Chapter 17: The Flare-Up

I welcomed my work after all these troubled but strangely satisfying days. I had encountered the love of my life, had survived the challenges of my future mother-in-law and had made peace with my father before he died.

A load had been lifted from my soul and I could dedicate myself to work. When I entered the building, I received more support from my colleagues than I had expected - perhaps I was not such a cold German after all; the influence of Maureen had probably changed my habits and people had perceived this. It was also possible that over time a team starts to reflect the leader’s position within their own framework.

When I arrived in the office, however, Mary Ann gave me a message that Frank wanted to see me immediately. He hummed and hawed for a moment before he said that it might be a good idea if, in future, I would lead the discussions with NT. I asked why, and in a roundabout way he implied that he might have made some bad decisions and that I should try to get us out of them. I said that I would try my best, but I already knew what had happened - Eileen.

Peter was the next to corral me and drag me into his office. “Don’t ever let Frank and Eileen be in the same boardroom again! I tried to stop him, but she just smiled at him and he melted. It was embarrassing, to say the least. It’ll be a long time before people forget this debacle!”

He showed me the notes of the last meeting and I shuddered. Frank had given in on points that we had painstakingly negotiated over weeks, and had committed more resources than we had available. I could see Eileen’s eyes sparkling as she slowly reeled him in, and the easy, sexy voice that would have kept him in limbo, ignoring the desperate eyes of his staff. Now I knew why he did not want to meet her again - at least not in a business negotiation - as she would eat him alive, again. She was a witch, and I remembered what she had said - she was mine in love, but in business she was on her own. There was a lesson here: to observe, to understand and to not let it happen again.

Peter and I called our people together. Since I could not admit that my boss had been a fool, even when everyone knew it in this specific case, I asked for a status report. They looked at each other until Peter spoke up.

“James, the meeting didn’t go as well as we wanted. Mrs. Monahan took charge of the meeting and never let it go. We made some commitments that we shouldn’t have made, and now we have to reorganise our schedules. We can’t meet three of our previous objectives anymore with the staff we have. We’ll have to ask for a delay and eventually get two more people from HQ.”

This was worse than I had first thought. I let them discuss the points for a while to clear my mind, and then stopped them.

“Gents, [No women?], let’s step back and analyze the problem once more. We’ve three options - to ask for help, ask for a delay or, somehow, do what we promised. I don’t want to ask for help at this stage. It would indicate to HQ that we did not know what we were doing when we bid on this contract. Asking for a delay would have the same impact to our image with NT. Doing what we promise would mean a lot of additional work, but we would be able to maintain our pride. I’m proud of what we have done up to now and I am certain that we can still handle the project, so I want to go for the third option. However, it will take lots of work and dedication from all of us, so I cannot do it without you. I’ll go out to get myself a coffee, and when I come back I want you to tell me what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it. Anybody else wants coffee and Danish, I’m buying?”

They all stared at me as I opened the door to leave; Peter lifted his hand and asked for coffee, others asked for both. It took me some time to get everything, and when I came back, I found a room full of people still staring at me.

“Gentlemen, what is your decision?”

Peter got up and took the container full of coffee and pastries from my hands and distributed them to the others. The tension slowly mounted and at last he turned to me. “We’ll do it your way. We have our pride too, but you have to promise to exclude certain people from future meetings!”

I assured them, “This has already been agreed to between certain people and me. Don’t worry, I’ll handle that. Thank you, people. Let’s go to work then. By the way, if we manage to finish on time, I’ll invite everyone in this room plus wives, girlfriends and/or partners for dinner in a very good restaurant. In your free time - if you find some - you can choose the restaurant, but please don’t bankrupt me, because I will pay for it out of my pocket!”

The team’s working habits changed from busy to very busy. Late nights became standard, and I received some worried calls from wives and other partners. I promised that there was no hanky-panky going on; it was just a project that had gone off the tracks and that we had to recover. My budget for food delivery was soon exhausted, but I started to bill it to Frank’s account, and he never said a word. We had planned five weeks of decent, but not exaggerated workload to finish the final proposal, but it had become five weeks of heavy drudgery, redoing parts, reprogramming others, and still handling our other customers that had problems. Without Peter, Jim and Mary Ann I could not have handled it. Frank was conspicuously absent, and I had several meetings alone with Sir Allan, explaining what had happened, what we were doing and what our new objectives were. He was very supportive, but I wondered what he had said to Frank.

During all these hectic days I received a packet with documents from Dr. Willington, the lawyer in Germany, and I had to go to the consulate to change my passport, including the name I had inherited. This was done much faster than I thought, and I was ready for the surprise I had in hand for Maureen. I had spoken to her each night, and she was starting to worry too.

“Is that meeting on Friday in Brisbane still on, my love? I’m dying to see you!”

