Actually, most people had been kind of clueless or disinterested, but I wasn’t really talking about most people. I was talking about Keisha.
She immediately looked uncomfortable.
“But if you don’t want to talk about it – ” I said.
“No, no, I don’t mind. It’s just… it’s a good company and all, don’t get me wrong.”
“Of course,” I agreed.
“And girl, I know I’m lucky to even have a job in this economy.”
“I know what you mean. I was a secretary barely making ten dollars an hour before this.”
“Really,” she said, her eyes wide.
“Really.”
“So you know that shit rolls downhill.”
I burst out laughing. “Oh, I definitely know that.”
I launched into some of my funniest stories about Herr Klaus, and told her about how I’d ditched out that Friday night to go with Connor, and what I’d said to Klaus on the Monday when he screamed at me and I quit.
It was probably more than I should have told a stranger, but I was two margaritas deep by that point, and Keisha was laughing so hard she was crying when I finished the ‘You’re a shitty boss, but you’re a shittier human being’ line.
“Damn, I wish I could say that to a couple of people around here,” she said afterward as she wiped her eyes. “Let me tell you, they made all these changes about a year ago, and whoever made ‘em didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”
“Like what?”
“Some genius upstairs thought it would be a good idea to outsource half of our customer service to the Philippines. Which might be okay, except they have these giant call centers over there, right? They actually have malls over in the Philippines, like giant shopping malls, filled with dozens and dozens of different customer service companies. That’s a fact – one of the guys I speak to all the time, Ferdinand, he’s my buddy, he told me the real deal.
“Our company pays them crap to begin with. So, somebody in the Philippines gets an offer to make 25 cents more an hour to go work in some other place across the mall, they’re gone. Outta there. So I’m constantly having to deal with new people who just started that day who don’t know what the hell is going on. I swear, management here is so cheap, they’re bendin’ down to pick up nickels, and dollar bills are fallin’ out of their ass.”
I laughed hard at that. Partially because it was so true of my old job, too.
“Then our sales department puts in orders – and there are always errors. Lots of ‘em. Sales got their heads up their asses so far they can see out of their mouths. Not to mention they got ADHD so bad they don’t doublecheck nothin’.
“So, anyway, Sales submits the orders to the Philippines. Problem is, the overseas guys don’t go through the whole purchase order and say, ‘Okay, there’s five errors here, you need to fix all of them.’ No, as soon as the Philippines sees one error, they kick it back without checking the rest. So if the Philippines sees the purchase order doesn’t match up on the first line, they kick it back to me. I fix the purchase order number and send it back to the Philippines. But then the Philippines notices that the shipping address is wrong, so they kick it back again. And so on and so on and so on. What used to take ten minutes to straighten out can take a whole day. And I can’t do a damn thing about it, because that’s official company policy now.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”
“No! But does upper management care? NO! ‘Cause they’re only paying these people two dollars an hour! But they expect US to ship on time, and ME to handle all the screaming customers, and don’t even get me started on how the company handles customer service. I’ve had customers say to me, ‘I left your competitor because you people said you could do this, but you LIE. You may be cheaper, but if I wasn’t locked into a contract, I would leave right now because I cannot ever count on you to keep your word.’ I don’t know how many people have told me that. And anything I can do to help them out, I basically got to break company policy to get it done.”
This was it.
This was what I had been hoping to get in the interviews.
“Look, this is awesome – this is exactly what I was looking for – but is it okay if I tell upper management about this?”
Keisha got quiet for a second. “Are you going to tell them I said it?”
“No, if you’re worried about somebody coming down on you – ”
“Girl, I got a boss makes your Herr Klaus look like Santa Claus.”
I grinned. “Then I’ll tell them five or six people all said the same thing.”
She laughed. “If you tell them fifteen people said it – that’s half the department I work in – then you can tell them any damn thing I say. Now listen to this – ”
13
The rest of the evening was pure gold.
Keisha and I had dinner, then dessert. We switched to water halfway through so we’d be okay to drive, and the whole time she gave me enough material to do a doctoral dissertation on all the things wrong with Telenexin, Inc. Not only were her stories perfect cautionary tales of a corporation disconnected from its front ranks, but they were really funny, too.
“But how would you fix it?” I asked her at one point.
“Honey, get a pen and some paper,” she said. So I did.
I ended up covering twenty sheets with notes.
I picked up the bill, made a new friend, did my job, and had an awesome time doing it.
I even saved the receipt, just like Sebastian had told me to.
14
Keisha’s insights were the foundation for everything else that followed. Once I knew the right questions to ask, the rest of the interviews went amazingly well.
People were so used to accepting the status quo, they just didn’t think about it until someone brought it up. But if you happened to stumble across one of their pet peeves, that was usually a match to a can of gasoline. In fact, if you knew their pet peeve, and indicated that other people hated that thing, too, they would go off on all the things that were wrong with the company.
