“Our system allows local supervisors to classify complaints before escalation,” she continued. “They can mark an incident as service recovery, passenger conduct, document issue, boarding conflict, or discrimination. Once a complaint is coded as something else, it doesn’t reach the bias-review team unless someone manually catches it.”
A board member frowned.
“So a supervisor accused of mishandling a discrimination issue can determine whether the complaint is categorized as discrimination?”
Patricia nodded. The board member looked around the table.
“How did we approve that?”
No one answered.
The question was more dangerous than anger. It meant the company could no longer isolate the problem to Sandra Martinez. The outside counsel leading Meridian’s internal review, a former federal prosecutor named Nadine Brooks, opened a second binder.
“There is more.”
Richardson closed his eyes briefly.
“Of course there is.”
Nadine continued.
“We reviewed training completion records. Ninety-eight percent of customer-facing staff completed the company’s annual bias module.”
“That sounds good,” one director said.
“It is a thirty-seven-minute online course.”
Silence.
“Employees can click through sections without demonstrating practical competence. The final assessment is ten multiple-choice questions. A score of seventy percent passes. If someone fails, the system immediately shows the correct answers and allows unlimited retakes.”
Patricia added, “Average completion time is nineteen minutes.” The board member who had spoken leaned back.
“So our mandatory thirty-seven-minute training takes nineteen minutes.”
“Yes.”
“And we report ninety-eight-percent compliance as though that tells us something meaningful.”
“Yes.”
Richardson rubbed his forehead.
“This is how companies end up testifying before Congress.”
Nadine did not smile.
“You are testifying before Congress.”
The room stayed quiet. They discussed Sandra next. Human Resources had completed the first phase of her investigation. The facts were not disputed.
She had destroyed a passenger’s valid passport without authority. She had publicly accused him of fraud before qualified verification. She had demanded access to a government communication device she had no right to seize. She had made unsupported statements implying national-security concerns.
She had treated comparable document issues differently in the recent past. Most seriously from an employment perspective, she still insisted she had done nothing wrong except “trust her experience.”
“What did she say about the unfinished sentence?” Richardson asked.
Patricia looked at her notes.
“She says she was going to say, ‘You didn’t look like the photo.’”
“Do we believe her?”
Nadine answered.
“We don’t have to decide what word she intended to say in order to evaluate the conduct we can prove.”
That mattered.
The investigation did not need to read Sandra’s mind. The company could judge actions. Richardson looked at the general counsel.
“Termination?”
“Defensible.”