“Unfortunately, no. There’s too much work to be done here and I can’t leave. I know that we’ll have to have a meeting soon, but it’ll be in Sydney. We cannot lose a day or two traveling between cities and enjoying ourselves in hotels and restaurants. Your mother wanted to show off as the powerful businesswoman and threw a big wrench into our project, and we’ll have to pay for it in overtime and weekends.”

“What did Mom do, for heaven’s sake?”

“She saw that Frank, our marketing director, was infatuated with her, and she used this to get concessions that were never considered when we signed the contract. This means that we must re-do a lot to meet the conditions that were changed. We had to bring in two more specialists from other branches, and that will cause problems for the other groups. In general it caused a lot of confusion and waste of time. We have to keep our side of the contract, and we will deliver on time, as promised, whatever it will cost us. But we are not happy with your mother, Maureen!”

“Mom wants to talk to you, James. Be careful.”

Eileen was happy - her voice showed her eagerness to see me.

“James, will you be here on Friday? I have prepared a nice surprise for you!”

I was very upset as she still had not realised what she had done to the project. Well, she was the CEO, and she had told me that in business her priorities would be her company.

“Eileen, I shall not be there on Friday, and at this moment I don’t know when we’ll make it to Brisbane. The assumptions and terms of our contract were changed at the last meeting, and we’re way over our heads trying to readjust, reprogram and redirect our work. We are working 12 to 14 hours a day to keep our commitments and probably it will get worse during the next weeks.”

I decided to tell her what I thought.

“You really messed us up, Eileen, and that’s not funny! You also caused the company to re-evaluate certain people in our management; it surprised everyone how this could happen, and how the person stepped overboard without my people being able to stop him. If I’d been there, this would not have happened, you can be sure of that! By the way, you’ll have to send three people from your logistic and accounting staff to Sydney not later than tomorrow night, since we cannot do all these changes on our own without having inside-NT expert opinion. So, in short, I don’t know when I’ll be back in Brisbane, Eileen.”

There was silence on the other side.

“James, aren’t you over-reacting? All I did was tease your boss and he fell all over himself offering me the additional benefits. That wasn’t my fault! Should I have said ‘No’? After all, it didn’t cost me anything and, at the end, my company was better off!”

“Eileen, there is a word called ethics. It means, among other things, that one does not abuse the goodwill of the other person. It deals with what is good and what is wrong behaviour, and what kind of actions are right or wrong in certain circumstances. For example, if you have a top manager of your partner company practically licking your boots, offering you one benefit after the other only that you smile at him, and you accept this without hesitation? Would you consider this correct if it happened the other way around?”

I realised that I was talking to the CEO, not the woman who had told me that she loved me. She could separate her priorities, and that told me a lot about her.

“Eileen, I was brought up and worked always to ascertain the result of a negotiation should be for the benefit of all involved, and not for one person being proud that she had hoodwinked the other. You can be certain that this meeting will have a pretty negative impact on Frank’s performance evaluation within the company, but what’s done is done. We’ll keep our commitments and will deliver on time. Unfortunately, this means that both Maureen and you will not see very much of me. Sorry!”

There was more silence on the other side. Then she handed the phone to Maureen and all I heard was some muttering that did not sound very friendly, and a loud noise.

Maureen waited for a moment and said that she was alone.

“What happened, James? She just stormed out the room and slammed the door. Is something wrong?”

I explained the situation to her and said that at this moment I was not happy with Eileen at all. She had disappointed me very much - not so much as a businesswoman (that behaviour could eventually be excused), but as a person. How could she, in full view of all people present, step on Frank and wipe the floor with him? She must have known that this would have serious consequences, but she still went on and apparently felt proud of herself!

“Maureen, my love, please never be like your mother!”

We discussed the situation a bit, and whenever we had the opportunity for a phone call during the following weeks we tried to avoid this subject. We talked about our situation, when we would get married and where, her choice for a honeymoon trip and what we could do once my workload would come back to a normal level. Her studies were close to the final tests and since it seemed that the three main lines in our current life - the project delivery date, her final exams, and our desire to get married as soon as possible - were coming together, and we set a preliminary wedding date for three months hence. She managed to visit me in Sydney a few times, but it was not the same. I was deadly tired and she was very careful what she said about her mother. Eileen never spoke to me and I did not initiate any contact outside of work issues.

With a final effort from our company and the support of NT staff, we set the project delivery meeting for a Friday morning the following week, and I decided to hold it in Brisbane. It was NT’s HQ after all, and it seemed to be appropriate to present our work to their management on time and on their turf. I was very proud of my people. I asked our president and Frank to participate; Sir Allan Moise accepted, but Frank declined. He said that he had already other commitments. It was sad how one meeting had changed the image of a capable manager; nobody really trusted him anymore. It was not his competence, that was undoubted, but his judgment.

