My Boss Fired Me Before The Buyers Reached Our Lab

Brice fired me at 8:12 on a wet Thursday, while a failed coating sample dried beside my lunch.

"We need the room for the buyer's team," he said. "Pack before ten."

I was thirty, a Filipino American packaging chemist, and I had spent four years teaching paper to hold soup without a plastic skin. I had warm brown skin, dark eyes, and straight black hair I wore in a low braid.

The sample beside my lunch had curled at one edge. I folded it into a tiny boat. Bad coating made good creases.

"Am I being removed from manufacturing too?" I asked.

Brice laughed as if I had asked whether I could keep the stapler.

"All duties, Tala. Effective now."

Through the lab window, rain blurred the trucks on Commercial Street. Beyond them, Portland Harbor looked like a sheet of dull tin.

Rillwake Packaging had leased this old brick room because the drains could take our wash water. Now the company was selling for $24 million, and Brice wanted the buyers to see clean benches and a smooth handoff.

Brice Haldane was forty-nine, white, American, and fond of calling each deal a new member of his family. Brice had pale skin, sandy hair trimmed close at the sides, and a wide smile above a neat gray beard.

He had once brought coffee for the whole lab. He still spoke in that warm voice when he handed me a thin envelope.

Inside were my dismissal, a $6,400 severance offer, and a release of all claims.

"Sign by noon," he said. "I'll have payroll move it today."

"I need to read it."

The warmth left his voice.

"It's standard. Your position isn't. We can't carry a senior salary for replaceable lab work."

My salary was $86,000. His sale bonus was $1.2 million. I knew both figures because he had asked me to check the staff cost sheet, then left his own line visible.

"Who will approve the kettle runs?"

"Jo can handle the plant."

"Jo runs the line. I approve the coating."

"You don't own a process because you stand beside a tank."

I set the envelope down.

"Please put the removal from manufacturing in writing."

He tapped my dismissal letter.

"Read the second paragraph. Then give security your badge."

I read it twice. All supervisory authority ended immediately. My access to the South Portland plant would stop at nine.

"Thank you," I said.

He mistook that for surrender.

My desk had three drawers. The top held test strips. The middle held tea and spare gloves. The bottom held a blue folder marked FOUNDING PAPERS.

I had brought the formula to Rillwake before Rillwake had a bank account. I had made its first version in a borrowed workshop, using seaweed extract and a small rented mixer. When Brice raised money, I had kept the formula and licensed its use.

The lawyer who wrote that deal had made two signed sets. Mine lived in the blue folder.

Brice saw it go into my tote.

"Company records stay."

"My signed agreement comes home with me."

"We own everything commercial, Tala. Don't make this awkward."

"Then your copy will say that."

He looked at me for a long moment. Then his phone rang, and he turned away smiling.

Soren Lind stood outside the lab with a cardboard box. He was forty-two, Danish American, and our finance officer. He remembered invoice numbers the way other people remembered birthdays.

"I didn't know until seven," he said.

"Did you object?"

He looked at the box.

"I asked about the closing schedule."

That hurt more than I expected.

He helped me pack my mug. Beneath it lay a batch sheet with a strange ingredient code, N-17. I had circled it yesterday and sent a question to purchasing. No answer had come.

"Did we change suppliers?" I asked.

Soren's hand stopped on the box flap.

"Ask Jo," he said.

"I did. She was told it was an office code."

"I can't discuss purchasing here."

I left the sheet on the bench. I took my blue folder, my mug, and the little boat.

At 9:06, I sat in my car near the fish pier and called Lena Cho, the lawyer who had reviewed my founding deal.

"He fired you before closing?" she asked.

"Four hours before."

"Did he remove your authority over production?"

I read her the second paragraph.

"Send that and the agreement," she said. "Don't sign the release."

At 10:18, she sent a notice to Rillwake and the buyer's lawyer. Under section eight, the license was suspended whenever I no longer supervised manufacturing. It could not transfer to a buyer without my written consent.

I watched a gull step across a puddle beside my tire.

At 10:31, my phone lit up with Brice's name.

Before I could answer, his text arrived.

The buyers have stopped the wire. What did you send them?