“We can’t afford ’em anymore. This is a Darwinian struggle. Only the toughest survive. I want Tokyo to see an immediate change in our numbers.”
“How immediate are we talking about?”
He stared at me for a few seconds, then got up and shut his office door. He sat back down, folded his arms.
“So here’s how it’s going down, Steadman, and don’t you breathe a word of this to any of your Band of Brothers. By the end of the second quarter-that’s barely two months from now-Dick Hardy and the boys in the MegaTower are going to be making a decision. It’s either gonna be us or the Royal Meister sales force. Framingham or Dallas. Not both.”
“They’re going to winnow out all but the top performers,” I said, nodding. “Consolidation. Survival of the fittest.”
He gave his shark’s smile. “You still don’t get it, do you? They’re not cherry-picking. One lives, the other dies. It’s a bake-off. The one with the best numbers gets to survive. The other office gets shut down. A ‘soft quarter’ is not going to be shrugged off anymore. It’s a goddamned death sentence. We have another quarter like this one and everyone in this building gets their walking papers. Now, ready for the bad news?”
“That was the good news?”
“It’s all riding on you, buddy. You’ve got to pull a goddamned rabbit out of your hat in the next couple of months or everyone in the Entronics Framingham office, including you and your so-called Band of Brothers, gets shot. It’s all up to you. You cannot afford a single misstep.”
“Don’t you think we should let everyone know the stakes?” I said.
“No way, Steadman. Scared salesmen can’t sell. Clients can see the flop sweat. They smell the panic. Bad enough with all the rumors flying around the halls, the turmoil we’ve been seeing. So this is our little secret. You and me. You’re working directly for me now. And if you screw up, I’m gonna have to get my résumé printed up too. The difference is, I’m eminently employable. You, on the other hand, will be blackballed from here to Tokyo. I will personally see to it.”
I wanted to say something about how the flop sweat wasn’t good for managers either, but I stayed silent.
“You know,” Gordy said, “I didn’t want to give you this job at first. But now I’m glad I did. You know why?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone dry. “Why’s that, Gordy?”
“Because I like Trevor a lot more than I like you, and I wouldn’t wish this on him.”
On the way out of Gordy’s office, I passed Cal Taylor in the hallway. He’d just come from the restroom, and he was looking a little loopy. Ten in the morning, poor guy.
“Hey, there, boss,” he said. “Something wrong?”
“Wrong? No, nothing’s wrong.”
“You look like you just ate a bad clam,” Cal said.
You have no idea, I thought.
23
For the rest of the morning, I went over the T &E expenses and began to devise the tough new policy that Gordy wanted. I thought of this as my “no more Mister Nice Guy” memo. It was pretty hard-line, I have to admit. No more flying business class: economy all the way, unless you used your own frequent-flyer miles to upgrade. No more fancy hotels: now the limit was a hundred and seventy-five bucks a night. All business trips had to be scheduled at least seven days in advance, because it was cheaper; any last-minute trips had to be authorized in advance, by me. I lowered the per diem to fifty bucks a day, which was pretty harsh, but dealable, I thought. You couldn’t write off any meals beyond that unless you were taking a customer. And no more taking customers out for drinks unless there was food too. We spent way too much on off-site meetings, so I cut down on those too. A lot of money had been dumped on catering lunch meetings at the office, but no more. Now you had to bring your own lunch.
I did some number-crunching and figured out how much this new policy would save the company, and I e-mailed the memo to Gordy.
Right after lunch, he called and said, “I love it.”
I took a break, returned a bunch of calls, then I read over my memo again. Tried to soften the language a bit so that it didn’t sound quite so hard-ass. Then I e-mailed it to Franny to read over and double-check for typos and such.
Franny-Frances Barber-was the secretary I’d been assigned. She’d been with the company for over twenty years, and her only flaw was that she went out for a cigarette break every half hour. She sat in the cubicle outside my new office. Franny had a real no-nonsense look, a tight mouth with vertical lines above her upper lip. She was forty-five but looked ten years older, wore a strong, unpleasant perfume that smelled like bug spray, and was pretty fearsome if you didn’t know her. But we hit it off right away. She even began to reveal a bone-dry sense of humor, though it took a while.
She buzzed me on the intercom and said, “A Mister Sulu for you?” She sounded uncertain. Her voice was so cigarette-destroyed it was deeper than mine. “Though he doesn’t exactly sound Japanese. He sounds more like a surfer.”
Obviously she didn’t know Classic Trek. “Graham,” I said as I picked up. “Long time.”
“You sound kinda spun out.”
“Insane around here.”
“You been avoiding me, J-man? I’m starting to feel like a Klingon.”
“I’m sorry, Graham. I’m-well, I’m on this new regimen now.”
“Regimen? It’s Kate, isn’t it? She finally won.”
“It’s a lot of things. Kate’s pregnant, did you hear?”
“Hey, congratulations! Right? Or condolences. Which is it?”
“I’ll take the congratulations.”
“A baby Steadman. Blows my mind. Too weird. The pitter-patter of little Tribble feet, huh?”
“Tribbles didn’t have feet,” I said.
“You got me,” Graham said. “And I call myself a Trekker. Well, lemme cut to the chase. I’ve got some stellar shit here. Some killer White Widow.”
“That some kind of heroin?”
He answered in a Jamaican accent: “Ganja, mon. The only true worth is what comes from the earth, mon.” He added, “And not just any ganja, dawg. We’re talking Cannabis Cup first prize. Indica/Sativa mix, but more toward Sativa. A very energetic, social buzz. A legend, J-man.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Come on over to Central Square, I’ll roll us a big doobie or fire up the Starship Enterprise, and we’ll go for a ride in the Love Bug.”
“I told you, Graham,” I said firmly. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Dude. You’ve never done White Widow.”
“I’m sorry, Graham. It’s just-things have changed.”
“This ’cuz of Little Jason coming along? The old ball-and-chain put her spike heel down?”
“Come on, man. It’s not that.”
His voice got small. “Okay, man, I think I get it. You’re a vice president, now, right? Says that on your company’s website. You got your own secretary, and a big fancy house. Guess you got to put a little distance between where you come from and where you are now, that it?”
“Does that sound like me, Graham?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Not sure I even know who you are anymore.”
“That’s way harsh. Don’t do the guilt number on me, come on.”
“I call it like I see it, dude. Always did.”
“Cut me a little slack, will you? I’m over my head at work. As soon as I can, we’ll go out. Dinner’s on me. Okay?”
“Yeah,” Graham said sullenly. “I’ll wait for your call.”
“Graham-” I said, but he’d hung up, and now I felt bad.
Franny came into my office. “Uh, Jason,” she said, standing at the door awkwardly, adjusting her glasses. “You sure you really want to send this out?”
“Why not?”
“Because I was just starting to like you, and I don’t know if I’ll like the next guy as much.”