Sounds like you're looking for split.

while (my $record = <EMPLOYEES>) {
  chomp $record;
  my @person = split /\t/, $record;
  # now do something interesting with @person
}
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Actually I think I'd use a hash:

my @cols = qw(name email office);
while (my $record = <EMPLOYEES>) {
  chomp $record;
  my %person;
  @person{@cols} = split /\t/, $record;
  # now do something interesting with %person
}
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Oh, and you should really be checking the return value from open and taking appropriate action.

open (EMPLOYEES, 'employees.txt')
  or die "Can't open employees.txt: $!\n";
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