I agreed with Sir Allan that I would take everyone involved in this project to Brisbane; it was our project, not mine. The night before our trip, I fulfilled my promise and had dinner with my group of more than 30 people in a very nice restaurant - the food was good, the wines excellent, and the group could boast of their effort and resounding success.

The next morning not everyone was in the office at nine, but with a few hours left before we had to start travelling it was sufficient to run through the presentation once more. I had given Jim some parts of the presentation as I would do the introduction and the closing; I would also get into the presentation on the more difficult parts, where commitments from the company were involved. Peter asked me to take Mary Ann along as he was certain that she was the only person who could handle the logistics of the presentation. I agreed - she had done an outstanding job and had really come out of her shell in the last months. She had changed from a nondescript worker bee to a very competent, nondescript professional.

We arrived late in Brisbane and Maureen was hiding in one of the stuffy lobby chairs. She tried to be inconspicuous, but even so, most men’s eyes were wandering to where she sat. Her red hair, her sparkling eyes and the warm expression on her face did not fascinate only me, but most other people who looked at her (perhaps with the exception of certain women who were obviously jealous). I said hello to her and gave her a little kiss. Before I could say anything, she told me that she only wanted to see me and say hello; she knew that she could not stay that night. I introduced her to Sir Allan, who suddenly looked at me with a kind of calculating glance. He knew about our marriage plans but had not seen her before. When she left, he turned to me.

“You did well, James. I hope that you both will continue to be as happy as your eyes show when you look at each other. Does this mean that there’s a chance that you’ll stay in Australia after your term here ends?”

I nodded, and he smiled, satisfied. Wheels seemed to go around in his head and he looked at me once more and nodded.

“You’re welcome here, and I’m proud of the work you’ve done with us. It was difficult for you and for us at the beginning, but you adjusted to us and adjusted your people to your leadership and the company is better off now than it was before you joined us. Thank you for your hard work, James. We’ll not forget it.”

I wondered where this came from, but all I could do was to follow him to the dining room where we had a light dinner, before going upstairs to relax and sleep.

There was a tense breakfast in the morning and cars were waiting to take us to the NT building. Their Marketing Director was waiting for us in the lobby, and he led us to the meeting room. Eileen was waiting for us with her staff, and she looked at me for a moment before turning to Sir Allan. She was severely dressed in a dark business suit, with a colourful scarf lighting up the image of a successful woman. She seemed to have put some makeup on her face (which made her even prettier than she already was) and wore two beautiful diamond earrings. I introduced him to her, and it was funny to see how they politely judged each other without saying anything. This was not Frank being smothered; this was the president of the Australian arm of a big multinational company looking at a business peer, not a beautiful woman. I decided I still could learn a lot from Sir Allan!

Polite words were exchanged, everyone was invited to take a seat and I was asked to start the presentation.

Having rehearsed it often enough, it was not difficult, at least as long as nobody asked a sneaky question. I started by thanking NT for their support and competence and said that we could not have come so far without it; I also thanked our people for doing an outstanding job in a constricted time frame.

Then the fun started. After I had presented the assumptions and definitions of the project and Jim went into our proposal, and immediately Eileen started to ask questions. I had wanted for us to make the proposal first and then answer questions, since having the whole picture made answers easier to understand, but Eileen wanted to ask questions during the presentation so that she could clear up any doubts immediately. It was a valid point of view, but the flow of the presentation was broken often enough with points that would have been answered within five minutes anyway. After a while Sir Allan stepped in at last and suggested to Eileen that she should hear out what we had to present, have a coffee break, and then start the question-and-answer session.

She agreed to this - though it seemed rather reluctantly - and I was able to finish my job. My people looked at me and even the NT staff seemed to be surprised about the treatment I had received. One whispered to me, asking what had happened, because in previous meetings Ms. Monahan had been very friendly to everyone. I just told him to shut up and to be prepared for whatever else might happen. Eileen talked to her people during coffee break, and it seemed that even they were surprised about the heavy mood of the meeting.

She called us back and I went into detail on the more important issues. If Eileen was difficult before, now it became obvious that she wanted to create a situation where I would either explode or walk away. I had my almost 50 PowerPoint charts with the main points, but I also had more than 100 charts for backup explanations. I could answer almost all the questions, and what I did not have ready was answered by my people or even her own staff. After more than an hour being grilled on issues that had been discussed and resolved before, and nitpicked for every little detail, I asked for a break and went to talk to Sir Allan.

