Chapter 45

"Is it true?"

Gene had called me bright and early on Thursday morning. I was at the computer, tinkering with the signal attenuation program I used for integrating the price feeds together.

There was a relationship reference point I used that could only be achieved by lowering the metals and raising the currencies, in relation to the grain prices. It was the relationship ratio that interested me, not the actual price each was trading for.

"Good morning, Gene. Is what true?" From the tone of his voice, I knew something had upset him badly.

"Patty. Is it true she's coming to work for you at the company?"

"Oh, that. Yes, that's true. She's starting sometime after the fifteenth of next month. She's retiring from her other job. It will be nice to have someone in accounting who can speak in precise numerical figures."

"You're going to have to choose, Kenny. This has been a family tradition with us. You can't just come in like this and try to put in all these senseless kinds of upsetting changes."

Gene was starting to get himself all worked up. I had noticed this tendency in all the Macklinson men that I'd had any real dealings with. It was as if they deliberately ramped up the level of their emotions. This made every confrontation more heated and emotional than it needed to be.

"You better just try to calm down for a minute, and think about what you're trying to accomplish with this phone call, Gene. I'll discuss these things with you, but only if you can speak calmly and rationally."

"I'm not the one who isn't being rational." Gene bit off the words as he spoke them. I could feel him trying to rein himself in though.

"It sounds like both our families have conflicting traditions, Gene. In my family, we hire anyone we think can get the job done for us. We're mostly interested in making things run better, so we can make more money for ourselves. I'd be interested in hearing an explanation of your reasoning for me not hiring your sister."

"I already told you, it's tradition. My father decided that it wouldn't be good to have our women in the business, because business should be run on logical thinking, not emotional feelings."

"Well, I agree with part of that, but Patty didn't strike me as being an overly emotional person. In fact, she struck me as being just the opposite. Twenty five years with the same employer, and she never found it necessary, or appropriate, to resign, not even once. That does make her different from most in your family, but not in a bad way."

"Hardly the same thing. Patty is not your typical Macklinson woman, but she is the exception, not the rule."

"What about Cindy? You think she's another exception?"

"Why bring her into it? This is about Patty, and what it will do to any hope you might have of having any of the Macklinson people return to work."

I wondered if it had been Patty who had called to tell Gene of her having been hired by me. Maybe Gene didn't know that I'd hired Cindy too.

"I hired Cindy a couple of days ago. She's the one who first talked to Patty for us. I've got her working on redoing the office floor right now. We're starting to make some big changes here, Gene. Give us another month, you won't be able to recognize this place."

"You know, Kenny, this is precisely the attitude I find so galling. You make these wholesale changes, without having first thought about their impact, or their effect on other people. It is a dangerous way to approach business down here."

"My father tells me the same thing, Gene. He thinks I need to take time to study all my ideas about changing the way we do things. I think he's right, at times, but, if I listened to him, all the time, I wouldn't get anything accomplished. Its just two different philosophies at work. The way I think about it, if I make a change and it doesn't work, I can always play with it, until it does. I don't mind having to undo things from time to time. That's just my way, and it seems to work better for me than not doing anything does."

"You can't undo it, if hiring Patty makes all the other Macklinson people decide to stay away from the company."

"That is beginning to sound suspiciously like a threat, Gene. Is that how you want it to sound?"

"No, it isn't a threat. What I'm telling you is what I already know would happen, if you were to go ahead and actually hire Patty, or keep Cindy working for you there. You can't just go fly in the face of seventy years of family tradition."

I sensed that Gene was only being candid, telling me what he honestly believed would happen. I also sensed that Gene still didn't have as firm a grasp on his position, relative to mine, at the company. He was still acting as if he were someone with authority over the decisions being made.

"I think I understand you, Gene. Basically, you're saying I need to make a choice. Either have the Macklinson men here, or keep Cindy and Patty on as employees."

"I'm afraid that's really the only choice, Kenny. For myself, I wish things were different, but I'm afraid they aren't."

Gene seemed pretty certain that I'd look at what I'd be losing if I couldn't have any of the Macklinson men back, then decide that I had to follow his family's tradition. I didn't see it that way.

