Evan did not speculate.
He waited.
The year-end assembly took place Monday morning, December 22nd.
The breakroom held about forty employees.
Too many for the space.
People stood beside vending machines and stacked folding chairs.
A plastic Christmas tree leaned slightly toward the wall, decorated with silver tinsel and expired safety-inspection tags someone had tied on as a joke.
The room was overheated.
Winter coats hung over chair backs.
At the entrance, Dana Whitmore from human resources handed each person a white envelope.
Dana had hired Evan eleven years earlier.
Back then, Blackidge still trained technicians internally and promoted people from the floor.
She had been thirty-three, energetic, convinced she could remember every employee’s birthday.
Now she was forty-four and tired in a more complicated way.
She handed Evan his envelope without quite meeting his eyes.
That registered.
He did not open it immediately.
Instead, he looked around.
Sales was absent.
Executive administration absent.
Most department heads absent.
Grant Worthington entered at 9:10.
Preston Caldwell followed.
Both wore overcoats that looked absurd in the overheated breakroom.
Grant stood near the refrigerator.
“Good morning, everyone.”
Conversations stopped.
He spoke well.
That mattered later because some employees remembered him as openly cruel during the announcement.
He was not.
He was smooth.
Reasonable.
Almost warm.
Grant talked about challenging market conditions.
Delayed customer orders.
Temporary cash pressure.
Strategic discipline.
He praised the people in the room for their flexibility.
Then he used the word honor.
“Leadership has worked extremely hard to find a way to honor our year-end obligations without resorting to layoffs during the holiday season.”
People relaxed slightly.
No layoffs.
Grant continued.
“For selected operational positions, a portion of the December compensation cycle will be distributed through Blackidge holiday reward certificates.”
Reward.
That word bought him ninety seconds of calm.