“Sir Allan, I don’t know what’s happening here. During the last months all these questions have been discussed and resolved, and today was supposed to be a wrap-up show. It seems that Mrs. Monahan is not satisfied anymore with our work but is unwilling to say it. May I suggest that you take her aside and offer her that we either cancel the meeting and walk away from NT (you might let her know that we had already inquiries from other big logistics companies and it would be easy for us to change direction and go for one of them - and they would just eat her up), or that she decides that she wants a productive meeting and shuts up. With all respect, obviously.”

He gazed at me, and I saw the options being analyzed and decided on in his head.

“You’re right, James. Make some movements as if you were going to pick up your charts and start to put them into your case. Perhaps that’ll wake her up. I’ll talk to her.”

He got up and asked Eileen whether he could talk to her for a moment alone. She looked at me, but I shook my head and started to assemble my charts in a nice little heap and opened my case to start to close the meeting. Everyone looked at me, but I shrugged my shoulders and continued to get my stuff together. My people got the idea and went along, so when the two came back, we were ready to leave. She looked at the empty table in front of us and was surprised, and even more so when I took my computer and closed it in front of her.

She swallowed drily and looked around - everyone was staring at her.

“Gentlemen, I apologise, but I had a terrible headache all night and it is getting worse. I don’t believe that I can contribute much to the discussion in this state and have asked Mr. Gage, my Financial Director, to step in for me. Please continue - as far as I am concerned the project is approved.”

She swallowed once more and thanked us for our work. She said it was outstanding and NT would be very happy to continue to work with us. If her staff had no serious objections, NT would start to initiate work within two weeks.

“Please excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but I need to rest. Please go on and inform me about the final result. Sir Allan, it was a pleasure to meet you. NT invites all of you for dinner tonight and I hope to feel better by then. I understand that you may want to go back to Sydney - I have been told how many long hours you worked - but whoever has the time to stay here, he or she is cordially invited for dinner. Once more, please excuse me, and thank you for a good meeting.”

There was silence in the room as she slowly left, and then, as if managed by a string, everyone looked first at Sir Allan and then at me. Sir Allan asked,”Could we go on with the meeting, please? It has been some time since I could stretch my legs.”

Sir Allan smiled politely and, as if by a miracle, the meeting was finished within half an hour. Everyone was happy, no more questions were asked, and the project was approved, ready to begin in two week’sk’ time. Some said goodbye, others promised to be at the dinner, and off we went back to the hotel. Sir Allan took me aside when we arrived and said that even though it was just mid-afternoon he needed a whisky, and asked whether I could join him. Being a good German, I obeyed, and we had our drinks in the bar.

“Now, James, tell me what happened. This was rather unexpected, and I must say, your suggestion to tell her to shut up or we would walk worked just fine, but tell me why all this. Is she not your future mother-in-law? Was this a family fight?”

“Sir Allan, some weeks ago I had a short but rather explosive discussion with her about the way she behaved at the last meeting and how she treated Frank. Her behaviour was uncalled for and not something I would have expected from her. She made life very difficult for Frank and when I tried to explain this to her, all she could say was that he had offered it and that it was her right to accept what was offered. I exploded and gave her a lesson on ethics, told her that our company fulfills its commitments whatever it costs, and hung up on her. That was the last time I spoke to her, and the tone of this meeting was as much a surprise to me as it was for you, but you saved it and we have the job. Let’s forget what happened.”

He looked at me for a long time, considered everything and finally nodded.

“You’ll do well here, in Australia and in our company. I just hope that your private affairs are not impacted, but that is your problem, not mine, Good luck!”

He downed his whisky and got up to relax in his room.

When I came close to my room, I could feel the presence of Maureen. At least that had not changed! As I opened the door she flew into my arms.

“Poor baby! I told Mom already that I’m going to move to Sydney to stay with you. I have friends who were in the meeting and they told me how Mom treated you. This is unacceptable and I told her that! You don’t deserve this at all! I don’t want to stay with somebody like her, who’s able to do this to someone she told she loved so much! That was all a lie! I believed her when she said that she had changed! I don’t want to see her again! I brought some of my clothes and we can go back to Sydney together. My tests are finished and whatever I have to do to complete my studies, I can do from Sydney or with a return trip from there. I still have money from a fund my father set up for me, so you’ll have no extra expenses from me. And I will not invite her to our wedding!”

I had almost fallen from her welcoming assault but managed to hold her - and me - upright while I led her to a chair.

“Tell me what happened, my love.”

“My friends in NT called me and told me what Mother said to you and how she interrupted you all the time. They said she was mad at you for some reason and used her position to attack you personally. Everyone was stunned because up to that moment, the meeting was supposed to be only a wrap-up and general congratulations. And suddenly it grew into a fight between mom and you! What happened? And when she came home, she cried and didn’t want to talk to me, but I insisted and went into her room without knocking! And then she said that you had abandoned her and walked away from her! And that you deserved what you got!”