In fact, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try to finally get through to all the Macklinson men. Things had changed, and they either had to accept those changes, and learn to live with them, or go off and do something different with their lives.

"I guess I'm going to choose the women then, Gene. I've got no use for people who can't change when they need to. Macklinson traditions aren't important to me. Making this business better is important. I'm becoming convinced I can't accomplish that by having you or your brothers involved in it. As far as your sons and nephews go, they have to decide for themselves what is more important to them. Anyone who works for us, they need to do what we tell them. If doing that conflicts with their values or beliefs, then they should just stay away from us."

"That's certainly clear to me now, Kenny. You know Kyle and Steven will choose family over working for you? Nobody is going to come out ahead from you taking this unreasonable attitude."

"You're wrong about that already, Gene. I feel like I'm going to come out ahead. I don't want people here that can't work within our framework. We set the policy, and you get to decide if you can co-exist with it or not. You don't make policy anymore, we do."

"I give it another month before your father calls me himself, asking for all of us to come back to work."

"If he does that, I'd be the first one to call and congratulate you. Right after I did that though, I'd call my father and negotiate to buy Macklinson's from him. He'd sell it too, because if things were going badly enough that he'd want to give you that call, then he'd be only too happy to unload the company. Since I own forty percent of his company, and, since he's my father, I seriously doubt he'd do that, even if I messed things up so bad we'd have to shut this operation down. He'd probably tell people it was a good lesson for me to have learned."

"Is this trouble between us going to have any bearing on our agreement for you to purchase the Underwood property?"

"Not from my end, Gene. This isn't personal, you know. This is a conflict of philosophies, a disagreement over how the business needs to be operated. To be candid with you, I'm glad we got this out in the open today. I've been trying to convince you that things are going to be run the way I want them to be, and you don't seem to believe what I've been telling you. I feel like we finally resolved everything today. I can just move forward with things now, knowing that we both understand our differences are completely beyond repair."

"I can't help believing that you're making a mistake."

"If I am, it won't be my first, and it won't be my worst. I know I can live with the consequences any mistake of mine will cause me. You should make certain you feel the same, before you counsel the kids to stand with you, Phil, and Larry on this. There are already some of you I've decided I won't ever take back. Right now, Phil, Billy Ray, Jerry, Doug, and the other Jennings boy are the only ones who need bother to apply to be taken back here. If Kyle or Steve quit again, they'll be done forever here too."

"What did Jesse do to get lumped in there with Larry and me?"

"He's too much like his father. I think I can work with the other kids, but not Jesse."

"You keep digging your way down deeper, Kenny. You have no real justification for excluding Jesse."

"I don't need one. That's what I'm trying to tell you, Gene. You think I need to justify everything, to try to get your approval for it. You've taught all these kids the same thing. I don't have to satisfy you, your brothers, or any other Macklinson. You don't have to satisfy me either, not unless you happen to work here."

"It isn't right to force a man to choose between his job and his family."

"Then stop doing it. Let the boys decide for themselves, without first having to pass some Macklinson family unity test. I can do without all of them, if it comes down to that. I'm pretty sure that isn't what you want."

After Gene and I got off the phone, I decided to call my Dad again. It seemed like I was calling him almost every day, telling him that one or more of the Macklinson people had a conflict with my way of doing things. This wasn't the way he liked to manage things.

He preferred having the people he put in charge taking care of these types of problems themselves. I still wanted to talk to him, because I figured this was still training for me. If I was wrong in what I was attempting to do, I wanted him to tell me so. I didn't want to wait until the situation was damaged beyond repair.

I spent fifteen minutes, filling him in on everything that had taken place, and telling him what Gene had said to me. Each time he asked me a question, I tried to answer it as honestly as I could.

"I don't think you were as diplomatic as you might have been, Kenny. Gene isn't stupid, you didn't need to explain every single little thing to him like you did. Sometimes, letting them draw their own conclusions is preferable."

"I've tried being subtle, Dad. None of them seem to believe me when I tell them what I'm going to do down here. They all think they can keep doing what they've always done. Even now, I'll bet you that Gene still thinks things are going to go back to the way they were. I'm betting he's going to make Kyle and Steve quit, just to try to prove to me that he can do it."

