Chapter 60: It should have been obvious from the start

June 17, 2001, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

🎤 Steve

“Amazing,” Nalani breathed when I gently ran my soapy hands over her compact body.

“Something I learned from my first lover,” I replied. “The shower afterwards is awesome.”

“It’s so intimate.”

“Yes, it is,” I replied as I ran my hands up and down her legs.

I stood up, helped Nalani rinse off, and then handed her the soap. She rubbed the soap in her hands to build lather, then began washing me.

“Wow!” she gasped.

“What?”

“Washing you feels just as intimate as you washing me. I think I understand what my Japanese friend was trying to tell me about bathing.”

“Washing someone is a very, very intimate thing to do.”

“Pretty amazing. I suppose that’s the last lesson for the day.”

“Probably. But there will be other lessons in the future. That’s why it’s important to keep in touch.”

When she finished soaping me, I rinsed off, and we got out of the shower. I grabbed a large, fluffy towel and dried her, and then she did the same for me. We left the bathroom and went to the great room and began dressing.

“So, now that I’ve had time to think about it, I’d be happy to do it for you in the future.”

“Remember what I said - it’s about you and your partner discovering together what you like and what you don’t like, and building your sex life around the things you both like.”

“I think it was just weird. I mean, I knew what it was, I just had no real concept. After thinking about it, I’m glad I did it and as I said, I’d be happy to do it for you again.”

“I very much enjoyed it.”

Nalani laughed softly, “Except for the accidental scrape from my teeth!”

“No damage was done, you learned, kept going, and let me cum in your mouth.”

“If I visit you in Chicago, we can do this again?”

“If you aren’t in an exclusive relationship, I’d very much like that.”

“Should I leave before your family returns?”

“It’s up to you.”

“How much do you tell your wives?”

“Usually just that it happened, though in this case, they knew in advance.”

“But sometimes you tell them more?”

“Yes.”

Nalani smiled, “I trust you to tell them exactly as much as necessary. After all, they trusted you to be with me, and more importantly, me to be with you.”

“Very perceptive.”

“I just realized the most important thing you’ve taught me, and it should have been obvious from the start.”

“What’s that?”

“That all I had to do was truly open my mind and I’d be able to see much more clearly.”

June 19, 2001, Chicago, Illinois

“Welcome back, Steve!” Lucas exclaimed when I walked into the NIKA office building on Tuesday morning.

“Thanks, Lucas. Everything calm?”

“No FBI, CPD, KGB, CIA, FSB, DEA, ATF, NSA, NCIS, or any other three-letter agency showed up! And no US Marshals, either.”

I chuckled, “I do have that reputation. On the other hand, MI6 seems to like me.”

Lucas laughed, “Miss Money ... Penny isn’t here yet, 007!”

“Then I’ll have a few moments of peace! Carry on!”

I went through the security door, then up the staircase to the second floor. I walked down the hallway and as I approached the doors to my office suite, Kimmy jumped up, moved around her desk, and gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.

“How was Hawaii?” she asked.

“Enjoyable, but I could have done without the flight delays yesterday. We ended up not getting back to the house until nearly 1:00am.”

“What happened?”

“LAX was a complete mess, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Anything on tap for today?”

“Just your ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ meeting. Your sister wants to see you, but she’s not in yet.”

“OK.”

I went into my office, sat down at my workstation, and signed on to my computer. I brought up Outlook and quickly scanned my email, and saw nothing marked urgent, and other than the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ meeting, there was nothing on my calendar, just as Kimmy had said. There were three messages, but none of them needed to be returned immediately. I opened the email from Terry with the weekly development status report and scanned it, but everything was in order. Next, I read Cindi’s report and saw that the number of bug reports from our usual ‘first wave’ customers was in line with those for previous releases.

“Steve, your sister is here,” Kimmy said over the intercom.

I got up and went through the «yōshitsu» room which connected our offices.

“Morning,” I said. “Kimmy said you wanted to see me.”

