Chapter Six
Learning to Work Around Obstacles
Eric
It’s been a few days since the big blowup between Jessica and I, and we’ve only managed to keep the peace because we’ve completely avoided each other. Sometime today, though, I’ve vowed to myself that I’m going to get Alec his job back or I’m walking right the fuck off the job.
I won’t force the decision on my guys, though. If things go sour, I’ll simply let José—who narrowly avoided arrest due to the quick thinking and quicker words of Linda—know that he’s in charge and tell the guys to stay on the job.
They’ve gone long enough without a good payday.
Jessica comes out of her office, and I’m ready to put my cards on the table, but she’s quickly approached by a customer. As much as I’d love to put her in a position where she’d be forced by propriety to say yes, I don’t want to do anything to ruin her business either.
There are limits.
“Hey, boss,” Ian says, “we’re ready to put this window in. You wanna let Miss Davis know, or do you just want to chance it?”
“Go ahead and put it in,” I tell him. “I’ll be right back.”
Jessica’s dealt with the customer and I know she sees me coming. She doesn’t look at me, but I can see her deep breath from here.
I don’t want an argument, but I’m ready to give one if that’s what has to happen.
“Hey,” I say, approaching her. “Could we talk for a minute?”
“I’m kind of busy right now,” she answers. “Is it important?”
“Oh, I’d say so,” I answer.
“All right,” she says, “but we’ve got to make it quick. I’ve got a meeting with a supplier in a few minutes, and I’d really prefer not to have him come into a screaming match in my store.”
“I don’t see any reason why it has to go that way,” I tell her.
“Let’s go,” she says, and we walk in silence back to her office.
I close the door as usual, but before I can start, she jumps right in.
“I thought about what you said, and you’re right: it’s not fair that that man lost his job for trying to stand up for one of his coworkers,” she says.
“Great,” I tell her. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What I do think is fair, though, is for you to fire whoever actually did break into my store. So I think if anyone’s being unfair here, it’s you,” she says.
“Me?”
“Yeah,” she says, “you. Once you told me he wasn’t the guy, I didn’t want to see him go any more than you did. I was angry, though, and I just let it go the way it went. That part was my fault. Knowing who broke the law and broke into my store, however, you shouldn’t have just let him quit like that. You should have held the right person responsible and that should have been the end of it, and now I have to go. It looks like my supplier is here a little early.”
“No, we’re not done here,” I tell her. “Either my guys—all my guys—stay, or I go. They’ll finish out the job for you, but I’m not going to work in a situation where you’re going to try to dismantle a group of people I’ve worked with and come to trust implicitly for years.”
“Hmm,” she starts, “you’d think that having one of your own people commit a crime against one of your clients might do something to that trust. Maybe you should think about your judgment. Now, unless there’s anything else—”
“What’s it going to be?” I ask. “Lose me and Alec, setting you and your plans, whatever the hell they are this hour, back who knows how long, or realize that a mistake was made, but it’s no reason to fire anyone and you can have me and my whole team working hard for you until this job is finished?”
“Neither,” she says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
Here’s my predicament: she’s opening the door now, so anything else that I say to her has a good chance of being overheard, not only by my guys and her staff, but by this supplier of hers.
If I do something to screw with one of her business partners, chances are that me and my crew are immediately let go. If, however, I hold my tongue, Alec, a good friend of mine, either stays out of a job because he did a good thing for José, or I lose the best guy on my crew for making a mistake.
Fuck it.
“It’s going to have to be one or the other,” I say quietly and with a smile on my face.
“Now really isn’t the time,” she says, mimicking my actions, trying even harder than I am not to see the whole situation explode.
“Now is the only time,” I tell her. “Either make your choice or I walk now.”
“I don’t do business with people who hold a gun to my head,” she says. “Mr. Burbank, it’s great to see you again. This is Eric. He and his men are doing some renovations for us. Would you come into my office and we can talk about our future together.”
I wait for the older man to walk past me and then I give her my best “I’d make a choice unless you want me to really embarrass you” look.
She takes a step toward me, and still smiling, she whispers, “Call your guy and get him back here. Don’t think that I’m going to forget this.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. “You made the right choice.”
Although Mr. Burbank is already in her office, we’re still too close for her to do anything but mouth her final thoughts on the matter.
“Screw you.”
I smile and walk back over to the work area.
“What’s got you so happy?” Tripp, the newest new guy asks.
“I’m going to call Alec and tell him to get his ass down here. He’s late for work.”