And because of Keisha, I had a whole laundry list of potential pet peeves.
I think some writer gave a speech once that started with a joke about an old fish who meets two young fish and casually asks, “How about the water today?” and then swims on. After he’s gone, one of the young fish turns to his friend and asks, “What the hell is ‘water’?”
When you’re in it all the time, you stop seeing it – whether the ‘it’ is water, or bullshit problems at a corporation.
Sometimes it takes somebody getting you riled up for you to remember what you’re swimming in.
I kept busier than I’d ever been in my life, doing nine hours of interviews a day, then coming home and compiling the information with Anh’s help until midnight. I was exhausted – but exhilarated.
And terrified. The presentation to the CEO was in less than three days.
But I knew I had enough ammunition to blow him and everyone else away. I just wasn’t looking forward to having to speak in front of a group in order to do it.
There was one unanticipated benefit to all the work, excitement, and terror: I didn’t have time to think about Connor.
Well… that’s not true.
I just didn’t have time to think about Connor as much.
One of my biggest regrets was I’d never taken a picture of us together. I had nothing to look at besides pictures I found on the internet – and there were only a few that didn’t contain some famous starlet or model on his arm.
Or me pressed up against a brick wall with my dress half-off.
So I saved a file of photos I would return to again and again: Connor getting out of the Bentley and walking the red carpet for some charity function. Connor exiting a courthouse with a big grin on his face. Connor in some sort of sailing competition, sunglasses on, shirtless and ripped, looking grim and determined. And roughly a dozen more.
I would open th
at folder and stare at the pictures, and feel the sorrow and heartache and grief all over again… but also remember the passion, the excitement, the tenderness… and the love.
And then, because a mountain of work was staring at me (and because Anh kept smacking me with a rolled-up bundle of papers), I would close down the file, come back to the real world, and go on about my life without him.
I was almost so busy that I didn’t have time to think about him.
Almost.
Except when I went to bed, and dreamt of him, and cried myself to sleep.
15
The big day came. I arrived early, my stomach tied up in knots, and met Scott’s assistant. She took me to a giant boardroom with a steel and glass conference table, and helped me hook up my laptop to an overhead projector. I set out eighteen stapled packets, each ten pages thick, in front of all the chairs… and then I began to pace back and forth and try not to flap my hands.
Scott came in first, still dressed in expensive jeans and a white, long-sleeve shirt. It must have been his uniform of choice, the way Steve Jobs wore black turtlenecks.
“Ready for the trial by fire?” he asked with a grin.
Fake it till you make it.
“Yes,” I said, with as much confidence as I could reasonably fake.
“Can I give you a word of advice?” he asked.
Run away, maybe? Far, far away?
“Sure.”
“Most of upper management are your standard go-getters, but we’ve got a couple of alpha males in Sales. Top one is Bryce Smith. He’s the main reason our numbers have stayed constant… but he’s not exactly a warm and fuzzy guy unless you’re planning to buy a million dollars worth of equipment from him. He hates criticism, he’s resistant to change, and he’s very outspoken. Just be prepared.”
I knew allllll about Bryce Smith. He had been around Telenexin since the beginning, and ruled his own little shadow empire through threats and intimidation. A third of the sales department loved the guy, but they tended to be the ‘let’s talk about the sales contract over a round of golf and the strip club afterwards’ crowd. A third hated his guts, but blamed all the company’s problems on every other department but their own. And the remaining third were terrified of him and wouldn’t say a damn thing for fear of losing their jobs. The rest of the company pretty much hated him, even though many grudgingly admitted he was the best salesman in the company.
“Thanks for the warning,” I said.
“You’ll do great,” he smiled, and patted me on the arm. “I’m looking forward to seeing what you came up with.”
“Thanks.”
By that time, people were filing in and taking their seats. Scott left and took his place at the head of the table, directly opposite from where I was standing in front of the screen.
Last person in was a big guy, six foot four and muscular, but with a substantial belly under his tailored suit and expensive tie. He looked like a college athlete gone to seed. He was somewhere in his late 40’s or early 50’s, rugged with thinning blond hair, a hawkish nose, and a big, booming voice – which he used the second he walked in.
“This is a waste of time, Scott,” he snapped as he walked in the door. “I’ve got five SOZ’s ready to go, I’ve got another client call lined up for – ”
“Bryce,” Scott interrupted, “we’re going to listen to this presentation, especially since the research came from our own ranks.”
Bryce glanced at me as he sat down, but then looked right back at Scott. “Great, another fucking consultant. Why don’t you just pay me the money instead, and I’ll tell you the same thing I’ve been telling you for months: fire all the lazy bums sitting on their asses, put the fear of Bryce into the rest of them, and then maybe we’d get some goddamn work done around here.”
Three fourths of the table either rolled their eyes or glowered.
