“No matter how prepared you think you are for death of loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.” — Billy Graham
Lynda and Adam were away for a couple of weeks and I was getting home around 4:00 PM just to make sure that I was there when Maxine got home. Lynda had left cooked meals in the fridge for us that lasted a couple of days then we started eating out almost every day. We also ordered pizza on the weekend, not to mention the fact that I tried to cook something which turned out to be a bad idea.
Lynda and Adam were having a fabulous time in London. If I remember correctly, Lynda’s uncle Eddie Levy was trained to be a cook in Paris, France, when he was a young lad and he used to be a chef at Harrods before he retired. Harrods was known as the world’s leading luxury department store in London. While Harrods was known for its Food Halls, Harrods had been a food pioneer since 1834. I also remember that Eddie used to cook for the Queen, too. In any case, Lynda was telling me on the phone that one day Uncle Eddie was kind enough to put his chef’s uniform on to cook and serve spaghetti to Adam. Adam always loved spaghetti.
Lynda called me on Friday night just to remind me that they would be landing at the Toronto Airport on Saturday around 6:30 PM. Next day Maxine and I were at the airport around 6:00 PM waiting for them with bells on. Luckily the Lufthansa Airline flight wasn’t late that day and when they came out after going through the immigration and luggage inspections, Adam ran towards me and Maxine ran towards her mother to hug. I hugged, kissed Lynda as soon as I got a chance and said welcome back stranger. She said we had a nice time but it’s nice to be back.
Adam was totally excited and never stopped telling us what they did in London and poor Maxine had nothing exciting to share with them as we didn’t do anything exhilarating while they were gone. I asked them if they were hungry and was surprised to hear that they already had a nice afternoon tea and supper on the plane as they were 5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. Lynda also said that they were very impressed with the airline as the service was excellent. Typically, in-flight meals were served on trays but Lufthansa opted to serve meals with glassware, tablecloths, and metal cutlery.
Right after we got home, Lynda opened her suitcase and started giving things to me and Maxine. She bought me nice underwear and a beautiful blue velvet jacket from Marks and Spencer. I was surprised to see that she managed to buy me a size 39 which was my right size but it was hard to find that size here in Canada. They both were tired as it was almost 1:00 AM in London when we managed to go to bed.
The next day was Sunday. We had a nice late breakfast cooked by our beloved Lynda and I told her I missed her cooking. She asked me if everything is fine at work. I said seems to be okay. She said probably we should go to our townhome and check it out if everything is fine there. I said let’s do it. So we decided to leave the kids home for a little while and went to see our tenants.
When we knocked on the door the man came out. I said we thought we should come and check it out if you guys are settling down okay. He said everything seems to be just fine with us. Lynda said can we come in for a minute. He opened the door and let us in. As soon as we entered, we saw a bunch of African artifacts hanging on the walls in the living room. The nails they used were so huge and ugly. Then Lynda noticed a couple of bad spots on the beautiful living room carpet. I asked what the heck that is. He said my wife dropped beer accidently. Lynda spotted a hole on the corner of the beautiful drapes in the living room and he said that’s from her cigarette. There were several other damages and Lynda was going bananas as she loved that townhome. The problem was that those people never lived in North America before and they were living here the way they used to live in their country. I don’t suppose they knew any better. I said to him that we are completely disappointed with them and they will hear from our lawyer. He didn’t acknowledge the fact that they did something wrong.
We had to go through a painful process to kick them out from the townhome and clean the place before we rented it out. In the meanwhile we went ahead and submitted our case in Small Claim Court. We were disappointed again with the Canadian justice system when the judge asked me if I had pictures of the property before renting to them in order to compare and assess the magnitude of the damage done to your property. We had no experience of renting out properties to anticipate a requirement like that. We felt sorry for them that they just arrived in Canada and they were having difficulties to rent a place. The judge said I am sorry there’s nothing I can do and the case was dismissed.
Mrs. Benda was so busy organizing the company Christmas party that I hardly saw her in the office. They had a tradition in the company that she would invite everybody and his brother including all employees and their spouses, big shots from the department stores along with their spouses and anybody else she wanted to.
I was looking forward to the party as Lynda was curious to meet Mrs. Benda. I started sharing background information about the people she was going to meet just to give her an idea about what kind of people I put up with during the day. But I didn’t know any details about the party. When I asked Mrs. Benda she said you will love it. When Lynda and I got there, we found out that Mrs. Benda had rented a restaurant exclusively for our party. The beautiful Polish girls wearing Krakowski Traditional Polish Dancing Costumes were serving cocktails, loud Polish music was playing, and everybody was having a nice time.
As soon as Mrs. Benda saw us, she rushed to meet us and hugged Lynda and said I was dying to meet you. Lynda said I heard so much about you Mrs. Benda and I was looking forward to meeting you, too. She said was he complaining anything about me? Lynda said, no. She took us around to introduce us to other folks I never met before. As soon as Mrs. Benda turned around and started talking to other folks, Lynda said to me why didn’t you tell me that she looked like Zsa Zsa Gabor. I said, I just wanted to see your reaction.
The food was great. Mrs. Benda made sure that no pork was served to us. Following the nice dinner, there was an entertainment which included the Polish folk dance which was performed by those beautiful Polish girls. All in all it was a delightful evening.
I liked Mrs. Benda as a person. She was open and frank and never hesitated to share with me the dumb things she did unintentionally. She never pretended to be smarter than she really was.
