Misguided Intentions

Misguided Intentions

Jonathan was furious. He was the Vice President of Sales at Acme Consolidated. Well respected in the business community and very well respected in the local community he lived in. Appearances were everything to him. His Norman Rockwellian world collapsed when Acme was put into court ordered protection. Like everyone at Acme he was thankful Global Industries had been the white knight riding to the rescue. But this was too much. Global had done an audit on all the salesmen. The results weren’t flattering. The bulk of the expense account submissions were from a gentleman’s club next door to corporate headquarters, The Club Anonyme. The rest of the approved expenses happened on the weekend. Mostly water parks, Chucky Cheese birthday parties, family and ticket packages to the home town baseball, football, hockey and basketball teams. And worst of all the country club expenses for the executive team were being cancelled and Global were looking at how to claw back initiation fees from years gone by.

Jonathan was still struggling with the events of the past month. Acme had a product that sold itself. The flywheel gear reduction integrator was patent protected and was a perpetual profit generator. What took Acme down was an ill fated foray into a multi ethnic religious fund raising company founded by the Chairman’s son-in-law.

***

One of the ‘other duties as assigned’ responsibilities in his job description was to provide a professional sales forecast for mergers, acquisitions and investments. He had dutifully interviewed young Ballwell.

He understood the fundamentals of Ballwell’s business plan. The target was anyone at home during the day. According to Ballwell anyone at home during the day was by definition not working. If they weren’t working then they were either gullible stay at home housewives, lazy, sick or aimless. All were in need of redemption. Recruit a sales force of door knockers and the law of large numbers will win out. Knock on enough doors and enough of the knockees will sign up. Simple, knock on enough doors and success is guaranteed.

The interview was his last appointment of the day and he was only too happy to get out of the office and head next door to belly up to the bar at the Club Anonyme. Unfortunately for Jonathan his day wasn’t over. He had barely ordered his second pint when Ballwell appeared next to him. There was something about Ballwell that wasn’t ringing true with him. Jonathan had spent his whole life in sales and he was living proof it was hard to bullshit a bullshitter.

“So tell me Ballwell. You knock on the door, one in a hundred lets you in. Then what happens?”

Ballwell twitched, an involuntary twitch but a twitch none the less. He took a deep breath.

“Umm…well…uh…we’ve actually never gotten that far.”

Jonathan shook his head, ordered another round on his tab and headed of to the oval around the stage. If he had even the remotest idea of how much Acme had invested in this pipe dream he would have spoken up. It never occurred to him they had bet the farm on this.

***

That was then and this was now. The next morning saw the hammer dropped on the Acme sales team. It came in an email, no warning and no reason why.

To all members of the Acme Consolidated Sales team.

·      Effective immediately – all anticipated expenses must be pre-approved by Accounting.

·      No submissions without pre-approval will be reimbursed. NO exceptions.

·      Any sales team members not achieving quarterly targets will be on watch.

·      Failure to make target in two consecutive quarters will be cause for dismissed. NO exceptions.

Jonathan barged into Andrew’s office. Andrew was one of the very few of Acme’s Senior Vice Presidents still surviving in the corporate air bubble of the recently arranged marriage of Acme and Global.

“I’m not going to take this sitting down!?” Jonathan was shaking with righteous indignation.

Andrew was not having a good morning either and was not in a mood to listen to Jonathan’s rantings.

“I can help you out. I don’t remember asking you to sit down. If you want to commit corporate suicide go to talk to Bryce. He did say his door was always open.”

“I’ll do just that. Am I the only one left with a spine? You’ve all become a bunch of jelly fish.”

“You know where his office is. Now get out of mine.”

Jonathan went down the hallway with purpose in his stride. He would save the day from the new head office number crunchers. Stifling the dreams of creativity inspired by the dancers at Club Anonyme and stamping out the flames of beer inspired innovation was a worthy cause in itself. But more importantly the ladies at Club Anonyme had delivered an ultimatum – if we don’t see some cold hard cash, and fast, we’re going to start singing. Those songs would not have a happy ending.

Bryce’s office door was indeed open. Jonathan marched by Adrienna, executive assistant and gatekeeper to the second most powerful executive at Global.

“Bryce, there are some things you need to know and I’m here to tell them to you.”

“Yoo hoo, Jonathan!” Adrienna had followed him to the inner sanctum. “You’ve probably already figured this out but Bryce isn’t here. He’s making a presentation at the board meeting. Please, have a chair. He’ll be back in a few minutes. I can’t imagine anything you could have to say to him that you couldn’t say sitting down.”

***

It was abundantly clear nobody was having a good morning at the new Global Acme Industries. Bryce had presented the first quarterly results from the Acme acquisition to the board. Bryce had started in accounting, and he knew the numbers weren’t lying. The numbers never did. The results were not good and finding an uninvited, unscheduled guest sitting in his office did not improve his mood. Not at all.

“This better be important. Speak.”

“Oh it’s important all right. You’ve got a big problem. Accounting have done an audit on the sales department. Their numbers are all wrong. You’ve got to intervene and…”

“Shut up! Shut up and get out. Get a haircut, buy a new suit and get ready for more bad news. The flywheel gear reduction integrator sells itself. I want a report on my desk next Monday telling me why I should have a sales department at all.”

With no wind left in his sails Jonathan struggled to keep his head up as he walked back down the hallway past Andrew’s office. He leaned against he door jamb, shoulders sagging in defeat.

“Well?”

‘He told me to get a haircut and buy a new suit.”

“Well, that was dramatic.”