Page 4 of Catch a Kiwi
I could have explained that, too, but there was no point. I stood up and held out my hand. “Thanks for your hard work.”
“That’s it?” he asked, not taking my hand. The pale-blue eyes were fixed on me, his sandy hair seeming to bristle. “You’re sacking me? Just like that? It’s been more than four years! I’ve helped you?—”
“No,” I said. “I’m sacking you after a conversation aboutspecific ways I needed you to improve your performance, and your failure to improve it. Take your learnings from it, is my advice. Esther will brief you on the details.” No point hanging about to have a yarn about it, so I walked out.
“You’re a cold bastard.” Ah. Not over after all. I turned in the aisle of the open-plan office to see Jordan in the conference-room doorway. Now, he stepped out and advanced a couple of paces. “You come in like God Almighty,” he said, his voice rising, “pronouncing judgment like you’ve never had a weak moment yourself. Never made a mistake. You got lucky and got rich, and now you think you’re the last bloody word on everything.”
I could have said,Iamthe last bloody word on everything, because I’m the boss. That’s how the world works.I didn’t, because, again—no point.
“Are you done?” I asked. Everybody in the room was staring, but what would you expect. This was high drama, and they weren’t the ones getting sacked.
“No,” Jordan said. “Just because you can’t keep a wife and you don’t have enough blood in your veins or—or love in your heart to care for a family, you don’t think anybody else should have one, either. You think we should all live for this job. Live for you, more like. Live to line your pockets. You’re a cold, heartless prick who deserves every lonely night that comes your way, and you’re going to have heaps of them. All those cars and houses—what good are they then? What good are you?”
“You could have a point.” One of my favorite expressions. I didn’t add,But you don’t.“You can leave now, or Security will escort you out.” I nodded at Esther, who was already thumbing her phone, left them there, and headed to my office, ignoring the half-scared, half-curious, possibly-resentful looks cast my way.
Should I be concerned about any of that? No, I decidednow as I slowed for the outskirts of Balclutha and the turn off the motorway onto the Owaka Highway. Nobody liked to see a co-worker get the sack, however well deserved. Made them jumpy. Not an entirely bad thing. Anyway, it was done, and by all I’d learned over nineteen years in business, my judgment had been sound.
Let go, or be dragged.Very useful concept. I refocused on the road. It was trickier driving along here, especially since the rain had steadily worsened during the drive south. More of a deluge, now, and the wind was whipping the trees. A family in their rain gear stacking sandbags against their garage and a flock of sheep on a green hillside, still grazing at the sodden grass in the stoical way sheep did. Masters of accepting the situation as it was, sheep.
I slowed over the Catlins River Bridge, then sped up again until I reached the shingle road. No traffic along here, not today, because nobody was fool enough to drive out for a lovely walk on the beach in this storm. It hadn’t gone seven yet, and the sun wouldn’t set until nine, but it was dim enough. Sheets of water poured down the roadway, but I wasn’t driving through any standing water. The road was too hilly for that, I hoped. I had a stack of sandbags in the garage. Enough? We’d see.
My thoughts drifted back to the scene with Jordan, and what had happened after it, in my office.
I’d shut the door behind me, thinking over what I’d just done, and?—
Oh. Right. Dane.
I’d walked over to my desk, set beside floor-to-ceiling windows that normally looked out over Dunedin Harbour and the Otago Peninsula, but at the moment looked out at rain, and said, “You’re my new Director of Operations, if you want the job.”
Dane blinked his brown eyes. “Jordan get the sack, then?”
“He did. Does that scare you?”
Dane didn’t answer straight away. He considered. That was why I liked engineers better than MBAs. You couldn’t rush a good engineer, and you couldn’t sway one, either, not if he was sure he had the technical details right. “I want it,” he finally said. “Course I want it. Does the job scare me, you mean? Probably. I’d give it heaps, no worries, but it’s only fair to say that I’ve got no business diploma and I wasn’t planning to get one, so you should decide how much that matters before I get in over my head. You may do better if you advertise, interview some others. There’s Roger Wandless over at Pulse Energy. He’s?—”
“Do you really think he’s better than you?” I asked.
“No,” Dane said, and grinned. “I could just be a cocky bastard, though. I’m barely thirty. Just saying.”
“I was barely twenty when I started the first thing.”
“Bargains-dot-EnZed.”
“That was it. As for Zephyr, we’ve both been doing this a wee while now.”
“Yeh,” Dane said, “but you’re Roman D’Angelo, certified business genius.”
“Nah, mate,” I said. “I’m not. I do my research, I educate myself, I back my judgment, and I succeed more often than I fail. So far. When I fail, I ask myself why, I keep asking until I’m sure I know, and I refuse to close my eyes to the truth. That’s about the sum of it.”
“Fair point,” Dane said with another barely subdued grin. “You did hire Jordan, so …”
I smiled myself. “I did. And now I’m hiring you. What do you say?”
“What the hell,” Dane said. “What’s the worst that can happen? I flame out in disgrace and embarrass my whanau. But I’ll back myself. When do I start?”
Esther camein ten minutes later.
“Jordan gone?” I asked, swiveling away from the computer.
