Chapter 17: Road Warrior

My boss at Franklin, Didwich, and Casso – FDC – Derek Rogers, looked concerned. “Steve, if we lose the TCI account the sky will fall on this company. As a client they’ve come to represent about forty percent of our profit and easily about a third the workforce – that’s nearly five-hundred people.”

My knees knocked together with the implications of what would happen if TCI defected to a competitor of our systems and consulting company. So much of FDC’s business came from them everyone at FDC often joked about being a TCI subsidiary.

I said, “I’m speechless ... but I’ve never worked on that account, and I don’t know any of the players in their company. Oh, I know many of our own people on the job, but I’ve never interacted with any of them because so many of them are working full time in the field.”

“That’s precisely why the Executive Committee picked you for the job.”

“ME? But ... but, won’t TCI want to see an officer of the company, someone like you.”

“Thank you, but no, they want to see a young up-and-coming manager like yourself that does honest work on behalf of his clients – you know, eyeball to eyeball. They know the officers of our firm are wrapped up in running FDC and not in delivering the real work. That’s where you come in, you and your knack for creativity, innovative solutions to client problems, and great interpersonal relationships with your clients.”

“And, what do you want me to do?”

“We want you to go down to their head office in New Jersey and talk to the heads of the various projects we are working on. I’m embarrassed to say that we haven’t done a quality check with them for over a year. We each thought someone else had a rein on it. That’s something you may want to fix. Are we doing okay? Where could we improve? Are there some of our people that they want to see more or less or none of? Are they happy? What would make them ecstatic? You get the idea. We need to know the answers for every single project we have with them – about twenty-five separate efforts of various sizes spread across the country – the world – in their various major offices.”

“Travel is involved I assume.” I guess I’d been lucky; my client work for FDC had been in Boston or within a short drive from there. I hadn’t been on an airplane for any reason for over a year, and rarely before that. Now, I sensed, I was about to become a road warrior.

“Yes, a lot for a while. If you pull this off, you’ll be promoted to run the overall client engagement – even become a partner in FDC, but one whose nose is in the field. I needn’t tell you what a coup that would be in terms of salary, bonus, benefits, and perks, and heck, to tell the truth, you’ll be running all the projects as it is, and the other stuff will follow along soon. We all see you as a rising star, so I’m sure it’ll work out all right for you.”

“I live with people who depend on me to be around to support them.”

Derek said, “I’ve heard about your rather unique living arrangement. When the travel gets to be too much, we’ll arrange for your partners to visit you and usually you can always be home on the weekends. That decision is always yours.”

Derek added, “Your partners depend on you, but so will several hundred of your colleagues in this company, including me. I have great faith in you.”

“When do you want me to go out there?”

“First thing tomorrow morning. Jesse will take over your workload effective immediately; I happened to see her earlier this morning so she’s aware of what we’re asking of you. She’s probably waiting in your office right now to talk to you and catch whatever you’ve been doing.”

I nodded reluctantly. I had a host of conflicting emotions sweep over me. I felt honored for what had obviously become the most important job in the company. The work would be high visibility, a chance to shine, and a chance to get a promotion and a large financial boost to my life style. On the other hand, the travel bothered me. I would end up in a dozen-or-two different cities where TCI had major sites, probably hopping between two or three of their offices each week for the indefinite future. I loved my girls – Fran, Sheila, and Ally – and I didn’t want to be away from them.

This whole situation put me in crisis about my home life.

I trudged back to my office, talked to Jesse for two hours, dumping file after file into her capable hands and talking like a fire hose while she took notes on her iPad. About four o’clock I had my flights and hotel reservations for the rest of the week, plus an outrageous schedule of meetings until late Friday afternoon when I’d catch a flight from New Jersey back to Boston in time for a late dinner and the weekend.

At home, I borrowed one of Sheila’s roll-on suitcases and figured out how to pack what I’d need the rest of the week into the small bag. Besides my business suit, I needed casual clothes – just in case, and I wanted my exercise attire so I could jog or use the hotel’s gym in my overnights if there were time.

At home that evening, Ally found me trying to figure out how to pack smelly jogging shoes in my suitcase without everything else starting to smell like a men’s locker room.

