Month: August 2024

The Safety Dance – Part 2

Faber tapped his left index finger on the table top a couple of times and nodded his head once.  “Mr. Locke, I think we have a reason to continue our discussions further.  I would like you to meet with one of the leaders of our firm.  But he never travels to the Northeast.  At your convenience I’d like to set up a meeting with him at our corporate headquarters in Wyoming.”

Jim thought about this for a few moments.  All of this was so irregular that he was starting to feel like he was being set up for something illegal.  He began thinking of how he could back away from this without appearing to be afraid which, in point of fact, he was.  “Mr. Faber, I’ve just lost my job and I haven’t got the resources right now for airplane trips and mysterious job opportunities.  I’ve got to find a job right away.”

Milo smiled.  “Jim, I realize that this has been a very confusing “job interview.”  But we’re used to how unorthodox our organization appears from the outside so I’m also prepared to provide you with an incentive to entice you to give us a listen.  Here is ten thousand dollars in cash to give you the flexibility to consider talking to us.  All you’re committed to is meeting with us.  After you hear our story, you can walk away and continue your job search with enough money to get you through the next month.”

Jim looked at the bankroll with its crisp one-hundred-dollar bills strapped together.  He was beginning to think he had fallen asleep on the commuter train and would soon be awakened by the conductor and told to move along.  But after a minute or so he picked up the bundle and examined it.  He flipped through the bills and determined that they were all the same denomination.  They looked and felt real.

“Do you guys sell fentanyl?”  And that finally, forced Faber to smile.  “Mr. Locke, here’s my card.  Go home and think about all this.  Talk to your wife and see what she thinks.  If you don’t want to go forward just call me up and arrange to return the money.  Keep a thousand for your trouble.  That’s fair, isn’t it?  All I’m asking is for you to meet with my bosses and find out if we’ve got an opportunity that makes sense for you.  I think you can see we’re serious in our intentions.  Why not hear us out?”

Jim put the bankroll in the breast pocket of his jacket and told Faber he would call him the next day with his answer.  Then he got up from the table walked out of the restaurant and wandered aimlessly around midtown Manhattan for an hour before heading back to Penn Station to go home.  Every few minutes as he pondered what had happened, he found himself saying out loud, “Judy is not gonna like this.”

A week later Jim Locke found himself on a jet headed to Boseman MT.  Once there he was met by a large odd-looking SUV-like truck driven by a non-descript man in sunglasses and a polo shirt.  Not being directed where to sit he took the front passenger seat and prepared for the long ride to the corporate headquarters in Wyoming.  Having never been to the Mountain West Jim was impressed by the view of mountains, prairie and especially by some cattle crossing the road.  So, he engaged the driver whose name was Paul in some discussion about the countryside.  “Yeah, after a while you forget that it’s pretty amazing scenery hereabouts.  You just get used to the view and it just becomes the background to your life.  But every once in a while, you realize just how beautiful it is.”

“Have you lived in this area long?”  “Oh, ever since I came home from Iraq.  So quite a while.”  “Do you work for the company that I’m visiting?”  “Yeah, I’ve been with them for a good long while.”  “What are they like?”  “Well, I hear the guy in charge is a little screwy, but all the people I deal with are pretty decent types.”

After this there was silence for about a half hour.  Then Paul asked Jim, “So what do you do?”  “Well, by training I’m an engineer but what I do mostly is run projects for assembling complicated and expensive machines.  I build a team and then they build the machine.  Then I take the credit (or blame) for the result.”  “Sounds like a very interesting job.”  “Well, that depends on a lot of particulars.”  “Like what?”  “Well, can you find and pay for the right talent for all the disciplines?  Is the budget honest or did they buy the job?  Is the client smart or stupid?”  “You mean if the client is too smart the project will lose money?”  “No.  If the client is too stupid, he won’t believe you when you show him realistic constraints.  How many times have I been confronted with a client who demanded dry water?”  “Oh, I think I see your point.”

After another lull in the conversation Paul asked, “So where are you from?”  “Well, originally I’m from Brooklyn but I live on Long Island now.”  “Would you really move to a place like this?  We don’t have a lot of restaurants and clubs here.  Wouldn’t you be bored?”  “I don’t know.  We spend most of our free time at kids’ soccer games and movies with yellow animated characters.  Do you have those things around here?”  “Yeah, I guess so.  I don’t have any kids so I’m just going by what I’ve seen but yeah, folks around here have lots of kids’ sports teams and sure there are movie theaters though a few of them have gone broke.”

Afterwards, Jim excused himself saying he needed to get in a nap before they arrived.  He woke up as Paul shook him to announce they had arrived at the headquarters.  It was an old storefront converted into an office building.  At the receptionist’s desk he was asked to wait until his hosts came to get him.  When they arrived, there were six men, ages thirty to fifty something.  They brought him into a room filled with computer displays and started peppering him with questions about his previous work and asking him hypothetical questions about how he would approach some projects that seemed to require technologies that as far as he knew did not exist.  He found himself getting excited about the prospect of incorporating these impossible innovations into some of his best designs for industrial equipment.

And his enthusiasm sparked a synergistic energy from his hosts.  A couple of hours in they broke for a meal but it was plain to see that Jim fit in well with these men.  At the lunch, which consisted of ham or turkey sandwiches and decent coffee, Jim tried to pick the minds of his hosts about the company.  Their answers were a mixture of enthusiastic boosterism and a complete lack of details.  They insisted that the company would be a fantastic fit for Jim but they assured him that the details about the contract he would sign had to wait until he met the boss, Mr. Connors.  Apparently, in some senses this was a one-man band.  After they finished lunch, they went back to finish up discussions of some preliminary aspects of the project he would hopefully become involved in.  A half hour in a young man in a suit with a clip board walked in and announced that it was time for the interview with Mr. Connors.  Jim shook hands with the men he had so easily bonded with and ruefully headed off to what was for him, the least favorite aspect of any interview, meeting the head honcho.