“Maybe that will be in the presentation,” Scott said with a thin smile, then turned to the rest of the people present. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Lily Ross of Ross and Associates Consulting. Many of you have already met her over the course of the last week and a half. She’s conducted interviews with our staff during that time, and is here to present some solutions and insights she’s gained from our own ranks.”
“Good luck with that,” Bryce snorted, then peered at me closely for the first time. He frowned. “Hey… you look familiar.”
Shit.
Here it comes.
“A lot of people say that,” I said with a smile, then walked over to the laptop. “As Mr. Shaw said – ”
“Aren’t you that chick that banged that billionaire guy in the alleyway?” Bryce asked, obviously relishing the moment.
Half the table looked stricken. The other half – all men – hid snickers behind their hands or exchanged little glances with one another.
Scott just sat there in his chair, dispassionately watching my reaction.
Obviously I couldn’t count on any support from him. Not that I really wanted it; if he stepped in now to defend me, it would make me look weak. Unable to fight back.
This was it.
After all the work I’d put in, this was the real test.
The asshole bully was trying to push me around and display his dominance. If I wilted here, then all the hard work I’d done was worthless, because nobody was going to take me seriously.
I don’t know how I did it, but I locked eyes with him and smiled. “You’re Bryce Smith, head of Sales, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am,” he said in a cocky And don’t you forget it voice.
I looked down at a piece of paper as though searching for a fact, though I had memorized everything. I’d been preparing for this exact situation for the last three days. “You’re the man that one of your direct reports said, quote, ‘He has his head so far up his ass that he can see through his mouth,’ unquote.’”
Of course, Keisha had said it, not one of Bryce’s employees.
And she’d said it about the entire Sales department, not Bryce in particular.
But Bryce didn’t know that.
And at least a third of his own people had probably wanted to say it.
The table exploded in a series of gasps and stifled guffaws.
I looked up at Bryce. His face had gone fire-engine red. A vein pulsed in his oversized neck, and he had murder in his eyes as he stared at me.
“I’ve found that you can’t believe what everyone says, and that we should focus instead on the facts,” I said coolly. “Like the fact that you are personally responsible for over 10% of sales in the entire company, or sixty million in total sales per year.”
The vein stopped pulsing, and his jaw unclenched. “Sixty-two million last year, and that was 10.3% of all annual sales,” he growled.
“See? That’s why it’s so important to focus on the facts,” I purred. “So let’s do that and leave the personal bullshit out of it.”
Before he could say anything else, I turned back to my laptop and launched into my presentation.
I caught a glimpse of Scott, though, as I began.
He wore the barest trace of a smile.
16
It was funny watching people’s reactions to my presentation. Over and over, I would say something that would incense the head of one department – yet three or four other people would nod silently and exchange meaningful looks.
Of course, we cycled through each department head getting pissed off, with all their coworkers nodding or smirking in agreement.
Bryce, in particular, laughed the loudest and nodded the most vigorously, occasionally throwing in a “Hell yeah, you guys always drop the ball on that one,” or “Yeah, you screw that up every damn time.”
Bryce did me a favor, though, in that most people’s ire got focused on him rather than on me.
Even those who were seriously pissed off were deferential and polite, though.
Until I started bringing up the shortcomings of Sales.
“NO. WRONG,” he
barked at one point, just a few minutes into the Sales part of the presentation.
“I had seventeen different people tell me that, Mr. Smith,” I responded politely.
“Bullshit. Customer service always fucks up the numbers – ”
“Customer service has to deal with the fallout from the numbers, they have no incentive to – ”
“Do you know who I am?” Bryce barked.
Here we go again.
The Bully had been fine as long as everyone else was getting pushed around… but now that it was time for a taste of his own medicine, he was going to be an asshole.
So I asked the question I had been asking myself for a week, running through possible scenes exactly like this one:
What would Sebastian do?
“Do you know who I am?” Bryce barked.
“I know who I am,” I said coldly. “I’m the person your boss hired to fix your mistakes. Which, by the way, you don’t even know you’re making.”
Another burst of gasps and suppressed chuckles.
Bryce stared at me again, face all red and vein pulsing.
“You do not want to cross me, little girl,” he snarled.
“Why not?” I cooed. “I’m out of here in thirty minutes. You’re the one who has to clean up your own mess. And there’s a lot of it.”
Bryce pointed a thick, stubby finger at me. “You listen here – ”
“Bryce,” Scott said in a commanding voice from the other side of the table.
The entire room looked back and forth between Scott and Bryce, waiting for an explosion.
Bryce struggled to regain control of his anger as he addressed his boss. “Your… consultant is being highly unprofessional.”
“You just called me a ‘little girl,’” I said evenly. “You don’t get to lecture anybody about being unprofessional.”
He swung back around to me, his brows knit in a scowl. “I’d just like to see a little more respect.”
All That He Loves (Volume 2 The Billionaires Seduction) Page 20