“In my office at 2,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “You too, Richard,” he nodded at her colleague who’d just stopped by her desk. “We need to discuss the Lenox deal.” He turned to leave, and then pausing without looking back added, “Bring up the numbers when you come.”
She’d known her boss was heading for her the moment he stepped off the elevator. Moving relentlessly across the banking floor, breaching and sounding like a killer whale herding the pod, he moved from desk to desk; his version of Management by Walking Around. He didn’t know a pod’s leader is always female.
“Sorry,” she said to her boss’s turned shoulder. He froze.
“Excuse me?” he asked, without looking back at her.
“I have a client coming in at 1:45. I don’t think I can get to your office by 2.”
“Be there,” he said, and moved off like a battleship on course. She stared at his retreating back, torn between reacting to her rage and the need to tolerate his rudness.
Richard leered at her, pushing wide-rimmed black glasses up off the bridge of his nose. “Right!” he called out. Pointed and thin, wearing a white shirt, dark tie and dark grey suit, his shiny black hair and haphazard teeth suggested a hammerhead shark stalking prey.
“Good,” Richard said, sliding out of his seat and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. She couldn’t help thinking if he had less beak and more nose it would be easier to hold them in place. Not nice. She was beginning to think the way everyone else did on the banking floor. Cruelty was catching.
“The numbers will tell the story,” the shark chortled. “There’ll be a bonus in this for me,” he said, brushing his sleek grey suit while contemplating his attack.
“The numbers will tell a story- whatever story they want told,” she said. “Numbers can be manipulated, as you well know,” she added with a sigh. “It’s about the people behind the deal, not the numbers.” Richard looked down his long, pointed nose at her through his black glasses. She knew he was thinking she’d sink her own ship with that argument. He always knew the right answer. He’d gone to Harvard Business School, after all. She hadn’t.
“Finance is a social science,” she said. “My finance professor used to say if you don’t care about the people you shouldn’t be in the business.” Obviously he wasn’t a Harvard professor. Richard sniffed the air and moved off without saying goodbye. He probably wanted to avoid contamination.
Noticing she still had a half hour before her client arrived, she picked up the phone to call her son’s former Headmaster. She could skip lunch. The boy who wins his secondary school’s English prize at graduation doesn’t suddenly acquire a need for remedial tutoring in English over the summer. He’d tested badly entering boarding school. She’d known there must be more to the story than the numbers on the test. A fever of 102, corroborated by the school nurse, and a test given in an overcrowded, overheated room had combined to produce an impossible challenge; but how to deal with the new administrators who ruled by tests alone?
“Let me handle it,” his old Headmaster said on the other end of the line.
“Won’t they expect his mother to call?” she asked.
“Sure, because they know you’ll be intimidated by the numbers. You have so much to lose. I have nothing to secure but the future of education. You’ll remember I wrote an article for the NY Times recently on the evils of testing. They love to quantify everything because it’s easier. I’m a math teacher as well as Head of School. My motives won’t be as suspect as yours.” She gratefully accepted, although he hadn’t been to Harvard either.
Ten years later, when she’d left the banking profession far behind and settled in a service business that knew what serving was, she ran into her former boss’ secretary on the street. Happy to see her old friend, she was surprised how far she’d left her anger about the bank behind.
“What’s new, Gracie?” she asked.
“Oh, not much; except all the people. I’m about the only one from your time still there.”
“Richard’s gone? I thought he’d be Bank President by now!”
“He was fired years ago. Some real estate deal went bad, and he and your boss both got sacked. I think it was Lenox Partners. The principals were all crooks and the bank lost lots of money.” She was amazed by how sad she felt for her former tormentors. They had families and egos needing constant nourishment. Wherever they were now, it wasn’t a good place to be.
“I’m sorry,” she said; “truly sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Gracie snapped. “If it hadn’t been that one, it would have been another. They were always about nothing but numbers.”
“I know. It’s still like that for so many,” she said to her old friend sadly. “You’d think people would have learned by now. It’s not the ‘how much’, it’s the ‘how’ that matters.”
Gracie nodded. “Quality not quantity; they don’t teach that in the fancy schools, do they.”
“Because it’s too hard,” she agreed. “Some things can’t be quantified; like human nature.” They shared a long hug and wished each other well.
By Sidney S. Stark