“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love” – E.A. Bucchianeri
Lynda called in the middle of the week to let us know that mom’s back at home and she was recouping. She told me when she would be arriving back in Fredericton on Sunday.
I did my best to look after the kids all the time when Lynda was away. I came home in the afternoons even though there were a million things in the office to be taken care of. When the kids went to bed, I worked on plans to organize my area of responsibilities in a meaningful way and attempted to match with the existing skills sets. If I wasn’t happy with the present individual existing skills, I started thinking about bridging the gap by providing them with the training they needed. It could turn out to be a win-win situation. I have to admit that sometimes I was getting carried away with my thoughts but I knew for sure that Gord would never ignore my recommendations without giving them some thought. I knew that having an understanding boss was a virtue.
Lynda arrived on Sunday as scheduled and I took the kids to pick her up. She had bought some things for the kids and she wanted to give them as soon as we got home. It was almost 11:30 AM when I dropped them off at home and helped her with her luggage and before I left I told her that I had ordered and paid for a couple of vegetarian pizzas from Jim’s restaurant for delivery around 12:00 PM. I said unfortunately I had something to take care of at the office and Lynda turned around, looked directly in my eyes and said “Are you sure you aren’t rushing to the pub?” I didn’t think that comment deserved any response from me and in a way I was totally disappointed with it. I was just walking out the door when she shouted that I need the car tomorrow as I have a couple of things to take care of including the sorority meeting in the evening. I said no problem; I will walk to work tomorrow and will be back before you leave for the meeting.
Next day on Monday it was a nice day to walk to work as my new office was much closer to where we lived. It was a busy morning in the office for me as I was still meeting with the people who were supposed to work for me. I was attempting to maintain a low profile but it appeared to me that the general perception about me was that Gord Scott had a reason to “plant” me there and they were very suspicious.
I was just finishing the meeting around 11:30 AM when my secretary walked in and said there’s somebody on the phone who’s insisting to talk to you. I said thanks, I will take the call. As soon as I answered the phone saying, how can I help you? He said can we talk? I said of course let me close the door. He said my name is Frank Mohair. I represent the Department of Social Services and my office is located not too far from your new office. I am so sorry for such short notice but can you make it for a meeting around 1:30 PM this afternoon? I said aren’t you going to give me any idea what it is about. He said I have met with your wife three times already and heard everything she said about you. The bottom line is that she’s totally fed-up with your behaviour and she wants out. I said I just cannot believe that. He said can I expect you to be here then. I said do I have a choice? He said unfortunately NO. I asked if I needed a lawyer. He said not at this stage. I got the address and said I will be there.
It was absolutely mindboggling for me. I never ever imagined it could happen to me but the reality was that I was running out of choices. I didn’t know where I went wrong and why. I was totally devastated just thinking about my son. I never thought that criticizing Maxine for her behaviour could get me into this deep trouble. I don’t remember how I managed to pass the time but showed up at 1:25 PM for the meeting. The secretary took me into a conference room where I met Frank and saw Lynda who was sitting there staring into the space. I said I hope I am not late for the meeting. Franks said we will get it going right away. He said before we start the meeting, I need to explain to you the legality of this meeting. He said if you don’t reach any settlement with your wife, I have legal power to get a court order to garnish your wages as I have already done my homework and know where you work. I said I have no problem with that. He said basically she wants:
- You out of the house;
- You to continue to pay the mortgage and property taxes every month;
- You to be responsible for the maintenance of the house;
- You to leave the car for the family use with the responsibility of insurance and maintenance; and
- You to pay child support for Adam as well as Maxine as she was released from the foster home system under your custody.
Frank said depending upon temporary or permanent separation, spousal support payments may need to be determined and paid.
He asked Lynda to explain her case. She started saying:
- You have changed since we came to Fredericton. You never used to drink but now every single night you come home drunk (Not true. I never ever drank enough to be drunk. Most of the nights I didn’t even go to the pub. I was working late in the office and the only reason I was staying out until Adam went to bed as I didn’t want him to see us fighting or arguing in front of him);
- You are totally dedicated to your job and nothing else is important to you any more;
- You never seem to have time to give me a hand with anything. We have only one car which you use exclusively and I cannot do anything about that; and
- You never stop complaining about Maxine and her behaviour forgetting the fact that she’s only 15 years old.
Frank said please tell him the main reasons.
She said there were two things that made me go this way:
- I understand that you brought your girlfriend, Jean, in the house on the day I left for Toronto; and
- Maxine said that you touched her inappropriately more than once.
I said anything else, Frank. He said no but now you get to ask questions to defend yourself. I said unfortunately I don’t have too much time as I have a meeting scheduled at 3:00 PM and I need to ask you a favour, Frank. As you have access to my salary and benefits, please give me an idea how much it would cost me to cover everything you discussed on a monthly basis. That would be a great help as I am planning to go back to Chicago. If I cannot see my son every day, it’s not worth living in Canada for me. I know when I am in Chicago you will have no jurisdiction to garnish my wages. In fact you don’t have to worry about that. I am planning to give three months installments to start with in advance before I leave and then I will continue to send the money every month without fail. Not to mention that she will have the car to herself. Maybe I will also consider transferring the ownership of the house totally into her name.
Frank said, please stop it. I never had to deal with a situation like this before. You don’t even want to discuss the visiting rights for your son. I said I will not be here to discuss weekly visits, Frank. Maybe sometimes he can come and see me in Chicago.
Frank said how come you are not disagreeing with all those charges against you, Mir. I said how is that going to help me, Frank. She made up her mind based on childish and meaningless information and I thought she was smarter than that. Nevertheless, I am confident that she will do a better job of looking after Adam and he needs his mother more than me. I will make sure that she’s financially supported. The rest is history.