He was led down a few corridors to an area of the building that looked more like a corporate office than the rest of the building with polished hardwood paneling and gleaming metal trim.  The kid with the clip board swiped his keycard through the electronic door mechanism and after the chime announced its acceptance Jim was told to let himself in.  Walking through the imposingly tall and broad doors he walked toward the large desk and halfway there he recognized the man behind the desk by his sunglasses and polo shirt.  It was his chauffer, Paul.  Paul saw him enter and jumped up to meet him on his way to the desk and said, “Hey Jim, good to see you again.  I’m Paul Connors.”

The Safety Dance – Part 1

Jim Locke was on the 10:30 commuter train headed into Manhattan.  Of course, at that hour it was a local and stopping at every empty platform on the line.  Which suited Jim to a tee.  He was trying to make up his mind whether he should apologize for even setting up this meeting or hear them out.  Last night when he broke the bad news to Judy, she had looked truly scared.  And when he told her about the possible job offer in Missouri she had cried.  It was all happening too fast for her.  Too many things changing at once.  Of course, nothing had been mentioned to the kids but somehow, they seemed nervous, as if they sensed something was wrong.  Or was it his imagination?

By the time they rolled into Penn Station he had made up his mind.  He would listen to the spiel and then “decide” that the job wasn’t for him.  Maybe if he could impress the hiring manager that he was a strong candidate they might remember him for another opening closer to home.  Entering the office building lobby, he found the elevator bank for his floor and headed up to the fortieth floor.

When he got off, he was in a reception area and he announced himself and asked for Dave.  Five minutes later he saw his two hosts walking toward him.  “Jim, how the hell are you?  You look like you haven’t aged a day.  In fact, I think that’s the same suit you were wearing the last time I saw you five years ago.  This is Milo Faber.  He’s the hiring manager for that job I mentioned.  Milo, this is Jim Locke, the guy I told you about who called me out of nowhere yesterday.”  Jim and Milo shook hands and waited for Dave to subside before exchanging a few words of greeting.  “Well, Mr. Locke why don’t we head out for lunch.  I know Dave only has an hour before a meeting but I have a good long opening in my schedule and I’d like to talk with you a good bit about the position I’m looking to fill.  If you’re hungry there’s a very good new restaurant that’s opened up on Park Avenue that everyone says is pretty great.”  Jim was actually pretty hungry because he had missed breakfast while trying to calm his wife’s nerves that morning.  All he’d had was coffee.

During lunch Dave did most of the talking, filling up the silence with somewhat embarrassing stories from his time working with Jim.  In fact, Jim was beginning to think that Dave was somehow intent on sabotaging his chances with Milo.  But there was nothing he could do to end the babbling short of physical violence so he concentrated on the very good plate of food in front of him and chalked up the whole interview as a mistake.  Eventually the lunch hour expired and Dave excused himself to head off to his meeting and told Jim he’d talk to him later and then left.

Milo waited a few minutes while they finished their entrees, then asked if Jim wanted dessert or coffee.  “Milo I’m stuffed but I’ll take a coffee.  He signaled the waiter and gave him their orders and then looked at Jim carefully and said, “Were you and Dave close friends?”  The question caught Jim off balance but he decided for some reason to answer it candidly.  “No, we were casually friendly but Dave and I have somewhat different personalities.  I was somewhat surprised when he recommended me for this interview.”

Milo continued to peer into Jim’s face and said, “So were we.  Dave’s responsibilities with the company are decidedly unrelated to the kind of work involved in the position we have in Missouri.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t understand the scope of work involved.  And that’s mostly because he isn’t the right fit for that kind of work.  So, if your temperament aligns with Dave’s, the job we’re discussing probably wouldn’t be for you either.”

Now Jim was becoming both confused and intrigued.  This was the strangest interview he’d ever sat for.  What was next?  A scavenger hunt?

“Well Milo, I haven’t a clue as to what kind of job we’re discussing but you’ve got my attention anyway.  What would you like to know?”

During the interval, their coffees had arrived.  Milo took a sip from his coffee and sat back and shifted his gaze back at his guest and asked, “What do you want out of life?  What is most important to you?”

“Alright,” said Jim, “I’ll play along.  First of all, I’ll tell you that “the good of the company” is not my highest priority.  So, if that’s what you want to hear then it’s game over.  My highest priority is keeping my little family in groceries and school tuitions.  My wife and kids are the reason I work.  So, moving them down to Springfield Missouri would require it to be the best environment I can afford to give them which seems kind of unlikely to me.

Faber nodded slightly and displayed the faintest hint of a smile.  “Do you have family connections that would preclude relocating permanently away from the Northeast?”  Jim shook his head.  “No, neither my wife nor I have any close family left.  Our ties to New York are at this point just our personal history.  We’ve been thinking of moving out of the metropolitan area for some time but I haven’t found the right job and location to make it worthwhile yet.”

Faber pushed his coffee away and leaned slightly across the table toward Jim and speaking in a low voice asked, “What do you think is the biggest threat to you family’s long-term well-being?”  Locke tilted his head to one side, opened his mouth slightly and blinked, “Mr. Faber you ask the strangest questions I’ve ever heard from an interviewer.  You sure you’re not recruiting for the CIA?”

Milo looked down at the table and said, “Of that I’m very sure.  But it’s an interesting analogy.  Let’s say secrecy is involved.  But humor me.  What’s the biggest threat to your family’s long-term well-being?”  Jim thought about it for a few seconds and said, “Our own government.”