I glance back toward Jessica’s office as the crew claps and offers their congratulations, but I can’t see anything more than the door closing.
“Great job, boss,” Ian says.
Even José has a smile on his face.
I walk outside and make the call.
“What’s up, boss?” Alec answers.
“Good news,” I tell him, “José’s safe. The inquisition is over and you’re hired. When do you think you can get here?”
“Uh, I’m kind of busy at the moment,” he says. “Any chance I can just come in tomorrow?”
Right now, I’m glad I stepped outside for this.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but you have no idea what I just risked to make this happen and the shitstorm that’s going to be waiting for me before the day is over because of it. So, do you want the job or not?”
“Of course I want the job,” he says, “it’s just…”
“It’s just what?”
“Well,” he says, “I’m kind of out of state.”
“How can you be kind of out of state?” I ask.
“Okay, so I’m in Delaware. There’s a pool tournament going on here and it’s fucking wicked.”
This is one of the guys I just risked my livelihood for.
“You’re in Delaware for a pool tournament,” I echo. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Well, it’s not like I knew that I was going to be rehired today,” he says. “Besides, I kind of, you know, already found another job.”
“You really could have told me that,” I scold. “I’m going to look like a fucking idiot when you don’t show up here.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” he says. “I’ll totally quit this job and come back to work for you, only…”
I’m waiting for the end of the phrase, but it looks like it’s not going to come of its own free will.
“What?” I ask, “Only what?”
“Well, I kind of promised these guys that I’d stay on at least until the job at that store finished up,” he says. “I figured you’d hire me back eventually, but I didn’t know you’d do it so soon.”
“This really sucks,” I tell him. “You know you’re putting me in one hell of a position here.”
“Sorry, bro,” he says. “I need a job, and I didn’t think I was going to have one with you for at least a little while longer. I can talk to my boss here and see if we can—”
“Don’t worry about it,” I sigh. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks, boss,” he says. “If you want, I really do have the day off tomorrow, so I’d be happy to drive up there—you know, assuming that I can get a little reimbursement for gas money.”
I hang up the phone.
Fuck.
How the hell am I going to spin this so I don’t end up looking like the idiot I apparently am?
Sure, it makes sense now that I should have called Alec before giving that ultimatum, but in my defense, Alec’s one of the laziest motherfuckers I know. How was I supposed to know he’d actually go out and get himself a new job?
I walk back into the store, smiling at Linda as I pass her on my way to the newly sunken floor, which after a whole lot of back and forth and more wasted concrete than I’m prepared to admit, now sits level at 16 ½ inches below the rest of the flooring.
Really, unless Jessica comes out here with a list of changes sometime in the next day or so, we’re pretty much done here.
The old storage room was taken out weeks ago, the floor—well, we’ve already covered that—and my team is now in the process of setting the window.
There are a few more things left to do, mostly small and cosmetic, but maybe this won’t be the end of the world after all.
I really need to learn how not to be optimistic about anything.
Jessica’s door opens, and Mr. Burbank comes walking out with a smile on his face. Jessica’s smiling, too, but hers is strained.
She waits for Burbank to pass Hosiery before turning toward me and motioning for me to meet her in her office.
This should be fun.
I step into the office and close the door.
“You’re probably going to want witnesses,” she says. “In fact, knowing that someone could see what I would really, really like to do to you right now is probably the only thing that’s going to keep me from doing it.”
“I know I took a hard line before, and I just—”
“I’m not done talking,” she interrupts. “It’s bad enough that you forced that ridiculous decision onto me, but doing it where one of my most important business contacts could potentially hear you was beyond irresponsible, and I can’t tell you how livid I am at you for it.”
“You’re absolutely right,” I tell her. “It was wrong of me to do that. So, to make it up to you, I’ve decided not to bring Alec back onto my team until we’ve finished up this contract.”
“Great!” she says manically. “That’s just great! I was so pissed off at you that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what Mr. Burbank was proposing, and I just agreed to a cost structure that’s going to completely gut my profit margin on everything he’s going to supply for me.”
I wince.
“How much does he supply for you?” I ask.
“All told,” she says, “about a third of everything I carry.”
I’m about to tell her that a third isn’t that bad, but then I pull my head out of my ass.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” she says, “shit is right. Do you want to know what’s worse? Do you want to know what’s even worse than that?”
I cringe. “It gets worse than that?”
“Yeah,” she says. “You know how I wanted you to remodel the Plus section so I could expand it?”