“How was Hawaii?” she asked.

“We had a great time. Suzanne and Ashley took surfing lessons.”

“Jess allowed that?”

“She’s getting better. And, honestly, once she let Albert start flying with Aimee, surfing lessons seem almost tame by comparison. And she did allow Amanda to take Albert to Paris last week.”

“Have you heard from Birgit?”

“She’s fine. She thinks Kara overreacted, but I don’t see how Kara could have done anything else.”

“Me, either. Birgit is, well, Birgit.”

“Words fail,” I chuckled. “So what’s up?”

“Two things. We’ll take the easiest one first - Julia expressed a concern that our consultants and on-site support staff salary schedules don’t take into account advanced certification like CCNE or MCSE, and you know both of those increase the market value of the employee. Given that the egalitarian pay system is your baby, I’d like your recommendation on how to address Julia’s concern.”

“When do you need my proposal?”

“By next week’s EC meeting, if possible.”

“It should be. What’s the second thing?”

“Anne Nelson.”

I shook my head, “I haven’t even been back from vacation for twelve hours!”

“You got in late?”

“Delays at LAX. We got home about 1:00am.”

“Ugh.”

“Now what?”

“A strongly implied threat and offer to settle.”

“She can go fuck herself!”

“I agree with you.”

“What did the Board say?”

“They’re split. Karl and your dad think we should pay her off. Joyce and Al both agree with you. Beth wants to talk to you about it.”

“Which means she’s leaning towards siding with Karl and my dad, and won’t vote against me without a conversation. But we know we can’t lose in the long run.”

“Deborah, Jocelyn, and Liz feel Anne Nelson is going to use the ‘string of NDAs’ as evidence of a cover-up. You know, implying that we’re paying them to be quiet. It’s an effective tactic because we’re obligated by those NDAs to remain silent. We know they’re in place because both Kaitlin and Mikela came on to you, but we can’t actually say that. And we also can’t share the private findings in their employee files. Combine that with the public information about Callie and Charlie with regard to the cheating case, as well as your public relationship with Penny, and the PR becomes a nightmare.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Those NDAs are killing us and we need to find a way to get out of them. I want to talk to Kaitlin and Mikela.”

“The legal team will lose their minds! Anne Nelson would use that as even more evidence of a cover-up!”

“Except all I want from the two women is a release to share the private records with Anne Nelson. You know, the detailed records we kept on exactly what happened. I’m positive Mikela will cooperate, because if this does go to court, the NDAs will be voided and it’ll all come out anyway. I have no idea what Kaitlin will say or do, or even where she is. That said, if we have Mikela’s file and permission to show it to Anne Nelson, we trap her in a position of knowingly filing a false lawsuit.”

“And if she goes to the press?”

“They’ll call Cindi for a statement and we have Mikela admit her mistake. And we have them talk to Charlie and Callie about the cheating incident, and provide the court transcripts. That’ll be the end of it. Well, for this round.”

“This round?”

“Anne Nelson reminds me of a certain other lawyer who became my nemesis, and like a dog with a bone, she won’t let go.”

“Too bad Lisa Glass is serving life in prison in Texas.”

“Do not say things like that, Squirt. Joking about Littleton in that way as I did could have really come back to haunt me.”

“So if that solution is out, then what?”

“Let her joust at her windmills; we all know there’s nothing here for her to find.”

“What about Lee?”

“If the man so much as looks at a female employee the wrong way, Cindi has to land on him like a ton of bricks.”

“And you staring at Kimmy’s ass and mentally undressing her?”

“She’d consider it harassment if I didn’t do that!” I chuckled. “But you make a good point. I’ll discuss it with her.”

Stephanie laughed and shook her head, “Only my idiot big brother would have to talk to a girl about his intention to NOT do those things!”

“If that’s true, then who’s the REAL idiot?”

“Society, of course!”

