CHAPTER nine
Didrickson wasn’t in his office when I got back so I scribbled him a note to call me. I dropped the note on the seat of his chair so he wouldn’t miss it.
I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk and propped my feet up on it. Once I’d tried putting my feet on the desk but the chair was so cheap I fell flat on the floor when I leaned back.
I lit a cigarette and cursed the stock options. Nothing but a pain in the ass. Back in the good old days stock options weren’t a problem. Because there were none. The previous owner of the company was such a tight wad he didn’t believe in sharing the wealth. It was a different regime when Oakes took over though. He gave away the farm. He hired all of his old buddies from the last place he worked, tripled their salaries and gave them stock options. Rick Cox only made things worse. The man managed to make everything an administrative nightmare. He was responsible for rolling out the yearly stock option plan and crunching the numbers for the option grants. Oakes would make his recommendations on numbers of options for his cronies and Cox would play around with the rest left-over. And play around. And play around. The numbers were a constant moving target right up until the moment the numbers were given to the board to approve. The total options they issued could never change because of the 10% limit, but the individual’s numbers were fair game. I think his formula for coming up with numbers was based on where the planets were in the sky on a certain day. Very scientific.
When Richard Cox joined the company as a full-time employee I had breathed a sigh of relief. I remember thinking that we were finally getting someone ‘normal’ at the helm. Cox was originally a member of the board of directors, appointed by the bank consortium. He had been a wizard at a Bay Street investment bank and actually brought some sanity to the place. The board woke up one day and appointed him the chief operating officer. The position was vacant because they had just fired the current chief operating officer. Actually, press reports said the guy resigned to pursue other business interests. Right. Cox was on-deck and the logical choice as replacement. Chris Oakes put up a fight but soon realized he was in a losing battle. A few months later, when the board gave Cox the additional responsibilities of chief financial officer because the incumbent retired, the battle lines were drawn. Oakes and Rick Cox had been openly feuding now for two years.
I wasn’t the only one who was glad Cox joined the company. The company was re-organized, excuse me, re-engineered, and many people who had reported directly to Oakes ended-up reporting directly to Cox. But Cox’s true stripes started to show after about three months of having the dual role of COO and CFO. What a let-down. The guy turned out to be indecisive, misdirected, unfocused and on a good day, a three-headed monster.
The rivalry between Oakes and Cox appeared to be heating up over the last month or two and I expected a show-down soon.
My phone rang and I tore my pantyhose on the corner of the drawer when I tried to get my feet back on the floor and swing my chair around. Kathleen, you are so graceful.
"Kathleen Monahan."
"Yes?" the voice on the other end demanded.
"Who’s speaking please?" I knew it was Didrickson, and in fact his extension number lit up on the digit display on the telephone console, but I hate arrogant bastards who don’t identify themselves on the phone.
"It’s Harold. You left me a note to call you. I’m back."
"I’ll be right in." I picked up the two sheets of paper with the stock option lists on them and headed for his office.
I handed him the list with his initials on the bottom and said, "I got this list out of the last board meeting file." Then I handed him the other one. "Jay printed this from the stock option system just before lunch. The numbers aren’t the same. He’s got to give a report to Rick Cox with the total options outstanding and he noticed the numbers don’t jive."
He handed both back to me after he quickly glanced at the two. "Then the system is wrong. The one with my initials on it is the one that was approved at the board meeting."
"Thanks."
I called Jay when I got back to my office and told him Didrickson said the one with his initials was the final list. He said he would come down and pick up the lists.
My phone rang again. The digit display indicated it was Didrickson calling. "Yes," I answered. I thought I’d try his style.
"What exactly were the differences on those two lists?"
"There were four different entries. Rick Cox, Mary Dawson, Jay Harmon and Bill Heatherington. Cox had a difference of 20,000 and each of the others were increased by 9,000 each."
"I think you better give me those lists back."
"Sure. But Jay’s on his way back down here to get the lists to finish his report to Cox. And he’s the one who noticed the differences."
"Make him copies then." He hung up.
Yessir. Right away sir. I passed Jay in the hall on my way to the photocopier room. "Follow me. Didrickson wants the originals of these and I’ll make you a copy."
The next couple of hours were spent creating paper. Agendas for the upcoming board and committee meetings, indexes for the binders of materials, drafting resolutions for the board to approve. Paper, paper and more paper. Baffle ‘em with bullshit. Most of the documents I started on were full of holes, ready for Didrickson to fill in the blanks. I made sure a current date and time were printed on the draft documents. Didrickson would soon start passing the documents around to Oakes and Cox for their input and we needed to be sure we were always working on the same draft. Chris Oakes never focused on anything until the last minute and was usually working on draft #2 when the rest of us were working on #5. I especially enjoyed receiving his comments on the documents two days after the meetings were over.
I ran into Tom James when I was getting my fifth cup of coffee since lunch.
