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“This isn’t going to be easy,” he cautioned.
“It never is, but we have all quarter to make it work.”
“A lot more goes into a transaction like this than you realize. Bob needs a finance and marketing staff set up right away to handle things on his end, not to mention HR.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we’ll have to power through it. Today we need sugar to add to the lemonade.”
“Are you absolutely certain you don’t want to take a few days to discuss it? We can always add your sugar to the news cycle next week. Sometimes unintended consequences crop up in things like this.”
“I’m sure.”
“This can only be done if Bob and I have the authority to make the hard decisions on personnel and such without other departments coming to you to complain and muck up the plans.”
“That won’t be a problem,” I assured him.
After he left, I turned to my best thinking position: facing the window without a desk or papers or a computer crowding me. Jay was right—caution could be useful at times, but this wasn’t one of them.
The market had been down significantly already, and these things had a tendency to snowball out of control if left untended. We were under attack by Sigurd, whoever he was, and giving him a chance to get another blow in before we reacted to this one didn’t fit my style.
The benefit of splitting off from the family company was that I got to set the rules and make my own decisions, right or wrong. And I knew this one was right. Hell, leaving Benson Corp. hadn’t even cut me off from Dad’s advice.
The only difference was that this morning Dad hadsuggestedwhat he thought I should do instead of telling me, and that was a thousand-percent improvement.
* * *
Jennifer
Vanessa stopped by after lunch.“We have an all-hands finance meeting at three.”
“What about?”
“No idea,” she said as she moved on to pass the word.
It was a typical big-company move. We’d had one after the last bomb hit the papers, too. Departmental meetings would rally the troops, explain the company’s biased point of view, and rescue morale from the abyss it was falling into.
Most of the people I worked with had drunk the Kool-Aid at the last meeting and come out happier than when they’d gone in.
This time I had a plan. I’d made a list of what I expected the PR points from management would be, and I had a few embarrassing questions to pose regarding the facts of the article—nothing that would put me in the enemy camp, just clarification questions that were guaranteed to give them fits and raise a good number of queries from the audience.
I reviewed my questions before the meeting time. I just had to wait for the question-and-answer portion that would follow the rah-rah bullshit speech our boss, Jay Fisher, certainly had planned. I knew his background. He’d come out of public accounting, worked his way up at Benson Corp., and become the CFO here under Dennis Benson when Vipersoft was spun-out. Facts and numbers were king with him. His reputation was his stock in trade. He wouldn’t sully it by continuing to spout the company line when the facts were on my side. Fisher was the perfect foil. His answers, or non-answers, would show everybody there how heartless Benson had been.
I left for lunch with my question list in my purse. Last time I’d made the mistake of forgetting it, and I’d failed to ask my two most killer questions. The rush of adrenaline from challenging Fisher had made me nervous and had cost me my best opportunity to score points. I wasn’t letting that happen today.
At street level, I removed the lanyard displaying my company badge. Advertising that I worked for the soon-to-be universally hated Vipersoft wasn’t wise.
After two blocks, that same odd itch at the back of my neck bothered me. I turned, but didn’t see anybody following me. My late-night hide and seek in our building had made me paranoid.
I walked an extra few blocks to avoid any company people and chose Tina’s Tacos as the recipient of my meager lunch spending today. Several nice tables near the window were available, so I got in line and made my mental choice from the overhead menu.
The tables filled up quickly, as none of the people in front of me chose takeout. By the time I collected my change, the only table left was in the back corner next to the restrooms, right behind two suit-types I didn’t recognize.
As I munched my two tacos, I overheard talk of local companies, and the lingo of stock traders drifted my way. They weren’t quiet about it either. The taller one was arguing the bullish case for Intel, and not getting far convincing the shorter one. They reminded me of a lot of my classmates at biz school—all numbers and no concept of the people and products behind the real world of the companies. To them, a company was a stock symbol with a number attached and no more. They didn’t make money by producing anything. The stock market was just a casino to them, and if they could beat the other suckers by hearing gossip first, they’d call that an honest day’s work.
I ignored them and read over my third question again and again, until I could visualize the words if I closed my eyes.
Q3: The paper said thirty-three deaths have been attributed to defects in our products so far. How many do you think the total will rise to by the end of the year?
That should get the room buzzing. It was a killer question, but maybe it could be shortened somehow…
