Chapter Thirty-Five
Now You’re Messin’ With A Son of a Bitch
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished. The same goes for no idiotic deed or deeds, at least in the mind of The Shareholder.
The snow was swirling outside as Chuck reconvened The Circle for a meeting with the Grand Poobah himself. It was a momentous event in the annuals of Woodland Enterprises. We had never had direct interaction with The Shareholder before. All communications went through Chuck. In fact, some had speculated that there wasn’t really a mysterious Shareholder. They thought that Chuck might be The Shareholder. Others figured The Shareholder was a high rolling California real estate tycoon. My best guess was that he was a New York business mogul with possible Mob connections. Chuck liked to quietly promote my theory. If the threat of losing one’s job didn’t deter research into The Shareholder’s identity, the implied threat of possibly losing one’s life certainly did. None of this speculation turned out to be one hundred percent accurate.
Everyone was pretty stoked about our impending cozy fireside chat. Well, maybe not so cozy in that we were in the conference room and The Shareholder was a voice on the speakerphone. And maybe not so fireside, although the fire part was appropriate since the chat was more like a roasting of our asses.
“Thank you for attending. I know this is the first time I have had an actual conversation with any of you, except Charles. Maybe I should have done this sooner. But I never had a question quite as important as the one I want to ask now. And I thought it would be best if I put it to all of you.”
Well, I guess that debunked the theory of Chuck being The Shareholder, unless he was a master ventriloquist, which I sincerely doubted. I glanced around the room. It seemed everyone was feeling a slight sense of honor that we were all being included.
“My question is this; what the fuck is wrong with you bunch of dickheads? It wasn’t that long ago that I was patting myself on the back for putting such a talented team in place to run Woodland. Y’all were making me very proud and very rich. Then I send my wife’s favorite nephew down there for a bit of seasoning and training. I know he was a weird fucker, but I thought he was a pretty harmless financial weenie. Shit. You let him blow the damn plant up.”
So much for our slight sense of honor. It might have been my imagination, but I think the temperature in the room dropped about ten degrees. I do know that my nads felt like they were starting to suck up into my body.
“Well…”
“Shut the fuck up and listen, Charles.”
Now I knew where Chuck got his kind and caring managerial style from.
“Then I tell you to go out and find a quality MBA to guide the financial side of the rebuild. And you did a great job with that! The dude rips us for over three quarter mil. What are you going to do next? Hire Butch Cassidy to run the cafeteria?”
No one laughed. No one even breathed. That was a good thing. I briefly considered a crack about the missing silverware at the culinary schools he and Sundance attended, but thought better of it. Another good thing.
“I have half a mind to come down there myself and make sure you’re not wiping your runny asses with my investment dollars.”
Did this guy know Doris? Maybe this was Doris with a disguised voice?
“To say that I have lost confidence in your collective leadership abilities would be like saying the White Star Line lost confidence in the Titanic captain’s navigation skills.”
So The Shareholder was an old fart.
“I have other interests I need to watch out for. I don’t have time to come babysit you. But, it appears that I can’t leave you alone without some adult oversight.”
Everyone’s a comedian these days.
“As each of you is well aware, or, by God, better be well aware, the thing that makes Woodland valuable and keeps me pumping money to you dipshits is X-400. Woodland is still the only place that can make it. And why is that?”
“Well, it’s because…”
“Who the hell is that? Did I ask someone to stink up the air? If I wanted to hear a fart, I’d squeeze one out myself.”
Phil Kitter’s dentures rattled as he clamped his mouth shut, turned red and sunk into his chair.
“Where was I?”
Understandably, no one answered.
“Yeah, X-400. No one else can make it because no one else knows how. And God knows there have been more than a few of our competitors that have tried over the years. Bastards! But no one can get it quite right except us. And as we proved, getting it slightly wrong can mean blowing things sky high, literally. Jesus. Now I know you have all managed to keep the formulation secret for all this time. Since you seem to have been hit hard with the stupid stick recently, I’m beginning to worry if that will continue.”
Sure it would. Even The Shareholder didn’t know how we maintained the secrecy of our formulation, unless Elwood told him.
“Even I don’t know how you keep it secret.”
Is there an echo in here?
“But, as Jehovah is my witness, it better stay secret or this ass kicking will seem like a tender dick massage compared to what would happen if it got out.”
Probably a good thing that our Circle was still all male.
“So, here’s what I’m going to do. In a few months, I am sending Dusty Koepke down. Dusty is my most trusted assistant. I will ask Dusty to review your operations and see if y’all can still find your ass with both hands. Dusty will review the security around the X-400 formula and take a look at your overall internal controls. Dusty will return back when a proper feeling of comfort is achieved. Each of you will also be evaluated. If in Dusty’s opinion, any of you are not giving one hundred and ten percent one hundred and fifty percent of the time, you might find yourself in a one on one performance discussion with me. And it won’t end well.”
Must be the new math.
“I know I speak clearly so there is no need for questions. Dusty is very capable. Trained by me and a top graduate of a highly respected…”
My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I think there was a faint drum roll at this point.
“MBA program.”
Shit.
A
MBA - Moron$ Ba$ and A$$ Page 36