Frank asked Lynda if she had any comments on what I had just proposed. She said I don’t know what to say anymore. I never thought he was capable of cheating on me and now I know that he has a girlfriend. I am totally mixed up.
Frank said can I make a recommendation? Why don’t we take some time to digest the whole thing and come back to rehash and decide what needed to be done. To be totally honest with both of you, he said, I never had the situation like this in my career.
What do you think, Mir. I said to be perfectly honest with you Frank I am not sure if I can continue to live with someone who doesn’t trust me. Besides it’s not up to me. This is her initiative and I am just going along with it. I hope she knows what she’s doing and consequently, she will be happy with her decision.
Lynda finally spoke and said it makes sense, Frank. Let’s take some time off to think it over.
Frank said how about getting together next Monday at the same time and the same place. I said sounds good to me.
Lynda turned around and asked me if I was going to be home around 6:00 PM as she got to leave around 6:30 PM for her sorority meeting. I said of course and left the conference room.
When I got back to the office, I only had 5 minutes left before the meeting. My secretary, Karen, just came in with a briefcase and said Jean was here and she apologized. The briefcase was supposed to be delivered last Monday but she had to reorder it.
I said no problem and grabbed a cup of coffee and entered the meeting room which was located only a couple of doors from my office. I looked around and was glad that everybody I wanted was there.
I said as you know I have been in this office only for a week and during this week I spoke briefly to all of you, one by one, and learned a great deal about what’s going on here. I want you to know that I appreciate each of you for doing your job so comprehensibly. They all cheered.
I said I don’t know if everybody understood the purpose of this meeting. They all said yes.
I said what else I don’t know is about the expectations for the meeting. There’s always a possibility that I may not tell you anything that you don’t already know. In any case, I would like to get a couple of things out of our way before we dig into the topic of the meeting:
- I don’t like lengthy and tedious meetings without a specific focus. I believe that all our meetings should be intended to improve the communication and collaboration, with the goal being to resolve issues affecting productivity; and
- What else I don’t like is the lack of participation in the meetings. According to the available statistics on the subject:
- 91 percent employees day dream during meetings; and
- 39 percent actually fall asleep.
Therefore, I do my best to conduct and finish this meeting as outlined.
I asked if anybody had any questions before I proceeded. Nobody responded which gave me reason to believe they want me to go ahead.
I would like to talk about the Job Tracking Mechanism that we have in place and it appears to be working for now. However, I would like to explore the possibilities of improving its utility to maximize the overall productivity.
Let me see if I understand correctly. There are four components:
- Planning: We try to plan each job on a timely and judicious basis;
- Scheduling: We appraise the availability of resources including the computer capacity and manpower to schedule a job;
- Monitoring: We monitor each job to make sure that all scheduled jobs are executed successfully on time otherwise we produce an exception report for each job to reflect the problem; and
- Reporting: Based on the exception report, we take necessary corrective action and make sure that the job’s done correctly.
I asked Anita, one of my supervisors, how did I do? She said everything you said reflects our current practices.
Any other comments, I asked and nobody else said anything.
I said the critical success factor to this mechanism, in my humble opinion, is to stay on track by taking necessary steps in order to correct the spotted deviation (problem). These steps need to be resolved on a timely basis. My understanding is this is not being done as part of our current practice in our environment.
Anita said, what do you mean. I believe that the time elapse from the problem reported and the problem resolved is too long and it’s not acceptable to me. It’s taking too long to rectify the problem. The bottom line is that our current discipline seems to be working just fine if there aren’t any problems but that’s not good enough for us.
Anita said I never thought like that before.
I said just listen to me, please. I am not looking for solutions in this short meeting. All I wanted to do is to share the observations that I have made in such a short period of time. The other thing that I wanted to bring to your attention just as food for thought is that we are missing a critical component of this discipline which’ is “ANTICIPATION”.
Anita said you need to explain it as I don’t understand.
I said if we are interested in improving the overall productivity of our operations at all, we cannot just sit back and wait for our clients to come to us with a request to run some jobs. We need to learn how to anticipate their requirements based on their track records and be prepared to deal with those jobs as efficiently as possible. We have no choice but to work more closely with our clients to do benchmarking. Benchmarking will also help us to identify areas, systems or processes for improvement. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how important or smart I think I am. I cannot come up single handedly with creative and workable solutions or approaches to bridge the performance gap without your help. Believe me we have much more brain power in this room right now to overcome those difficulties. It may take several brainstorming sessions to agree on something but it’s imperative that we get it done.
I asked Anita if it makes any sense to her?
She said to be totally honest with you, it’s an entirely new language to me. It sounds reasonable, not to mention logical but nobody spoke to us like this before. We were always treated just like dumb provincial folks.
David raised his hand to say something and I signaled him to go ahead. He said Anita and I don’t always agree on anything. Mostly we agree to disagree but this time I need to say that I totally and wholeheartedly agree with her. To be truthful with you I didn’t know what to expect when you called this meeting. As you know that there are all kind of stories about you out there. Nevertheless, I am absolutely impressed and I want to work with you for any changes you feel necessary to improve our professional image.
WOW! I said. I am absolutely humbled and I feel like I got more than I bargained for. I don’t know what to say about how everything went here previous to my arrival but I will guarantee you all in this room that I will never implement any change without your agreement. I need you all more than you need me but if we really care about improving what we do for a living and how we do it, we need each other desperately. If everybody agrees, let’s meet again next week only for 45 minutes to continue our discussions.
Another thing, please feel free to pop in my office anytime if you have any comments or ideas that you would like to discuss.
I grabbed another cup of coffee before I got back to my office. I closed the door and sat down. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was upset with myself that I may have given those folks in the meeting some hope for change without knowing whether I would be around after a week.
