Adam nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been following all that and watching it closely. We’ve got anti-harassment protocols in our Terms of Service and protective measures—”
“In the game, yeah, that’s great. But with the employees—”
He sighed. “Of course with the employees. We follow the law of the land.”
“He thinks we need to go the extra mile. We need to hire a consultant and go through a regimented training program. Every last employee, down to the janitorial staff.”
Adam was staring at me like I’d grown another eyeball in the middle of my head. “How long does something like that take?”
“State law requires two hours every two years. But if we are putting our best foot forward and really trying to cover our asses—”
He shook his head. “God, no. Two hours is enough, Jordan.”
“You should double it. And everyone attends. Even you. Even me.”
Rubbing his jaw, he slid his hand over his mouth. “There are online programs for that.”
“We should all do it together, as a company, in person. And the employees should see us sitting there—”
“Policing them?” He scowled. “I don’t want this to devolve into finger-pointing, do you understand? We have employees who are married to each other or are living together or even just dating. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.”
I shrugged. “I agree.”
“But then, any of them could have been the stars of our infamous video, I guess.”
The collar on my monkey suit suddenly felt tight. “Yeah. It, um—it could have been anyone.”
His black eyes flicked up to me. “Have you figured it out yet?”
I held up my hands. “Whoa, who the hell am I? CSI Irvine? I’ve got my people working on it, like I said. But the shit is viral and there was no metadata to find on the video. The person who recorded it had location information turned off.” Thank God for that. “Though that could have only told us so much, and without a warrant, we can’t get the IP address of the person who uploaded the original copy, even if we could trace the copies back to the original one…which my guy has told me is virtually impossible. It’s like looking for a needle in a thousand stacks of needles.”
His mouth thinned. “With the identifying information stripped from the video, I’d agree with you. Shit.” He ran a hand through his hair and stared out the window again.
“Look… I’ve been putting out fires with the IPO attorneys, the underwriters, and the banker. Let’s not expend our time, energy and resources on a witch-hunt. That horse has already left the barn.”
“If we find out who it was, we could cut the culprit loose and show that we are taking care of the situation.”
“Corporate training and some of these other things would do the same thing, to be honest. In the eyes of the Wall Street crowd, anyway.”
“So the banker actually suggested sexual harassment training…”
“You think I’d make that shit up? And as for those other things…” Oh, he was not going to like these. I braced myself.
His eyes narrowed. “Out with it. What?”
“We release a statement about this whole gamer sexual harassment thing that’s going on.”
“But we have nothing to do with that,” he huffed. “None of those people have any association with Draco Multimedia Entertainment or Dragon Epoch. It’s a bunch of sexually frustrated, antisocial fifteen-year-old kids bullying women over the Internet.”
“Other associations and companies have made their stand. We should too. Consider it a restating of our own Terms of Service against harassment and cyber bullying.”
He waved a dismissive hand. “Whatever. What else are we doing?”
“Oh, some monetary donations, community service hours—”
“Community service hours? Doing what? Picking up trash on the side of the freeway?”
“I’ll line up something—get us some good press. We’re going to be earning feathers in our cap, that’s all. We just need to keep our noses clean. I’ve got that TED talk next month. And we’ve got all those awards the game is up for—especially Game of the Year. Entrepreneur Weekly is featuring us on their cover. This is good shit. We can turn this around. We’re a big company and everyone has their brush with scandal. This little thing isn’t going to tank us. ”
“Yet,” he replied, stuffing his hands in his pockets.