"If he does, you have to follow through with what you told him. The main thing for you to keep in mind is, you're the one in charge down there, not any of them. If they can't believe it, or they won't, that doesn't change the reality of it any. Part of your problem with dealing with them might be that you don't really believe you should have to prove that to them. I think that's why you've been so insecure about the actions you've chosen to take. You asked for my advice, so I'm going to give it to you. Quit negotiating with them. Stop taking their phone calls. You've already explained yourself. They have to change, not you. Wait three months before you have any further conversations with any of them."

"That means that I'll be stuck here for at least three more months."

"Yes, but you should be able to spend no more than a day or two each week down there. Everything else, you can handle over the phone. Find someone you feel confident you can work with. Give them the daily responsibilities to keep things running the way you want them to. Macklinson's is your project, but I don't expect you to be there all the time. You need to oversee the changes you're making, but you don't need to be on site to do that. Find someone."

That was just like my father. He already knew I was having problems keeping on top of everything myself, so he tells me to find someone else to dump all of this on. For a minute, after he and I got off the phone, I was very tempted to phone Joyce, to ask her to come down to Alabama, to help me out. I knew she and I could work together. I was sure that would get my father's attention. I might have done it too, if I thought, for even a minute, that Joyce would agree.

I started thinking about bringing Michael Sparkman down. He was involved with handling special projects for my Dad now. Even more than I was, Michael was a person who shot from the hip. Like me, he wasn't troubled if things didn't turn out that well at first.

If my father was right, and the problem down here was with the Macklinson family, not with me, then having Michael here acting the same way I did, wasn't going to harm anything. Michael was even younger than me though, and I had come to believe that part of my lack of credibility, with Gene and his brothers, was my age, and lack of experience.

If I did bring Michael down to Alabama, it would mean I really was giving up on reaching an accord with all of them. I tried to figure out how I could be absent from the plant, yet still know what was going on. I wasn't sure that Michael would be willing to operate with me looking over his shoulder all the time.

In the past, this had been a cause of friction between us. This was the main reason why Michael had been turned into a special projects person. I decided to call him, to feel him out about the possibility of coming down to work as my assistant.

I had decided to start out with both of us being here, for at least the first two weeks, then have me gradually disengage, so that he could see I was ready to give him greater autonomy. This would also make it easier for him to report to me while I was back in Kansas. He would take my being physically absent as a vote of confidence for his being able to work without me. It was worth trying.

I was planning on flying back to Bolling the next day anyway, so I'd have Joyce invite Michael over to our house over the weekend. We could talk and I'd be able to find out if he and I were compatible with the direction I wanted to move things.

I called Joyce and told her what was happening, including my father's suggestion, and that I was considering Michael Sparkman as my new assistant.

"That would be a mistake, Kenny. Mike's too much of a cowboy now. He'd go down there with a gunslinger's mentality. He isn't ready for something as complex as what you're doing down there. You need someone with less ego, someone who won't mind being your caretaker down there."

"Do you have someone in mind? Who do we know that could do the work, but not mind being a second fiddle?"

"If I tell you, you have to promise not to just laugh. Think about it first, before you say anything. All right?"

I didn't like the sound of that. My first thought was she was going to suggest either herself or Emily. My Dad wouldn't agree to losing Joyce, and Emily didn't have the experience, interest, or training, to be an effective caretaker.

Besides, a large part of what I was trying to accomplish was to put me back with all of my family, not separate one of them from the rest of us.

"Okay. Tell me, who?"

"Ellen could do it."

"No way! Ellen doesn't know the first thing about running a company. She has no experience, no training."

"She wouldn't be running anything. You would. All she would do was be a caretaker, reporting everything back to you. You know how you phone your Dad or me? When we talk, you tell us everything that happened, and we discuss it with you. You tell her what to do, what to look for, and she would call you anytime anything happened that she didn't have clear instructions on how to deal with."

"What about her mom? You think Edith will let Ellen fly off to Alabama? She gets nervous if Ellen's in a different room than her."