The phone call Jack received from Director Undercash lasted less than a minute.
"It will be considered insubordination if you talk to anyone about what is happening in the Fayetteville office. There will be a meeting in Raleigh in two weeks to discuss the situation in Fayetteville."
After the Director hung up, Jack felt relief that a meeting would be held in two weeks. Something was very wrong. Since the agency meeting with DuPont on September 23rd, Steve Mazda's anger towards Jack was way off the charts. Why?
However, Jack was puzzled by the Director's reference to 'insubordination.' What does that mean? He had never previously encountered the use of that term in the workplace. It sounded like a term that might be used for managing a highly disruptive child in elementary school.
Jack decided to make some phone calls to a few agency old-timers to make some sense of it. What he learned was both surprising and alarming.
Lauren Sherry was arguably the most dedicated and hard working employee in the agency's Division of Air Quality. She led efforts to investigate and write reports on high profile and controversial projects in the division. Jack had studied one of her reports and was impressed with its detail and thoroughness. Whereas, most employees in the division worked in tight silos and compartments, Lauren Sherry's work looked at everthing, including inspection reports, emission reports, permits, on-site sampling efforts, laboratory analytical results, and the historical data for a given facility or group of facilities.
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cast of characters
