We exchanged the usual chitchat about the business, and I congratulated him again on the Albertson’s deal, and he was suitably modest about it. I pried a little about his connection at that middleman company, SignNetwork, but he got a little evasive. Trade secrets and all that. We talked about Amarillo, Texas, his hometown, and I told him about my weakness for Big Red soda, which he loved too.
When he’d finished his third cup of coffee, Letasky said, “Jason, it’s always great to see you, but can we speak frankly? Entronics can’t afford me.”
“Top talent costs,” I said.
“You don’t know what I make.”
I tried not to smile. “Your comp package is only one small part of what we can offer you,” I said.
He laughed. “Not too small a part, I hope,” he said.
I told him what we’d offer. It was exactly twenty-five percent higher than he made at NEC, and it didn’t require him to bust his balls as much. I knew from his private complaints to his boss-Kurt’s dossier even included some of Letasky’s private e-mails-that he was trying to cut back on the travel, spend more time with his kids. Given the kind of numbers Letasky drove, and our bonus structure, Entronics would still end up ahead.
“See, we want our salesguys to have a life,” I said. That was so bogus, I couldn’t believe the words were tumbling out of my mouth. “The way the package is structured, you can make a lot more than you make now by working significantly fewer hours. I mean, you’d still be logging the miles and all, don’t get me wrong, but this way you get to watch your kids grow up. You get to go to Kenny’s hockey practice and the twins’ ballet recitals.”
“How do you know-?” he began.
“I’ve done my homework. I’m telling you, my orders are not to let you get up from this table until you say yes.”
He blinked, momentarily silenced.
“These are precious years in your kids’ lives,” I said. Just about word-for-word what he’d e-mailed his boss, in fact. “And they go fast. Sure, you’re the breadwinner, but do you really want to get home every night too late to tuck them in? I want you to think about what you’re missing.”
“I’ve thought about it,” he conceded in a small voice.
“See, you can make a better living and also be there for your wife and kids. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to spend three weeks in the Grand Tetons instead of one?” That one hit home, I knew. He’d e-mailed that to his boss too.
“Yeah,” he said, his brows jutting up, the smile gone from his face. “It would.”
“And why should you spend forty-five minutes commuting to work? That’s time you could be spending with your kids. Helping them with their homework.”
“We’ve got a great house.”
“Have you ever seen Wellesley?” I said. “Didn’t Gail go to school there?” Gail was his wife, and she’d gone to Wellesley College. “It’s a fifteen-minute drive from Framingham, a straight shot down 135.”
“It’s that close?”
“For what you could get for your house in Evanston, you could be living in this house.” I took out a photo that I’d printed out from a Wellesley real estate website that morning. “Over two hundred years old. An old farmhouse that’s been added to over the years. Nice, huh?”
He stared at the photo. “Man.”
“Cliff Road is the most exclusive neighborhood in Wellesley. See the size of that property? Your kids can play in the yard, and you and Gail don’t have to worry about the cars. There’s a great Montessori school not too far away-don’t the twins go to a Montessori school?”
He exhaled. “The hassle of moving,” he began.
I slid another piece of paper across the table at him. “This is the relocation and signing bonus we’re prepared to offer you.”
He read the number and blinked twice. “It says the offer expires today.”
“I want you to have time to talk this over with Gail. But I don’t want you using this as leverage within NEC to negotiate a better package.”
“They’d never match this,” he said. I really liked his honesty. It was refreshing. “It wouldn’t do any good.”
“You’re not the top performer there. Here, you would be. So we’re willing to pay.”
“I have until five o’clock today to decide?”
“Boston time,” I said. “That’s four o’clock Chicago time.”
“Wow, man. I don’t-this is so sudden.”
“You’ve thought about it for quite a while,” I said. I knew he’d just turned down an offer from Panasonic. “Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and jump.”
He looked at me, but his eyes were focused on some point in the middle distance. I could see he was thinking hard.
“Plus, do you know how close we are to the Vineyard?” I said. “A hop, skip, and a jump. Ever been there? Your family would love it.”
I suggested he go back up to his hotel room and call his wife. I told him I’d wait down in the lobby, making calls and doing e-mail on my BlackBerry. I told him I had all the time in the world, which wasn’t true.
Forty-five minutes later he returned to the lobby.
Gordy’s jaw dropped. I mean, you hear the expression, but how often do you ever really see someone’s jaw drop? Gordy’s mouth came open, and for a few seconds he was speechless.
“Holy shit,” he said. He kept looking at Jim Letasky’s signature on the agreement, and then back at my face. “How the hell did you do that?”
“You approved the package,” I said.
“I’ve offered him damn good packages before. What did you promise him?” he said suspiciously.
“Nothing you don’t know about. I guess we just finally broke down his resistance.”
“Well,” he said, “good job.” He put both hands on my shoulders and squeezed hard. “I don’t know how you did it, but I’m impressed.”
He did not look happy.
20
When I got back to my office after lunch on Friday, there was a voice mail from Gordy. He wanted me to come by his office at three o’clock.
I called right back, talked to Melanie, and confirmed.
Managed to get through an hour and a half of calls and paperwork, all the while replaying Gordy’s message in my head, trying to read his inscrutable voice, figure out whether it was bad news or good.
At a few minutes before three I walked down the hall to his office.
“Booya,” Gordy said. He actually stood when I entered his office. Next to him stood Yoshi Tanaka, eyes dead behind thick lenses. “The better man won. Our new Vice President of Sales. Congratulations.”
Gordy extended a hand and gave what seemed to me a pretty damned grudging shake. His giant gold monogrammed cuff links glittered. Yoshi didn’t shake my hand. He bowed, ever so slightly. He didn’t know how to do handshakes, but then again, I didn’t know how to bow. Neither man smiled. Yoshi apparently didn’t know how to do that either, but Gordy struck me as unusually subdued, as if someone had a gun to his back.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Sit down,” Gordy said. We all took our places.
“I wish I could say this is a tribute to your own success,” Gordy said, “but that’s only part of it. You’ve had some good wins. Some big wins. You really seem to be getting your shit together. Getting Letasky was a major coup, and I frankly didn’t think you could pull it off. But the main thing is, I can’t have a bumbler in this job. I need someone totally reliable. Not like Gleason, spacing out on appointments. Even Trevor, dropping the ball on Fidelity. Playing golf and blowing off Pavilion.”
“Well, I look forward to the challenge,” I said, which, when I heard the words come out of my mouth, almost made me barf.
“And challenge it will be,” said Gordy. “You have no idea. You’ll be doing Joan’s job and Crawford’s job now. Anyway, I think Yoshi-san wants to say a few words.”