorganize, and no one had told him to stop working.

"Do you still need me, now that Martha is back?" Milton asked his supervisor one day, when they happened to cross paths in the halls. Martha was the name of the woman who had been on maternity leave.

His supervisor had been walking swiftly with his head down, and he appeared surprised to encounter Milton. "I don't know," he said with the polite stiffness that Milton was well used to. "It's not up to me. I'll have to talk with Mr. Engross."

That was as much of an answer as Milton received. He continued to show up for work until two weeks had passed without a paycheck manifesting. Then he called up the temp agency to let them know he was once again available. No one answered the phone.

In fact, there was no voice mail or any indication that the number he called was a number to a temp agency. Without anything to do, he went downtown to the temp agency to see what the problem was. He entered the building and took the elevator to the 14th floor as he had months ago when he first contacted the temp agency. The temp agency's name had been taken off the door and their former office was deserted.

What could Milton do? He went back to the office where he assumed he was probably no longer an employee, reasoning that maybe, if he used the right words and tried to be charming, his supervisor might be convinced to put him back on the payroll. As he walked into the office, he almost ran straight into Mr. Engross.

"You're late," he said grimly. "The file room won't file itself."

Milton was bewildered. He attempted to ask Mr. Engross about his pay, but stumbled over his words. Deciding the best course of action would be to get to work, and then wait until his supervisor showed up, Milton went back to his post and yanked open the day's first file. His job was to move all the files from one file cabinet to another. The company had recently lost a rather important client, and all of the files relating to that client had to be purged from the office's system. Consequently, all of the other files needed to be moved up by several cabinets, so as not to waste space. The first file Milton opened was the payroll file.

It said in big, black letters across the front: "PAYROLL." He flipped through it and found his name. There was a little note attached to the sheet of paper that had his identification numbers and his rate of pay, which read, "SUSPENDED." Milton frowned and felt a surge of frustration and anger. When were they intending to tell him that his pay had been suspended? After he finished cleaning up their files? In a silent rage, Milton ripped the "SUSPENDED" note off. Not satisfied by this, he scribbled out where it said his pay rate and wrote in $120 an hour.

The next few days he passed leisurely, waiting patiently for his transgression to be discovered. Feeling wronged by his superiors in the office, Milton had decided to leave the office badly. A week passed, then another, and then his paycheck arrived. It was for $9,000.

Milton agonized over the paycheck for another week before depositing it. He went to the bank and filled out the deposit slip, drenched in sweat. It was another week before he actually used any of the money. Nothing happened. He went back and checked the payroll file that he had altered. Someone had tossed out the copy of his payroll sheet that he had scribbled in his changes, and they had typed up a new copy with his altered pay rate of $120.

The "PERSONNEL" files were next to the "PAYROLL" files. He quickly found his and glanced through it. He was listed as "TEMP." Using the same ball point pen he had used on the "PAYROLL" file, Milton crossed out "TEMP" and wrote in "Supervisor." He then found his supervisor's file, drew a large "X" through all of the personal information, and wrote in big letters "TERMINATED."

Thus Milton took his first large step towards his amazingly successful career of bankrupting poorly managed corporate offices.