I remember when she told me a story not too long ago about her first visit to New York City. She went to New York City for a cosmetics convention and stayed in a famous hotel where the convention was being held. When she was walking around in the hotel to check things out, she observed that every employee of the hotel she came across, stopped and said “Hey” to her respectfully. She was so impressed with their attitude until she found out the real reason. The real reason was when she checked in, she had so many suitcases with her that she needed 3 porters to assist her. Once the luggage was delivered, she thought she was tipping them with two ten-dollar bills each. In fact she tipped them $200 each. She had no clue about differentiating between Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. It took a little while for her to realize that all American currency had the same or similar pictures and they all look identical unless you check carefully the associated figure printed on them. Just to cut it short, in addition to those porters, she had also tipped some other hotel employees with a hundred dollar bill. Therefore, everybody in the hotel knew that either she was a queen of some small country or she was married to some filthy rich dude. In her defence, she was used to Canadian currency which had an entirely different picture for each denomination of the currency.
While everything appeared to be hunky-dory at Eletex, there was something constantly bothering me subconsciously. Lynda knew that I used to suffer from parasomnia or talking in my sleep. One night Lynda woke me up and said what’s going on. You started talking in your sleep again. I said I needed some water. She said let’s go in the living room, I will get you a glass of water. Once we sat down across from each other, I said I guess I am worried about my job. She said why? Only a couple of months back we went to the company Christmas party. Everybody appeared to be cheery and affable with you, especially Mrs. Benda. I said I know, I just cannot explain to you what’s bothering me. She said try me.
I told her that I was struggling at Eletex as I was still trying to understand the “Culture” of the company. I had never ever worked for a small company like Eletex where everything appeared to be transparent. As you know Mrs. Benda has a unique personality and she has been very good to me. Nevertheless, Mrs. Benda’s generosity was an overriding factor for anything she did during the course of a day. For instance:
- If she’s happy with one of the employees, she will pop in the warehouse and pick several pieces of cosmetics, put them in a bag and give it to that person;
- She constantly insisted that the marketing folks not go to see any buyer in any department store “Empty Handed”. They always took a bag of cosmetics with them;
- If anybody came to see Mrs. Benda for whatever reason, she would give him or her a little gift of cosmetics; and
- She would have a couple of bags of cosmetics in her car just for emergency purposes.
Lynda said, so what’s wrong with that. I said there are two things wrong with that:
- Even though she owns the company, she has no right to grab anything from the warehouse without going through a process to make sure that the quantity of each item in the warehouse reflected on the computer is not compromised. Let me give you an example. Say the computer says that there are 100 pieces of a certain type of lipsticks and when Mrs. Benda kept taking those lipsticks 5 at a time 10 times during a month, it meant that there were only 50 pieces of lipsticks in the warehouse even though the computer said 100 pieces; and
- When an order comes in from a department store, requiring 100 pieces of those lipsticks, computer thinks we have the right quantity available to ship but when a person goes to pick the items to ship, she or he finds out that there are 50 pieces missing. It creates all kind of problems for the company to deal with those differences and Mrs. Benda has no idea about how badly she is screwing up the inventory knowingly or unknowingly.
Lynda said I am assuming that she has been doing this for years. I said, yes. She screwed up the whole computer inventory. I know that she’s not a stupid person. Even if I go ahead and get the current inventory of the items available in the warehouse and update the system accordingly, the next time she goes and picks something from the warehouse, it will be screwed again. To me it’s embezzlement.
Lynda said what else’s bothering you?
I said you know that Mrs. Benda is an incredibly generous person. For instance, I remember when I took my first expense report to her; she looked at the total figure and said to me, what are you trying to do to me? I said I am sorry if I misunderstood you and took my family out a couple of times for supper and also the gas expenses but I am quite prepared to reduce it. She said don’t be silly, I am not talking about reducing it. She said the average monthly amount of expense accounts for all senior staff is close to $800 and your total amount is only $360. You are going to make us look bad, Mir. You know what I mean. I remember saying to her that no, I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Benda, and to be totally honest with you we don’t want to get used to eating out that frequently and spending that kind of money simply because we are not paying for it. I said, what bothers me the most is that if we got hooked on to eating out and all of a sudden I don’t have an expense account. She said stop it. I heard enough already. She said I got only two things to tell you: 1. Don’t get any ideas, you are not going anywhere; 2. Spend whatever you feel comfortable with and that will be acceptable to me.
Lynda said I am surprised that you never shared this conversation that you had with Mrs. Benda with me and I support you wholeheartedly. We don’t want to get used to driving fancy cars and eating out too frequently just in case.
Lynda said is there anything else bothering you?
I said the other problem is that Mrs. Benda keeps a secret notebook which is dedicated to keeping track of the information on all major clients, their respective wives, and children. For instance, she had their names, date of births, dates of their anniversaries, and any special occasions in their lives. Sandy, her secretary, spends every month a significant amount of time to send greeting cards, flowers, chocolates, and wines to those folks. It costs the company a bundle. My problem’s that even though I am not responsible for the financial activities in the company, it bothers me that how can Mrs. Benda afford to spend that kind of money. I am curious to know what kind of profit margins these cosmetic products offer. I don’t have access to any of the financial reports which are kept under lock all the time. Helen is always in Mrs. Benda’s office and they appear to be very close.
Lynda said what is the answer? I said either I will have to take a deep breath and tell “the Emperor has no clothes” or find another job.