“You must have to travel for business. Spray each shoe with Febreze, and then put each shoe in a separate Zip-Lock bag. You should take a couple of extra bags for sweaty running clothes, dirty underwear, shirts, socks and such. If you’re lucky some hotels have overnight laundry service too, although it tends to be expensive.”

I asked her, “How do you know so much about business travel?”

“When I interned for Saks as an assistant purchasing agent, I had to be away a couple of nights each week over that summer with the woman I reported to. The more experienced women taught me a lot about traveling, packing, and so on.”

“I think I need an intensive course tonight. I just got a new assignment, and it looks like I’m going to be traveling every week from now until doomsday.” I’m sure my voice betrayed my lack of enthusiasm for the situation.

“Wow. You mean ... you won’t be in bed with us? Oh, Steve, I’m not happy about that.”

“Neither am I. I mentioned it to my boss and he said they’d fly you out to me, or I’ll be back here on the weekends.”

“That sucks.”

“There is an upside.”

“What?”

“Promotion, salary increase, big bonus, high visibility, a whole set of perks – some of which I won’t be around to enjoy, but they’ll be there nonetheless.”

“What’s the new job?”

I described how I’d just become the linchpin in rescuing the jobs of about five hundred colleagues at FDC who worked on various TCI projects. When Ally understood the critical nature of the daunting task ahead of me, she looked duly impressed and her demeanor softened. She even knew some of the people in my company that worked on those projects. Hell, everybody in the Greater Boston area did.

Sheila and Fran had a similar response to my sudden job change that would take me away from them week after week for the indefinite future. The three of them got clingy during dinner, and later I had a command performance to make love to each of them. I had to ‘fill their love bucket’ so they could last without me until Friday night.

My alarm clock went off at five a.m., and I prepared to head off to Logan Airport for a seven-a.m. flight to Newark. The girls lined up to kiss me goodbye at the front door, a little groggy from not completing their beauty sleep, and exceptionally naked to be sure I’d remember every little nuance of their subtle bodies. I had to finger each of them, consequently I had a hard-on by the time I left the condo.

I muddled through my first day of meetings with FDC’s project leaders at TCI’s head office in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in a massive corporate headquarters. I also met about a dozen people who seemed genuinely glad that I’d gotten the assignment to ride herd on the various system and consulting projects my company worked on. Everyone from TCI and FDC was cordial and warm, and they seemed to crave more interaction of the type I seemed to offer.

Derek had commented about how I’d been recognized as good at relationship building. Although modest on that count, he was right. I could befriend anyone, usually remembered names and details about people, and left a trail of lifelong friends wherever I went. My clients all loved me, so much so that I had started to find I could sell follow-on business at their offices without much of a problem – ‘rainmaking’ they called it at FDC.

The TCI manager of all the TCI-FDC projects was Jane Ellis; a woman about ten years my senior who I would have guessed graduated from Wellesley or Radcliffe. She had a precise accent to her voice and every syllable she spoke was terse and to the point. While that made her seem severe, she smiled a lot and often touched my arm to defuse the sting of a criticism or two of our company’s work. She gave us an overall B+ rating overall, and knew I had the job of making everything we did A+. I assured her that I’d be trying to do just that. I also didn’t consider a B+ very good.

In some respects, Jane was an elegant woman: natural hair that had a luster to it along with a few strands of gray, a complexion cover girls lust after, and a shape that belonged on the cover of the bikini issue of Sports Illustrated. She dressed sharp, and obviously spent a large amount of money on the outfits she wore. The business suit defined her power position in the company and also told everyone, me included, that she didn’t suffer fools gladly.

Jane was a director for TCI, a position just below vice president, and one that made her a big deal in the company. She had dozens of people reporting to her, and by reputation knew her stuff and had a near photographic memory. She’d obviously been held back in her career, probably because of being a woman; if she were a man, she’d probably be not only a vice president, but also one of the senior VPs at TCI.

Some of the TCI and FDC review groups had to leave at five o’clock. I felt I’d already put in a twelve-hour day, but we started to assess yet another project and that didn’t end until six-thirty. I felt ready to crash for the night.

Jane could see my fatigue. We’d established a good rapport by that time. She put her hand on my arm as I sat next to her, “What you need is a glass of fine wine.” She turned to the other middle managers in the room, “Shall we take Steve to our favorite watering hole?”