“Yeah,” I answer, confused. “That’s kind of why we’re here.”
“Oh, I know,” she laughs. “What’s worse than everything else is that I just agreed to make Mr. Burbank my sole supplier of plus-sized clothing. So now, all of the extra business I was going to do giving women something chic and sexy to wear for a price they won’t have to sell their firstborn to afford is fucked! I have two choices: either I can keep the prices where I want them and lose thousands of dollars a month on clothes that I’m actually selling, or I can raise the prices on everything in the store—‘cause I’m sure as hell not going to make one demographic of women pay more than another—completely obliterating my whole mission statement, business plan, and just about the only reason that I got into this stupid fucking business in the first place.”
It’s certainly not my fault that she blew it in her meeting, but I really didn’t help matters, either.
“But hey, at least you had a change of heart and decided not to follow through with the threat that put me in this position in the first place. That’s just perfect,” she says.
I don’t know what to say to her, but she’s waiting for me to say something.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her.
At least it’s a true statement.
“You’re sorry,” she says. “Well, that magically makes it all better. You want to know what pisses me off even more than everything else I just told you?” she asks.
“Do I?” I ask.
“Oh yeah,” she says. “It’s actually good news for you. I’ve already sunk so much into the whole remodel that there’s no way it would be cost-effective for me to just fire your ass once and for all. So, even after this situation which you and your men caused by breaking into my store, letting the wrong guy quit while protecting the one who actually did it, yelling at me in front of my employees—”
“Hey, we both did that,” I interrupt.
Apparently my attempt at levity is not appreciated.
“Then,” she says, “to top it all off, you all but blackmail me into agreeing to do what you want me to do in the first place, which, let’s face it, boils down to me covering your ass for a mistake you made, putting me in a position where I wasn’t in any way prepared to negotiate a business deal with one of the top clothing suppliers in New York, and I can’t fire you!”
“Hold on,” I tell her. “I know you’re upset, and I know it’s because of me, but will you just take a quick walk with me? I want to show you something that might cheer you up.”
“What do you think could possibly cheer me up right now?” she asks.
“Just come with me,” I tell her. “It may not make everything better, but it might just turn things around enough that you can go home tonight with at least one thing to be happy about.”
I would tell her that it’s not my fault she couldn’t stop her emotions from affecting her business transactions, but ironically, I would feel too guilty.
“Just give me a minute,” she says, and takes a deep breath.
“Okay,” I tell her.
“Outside,” she says.
I walk out of the office and I can hear her heels behind me. I turn around and she stops in front of me.
“What?” she asks.
“Follow me,” I tell her.
From there, I walk her up to the front where the guys are putting the finishing touches on the window.
“Now, we’re going to keep the grating up on the outside—permanently if you’d like it, otherwise, at least until the window cures—but that’s basically done. I need to get my carpet guy in here to take care of this section, but I can call him tonight and have him here by tomorrow. Every possible bit of space that we could get without encroaching on another section is here, the sunken floor is set and ready to be carpeted with the rest of it, and other than a few things here and there, we’re basically done.”
“That’s great,” she says, smiling. “You guys have done such awesome work. Thank you so much.” She leans in toward me, saying, “So you knew that you were this close and you still went through with your intimidation tactic?”
She has a point.
“It was kind of a principle thing,” I whisper back, hoping the guys aren’t paying too close attention to what Jessica and I are talking about. “I am very sorry about that, though. I should have thought it through.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “Hey guys. Everything looks great, but seeing all of your amazing work has given me a few more ideas that we can do to make this space even better than it is right now.”
“What are you doing?” I murmur into her ear.
“You’ll be doing a few upgrades free of charge,” she says. “If you don’t like that, I’ll simply nullify your contract for unwillingness to complete the project as requested.”
“You can’t do that,” I tell her, becoming acutely aware that it’s not so fun to be on the business end of a personal vendetta. “The project that was requested is hardly the project that we ended up with. If anyone violated the contract, it was you.”
“Actually,” she says, turning toward me seemingly just so she can look me in the eyes when she says it, “I had my lawyer add in a clause before we signed that changes to the initial plans could be made at my sole discretion at any point during the contract. So,” she continues, “here’s an ultimatum for you: you either do exactly what I tell you to do, free of charge, or we tear up your contract and you and your men are going to be getting a much smaller paycheck than you thought you had coming, and I’m not just talking about a few bucks either. I’m talking six figures.”
This is why you shouldn’t let a client pay you in installments, and why you always, always read a contract twice.