“Set up a call with the coterie of lawyers and my Consigliere, please. I want to talk this through with them before I speak with Beth. And I need to think about a strategy to deal with the new stone in my shoe.”

“I’ll set it up.”

“Thanks.”

I left Stephanie’s office via the same door through which I’d entered and went back to my workstation just as Penny was walking in.

“You don’t have much of a tan,” she smirked as she sat down. “Too much time inside?”

“I burn to a crisp in the sun!” I replied, sitting down. “I wore a hat all the time, used gallons of sunscreen, and sat in the shade. My wives, daughters, and Suzanne all have reasonable tans.”

“Steve Adams does NOT go to Hawaii without Fate bringing him some hot chick!”

I chuckled, “Steve Adams went to Hawaii and brought along FIVE hot chicks! Granted, two of them are my daughters, but they’re beautiful young women.”

“Losing your touch in your old age?”

“Asks the woman who turned 32 back in April! We’ve known each other for eighteen years now, Pretty Penny!”

“Oh, shut up!” she groused, but she leaned over and kissed my cheek.

By the time the ‘Kitchen Cabinet’ gathered, I’d disposed of all my email, reviewed everything in my ‘In’ box, and returned the calls on Kimmy’s list.

“How was Hawaii?” Liz asked.

“Great except for the delays at LAX on our way back. Did Stephanie speak to you?”

“Yes. We have a call with Deborah, Jocelyn, and Jamie at 2:30pm.”

“Perfect. I have something Stephanie asked me to think about and propose a solution, but I’ll let Charlie explain.”

“Certifications?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied with a nod.

“Basically, our pay scales are very good and our benefits are generous, but once our consultants and support engineers obtain certain certifications, their market value goes up beyond what our overall compensation package provides. The main area of concern is the networking certifications from Cisco, but I’m also seeing it with systems certifications from Microsoft and Red Hat. The problem is, our pay scale doesn’t take those into account.”

“What about creating a new scale that applies to them?” Cindi asked.

“Don’t those have to be renewed on a regular basis?” Elyse asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “It varies, but all of them basically expire if you don’t renew.”

“That creates a problem because we’d basically be stuck with the high rate of pay even if they didn’t renew.”

“How is that a problem?” Eve asked. “You get the higher base pay so long as you maintain the certification. If the employee chooses to let it lapse, we’re not changing their pay, they are.”

“Maybe there’s a middle ground,” Kimmy suggested. “You know, some kind of bonus structure? Don’t we charge higher rates for support engineers with the Cisco certification?”

“Yes,” Cindi replied. “Both for my on-site people and for Charlie’s consultants.”

“Elyse,” I said, “what if we structured it as an add-on stipend, paid quarterly? That would make it clear that it’s not their base pay. And they have to keep the certification for the entire quarter before the stipend was paid out?”

“That might work,” Elyse replied.

“It would also let us set the value of the different certifications based on what revenue they help generate,” Cindi offered.

“What amounts are we talking?” Elyse asked.

“I think we need a salary survey to figure that out,” Charlie replied. “You know, find out what pay a network engineer with a CCNE commands, compare that to our pay scale, and then use that to calculate the extra quarterly payment.”

“Are we losing people because of this?” Liz asked.

“One support engineer so far,” Cindi said.

“One consultant, though I think there were other factors there,” Charlie added. “But I also know there are recruiters fishing for people with certifications and offering significant pay and benefits packages.”

“We have to be competitive at all levels,” Elyse replied. “But I’d also worry about everyone suddenly going for certifications just to bump their pay.”

“You need to be VERY careful there,” Liz interjected. “Whatever rules are set, they can’t be subjective or we’ll end up in trouble down the road at some point.”

“Can we insist it’s related to the actual work they’re doing?” Eve asked. “I mean, and I do NOT mean to cast any aspersions, if Lucas became a Red Hat Certified Engineer, would he get the pay bump?”