"Tom, nice tie," I said with a straight face. He puffed up his chest. It was a nice tie, but this was the way Tom and I started off every conversation. It was expected that I would compliment Tom on his tie, or his suit, or whatever, and I think I had now complimented him on this particular tie about sixty times. Our man of substance. I was surprised to see Tom in the office this late in the day. Normally, he leaves at lunch to go to his gym for a workout and if he comes back, it’s only to impress Oakes.
"What are you doing in the office so late in the day?" I teased. "I thought Oakes was out of town." Tom looked insulted. It didn’t work with me.
"He was. He flew back this afternoon and we’ve got a meeting."
"Yeah? Good for you. Putting in overtime for this?" I laughed. Tom looked a little confused. He knew no-one got paid overtime in this organization and as the vice president in charge of human resources I could see his brain working to try and remember this.
"Forget it Tom," I said. I teased him because I could. Kind of like, why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can. Why do I tease Tom James? Because I can. He’s such an easy target.
"So what’s so important on a Friday afternoon? You and Oakes deciding on a tee time?" I grinned.
"We’re going over the personnel stuff on the acquisition of Marshton Systems. Deciding on who goes where. Who keeps their jobs. You know." Tom puffed up his chest a little when he said this.
Oh, this was good dirt. Amazing what these guys will share with me. I live for this stuff. Actually, it’s the only interesting thing in this job. The speculation. The rumours. The politics. My brain works a mile a minute trying to keep one step ahead of everyone by putting together everything they tell me. Bits and pieces, here and there. And before you know it, I know what’s going to happen before they do. I do most of my speculation with Vee and between the two of us we re-organize the company on a monthly basis. The way we think it should work. And eventually, the powers that be catch up with us and everything falls into place. We joke that in another life we’ll be management consultants. With the information that Vee’s privy to work
ing for the Chairman of the Board, and the information all the guys share with me, we know everything that’s going on in the company. As much as it’s a game with us to speculate and play around with the information, we keep the information between the two of us. We’re professional enough to know that rumours have killed many a public company.
I like to think that the executives share information with me because they can trust me. I’ve been around and lived through a lot of history in this company and I’ve become the unofficial company historian of fact and fiction.
"So, who’s in and who’s out?" I asked Tom.
"Well, the technical staff stay. That goes without saying. We’re trying to figure out now if there’s any fit for the top guys." Tom very carefully added Sweet ‘n Low to his coffee. No extra calories for this guy.
"What about Jerry Marsh?" I asked. Jerry Marsh was the majority owner of the company we had just acquired and the word was that he sold the company so he could retire.
"He’ll stay around for six months to consult. Help with the transition," Tom said.
"In other words, he’s playing golf and buying retirement real estate," I stated.
"We’ve got a lot of overlap in the finance and personnel positions. We promised them hefty severance packages when we bought them. Most of them’ll be gone when we get their operations working in synch with ours," Tom said.
This was standard operating procedure. TechniGroup would buy up smaller companies who were in the same sort of business as ours. Usually they would have contracts that were making money so they were very attractive buys for us. We’d purchase the company, keep the technical people and ditch the rest of the staff. I’d seen dozens of people come and go over the last two years. The transitions could take up to six months while our people got to understand their operations. We’d take this time to train their technical staff to our products and internal procedures.
"What about Phil? Oops. Excuse me, Philip?" I asked.
"I can’t see him lasting long. We don’t need two operational guys. Rick Cox’ll make mincemeat of him."
"Yeah, but I thought we’d promised him a job. We did a separate agreement for him to keep him on. Oakes was adamant about fitting Phil into the organization. Wasn’t the plan to create some sort of position in operations, kind of on a smaller scale? Get Phil running a couple of the regions?" I asked.
"Cox is fighting it tooth and nail. He and Oakes had a major screaming match about it the other day. Cox was so mad I thought he was going to run and get his mommy." Tom laughed.
Tom and I both knew that Rick Cox had not been very involved in the acquisition of Marshton Systems. It had been a transaction that Oakes had pushed through without any input from Cox. God, what a pair. I wondered if other organizations had such team work at the top.
I took a sip of my coffee. "Well, the next week should be interesting."
"Have any arrangements been announced yet for Ev’s funeral?" Tom asked.
"No, nothing yet. If I find out, I’ll let everyone know. You know Tom, we’ve got a great gaping hole with Ev gone. It’s going to take some time to get someone up to speed on her job."
"Jay can take it over," Tom stated.
Oh yeah, big promotion Jay. Maybe I’ll be the one to tell him. Jay, you’ve been promoted. We hope you’re up to the task. The job’ll involve a lot of data entry work and we’ll be glad to provide training.
"Right Tom. Jay’ll be happy with that. Taking over a clerical job. Tom, you should look at some of the existing staff to see who can do the job. We need someone who can be trusted. If we get someone from inside, the learning curve won’t be difficult."
Tom was flexing his forearms and staring at himself in the shiny surface of the paper towel dispenser over the sink. I grabbed my coffee and sighed. At least I’d had his attention for about five minutes. Par for the course. The man had the attention span of a two year old.
"Good luck at your meeting," I said over my shoulder as I left the room.
He didn’t hear me. He was picking at a piece of dry skin over his eyebrow.