I chuckled, “The day Lucas does that, I’ll personally pay him out of my own pocket! He refuses to even have a computer in his house. He does compromise with his wife about bringing her laptop home from work on occasion.”

“And yet he’s one of the most loyal, happy employees we have!” Kimmy said.

“I’d say you could limit it to specific roles,” Liz said, “so long as the rules were clear, objective, and non-discriminatory.”

“Can we get the government to do that with regulations?” I asked.

“Good luck with that, Don Quixote!” Liz smirked.

The other women all laughed.

“I think I can work with role-based limitations,” Charlie said. “Cindi?”

“Yes.”

“What about the programmers?” Eve asked.

“There isn’t much in the way of certification for programmers,” I replied. “Mainly we move them up through the scale based on experience and skill set. And those pay scales are the only ones we do a full market analysis for each year, rather than once every two years. Things change so quickly that we don’t have a choice. Our internal changes occur much quicker than anything at any of our customers, with a few exceptions like M&M, SPSS, or FFM. Lawyers are mostly change-averse, and doctors are worse!”

“Let me work with Cindi and Charlie on this,” Elyse said. “And I’ll make sure we run it by Liz. When do you need it?”

“Stephanie asked for my recommendation within a week, and I can give that. I’m sure she’s assuming it would take time to research and implement any recommendation. I’ll talk to her right after this meeting to make sure she’s OK with the general idea.”

“OK to ask what the lawyer coffee klatch is about?” Eve asked.

“Our new nemesis, and the new stone in my shoe, Anne Nelson, is trying for another bite at the apple. She’s basically threatening a PR assault if we don’t pay her off.”

“Who’s her client?” Elyse asked.

“She’s been very cagey about that,” Liz said. “I have to suspect it’s Margaret, but we can’t ask Margaret. The only way we’ll find out is if Anne Nelson tells us, or she files a lawsuit.”

“Won’t she try to keep the name redacted or sealed or whatever?” I asked.

“Then we move to dismiss for failure to state a claim. If she won’t tell us who her client is, she’ll have to convince the court that they can proceed as ‘Jane Doe’, though we’d have to be told who it actually is. And probably only Stephanie, Elyse, Bob, and I would be allowed to know until we moved much further into the proceedings.”

“Not to be flip, but who says it’s ‘Jane Doe’ and not ‘John Doe’?” Eve asked.

“Nobody,” Liz replied. “We’re assuming this is based on the complaints that Anne Nelson has revealed or implied.”

“Is it possible we’re looking at this from the wrong direction?” I asked. “That somewhere in NIKA there is a guy who feels he’s discriminated against?”

“That Crain’s article was pretty heavy on the virtues of female executives and employees,” Cindi replied. “I suppose someone could feel it was promoting misandry.”

“I’d really LOVE to hear Bob making that argument,” I chuckled. “Let’s say that’s true. Forget the legal issues, how does that play out in the press?”

“It doesn’t,” Cindi replied.

“And it doesn’t play out in court, either,” Liz added. “The government certainly doesn’t appear to care about that issue, and there is very little in the way of relief available to a male who feels females are being given an advantage. Now, if he’s sexually harassed, that’s a different story. Or if he’s over forty.”

“People over forty only account for about fifteen percent of our total staff,” Elyse said. “And most of them are in sales.”

“That’s a function of what we do and when we started,” I replied. “And our penchant for hiring new grads and promoting from within, rather than seeking senior people from the outside, except for Cindi who looks for experienced salespeople for most of those open positions.”

“Sales and marketing haven’t changed much since the snake convinced Eve to eat the apple and then convinced her to get Adam to eat it!” Cindi smirked.

“YOU used a Biblical reference?” I chuckled. “I’m glad this building is on a good foundation or it might have collapsed around us!”

Everyone laughed.

“The point stands,” Cindi replied with a smile. “Experienced salespeople, from pretty much any field except automobiles, have the right skill set. We can teach them enough about technology, and we also use consultants as pre-sales engineers as necessary.”