“Perhaps they are not the stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy” – Inuit Proverb
The next day I walked to the office as Lynda needed the car. If I remember correctly I had a busy morning dealing with all kinds of inconsistencies in the department. In the afternoon I had a telephone call from Frank the Social Services guy. Basically, he wanted to confirm the statements Lynda made on the phone. I said whatever needed to be said to endorse those statements which seemed to satisfy Frank. l also recall telling him that had he not insisted on our taking some time off to rethink, it would have been catastrophic. He appreciated that comment as a professional.
Things started getting routine as Maxine must have realized that not gruelling her about her mean and malicious scheme was itself a lesson for her to learn. But knowing Maxine it wasn’t going to last too long. In any case, we started getting together with the Scotts and Dorothy. Lynda continued to be involved with volunteer work under the umbrella of her sorority.
In the summer of 1981, there was an unfortunate auto accident in London, Ontario, when a friend of mine from Chicago was travelling to Toronto with his family to spend a week. His car was totally demolished by a truck. As a result, his wife was killed on the spot. He and his small kids were seriously injured. I took some time off to go there to look after them.
When I got back from Ontario on Monday, I was told that a couple of senior members of my team came to work on Friday but around 10:00 AM they left the office even though their jackets were still hanging on the racks in their office. Nobody knew what to do. What was worse that there was a technical problem in the afternoon where their expertise was needed. Nobody had a clue where to find them My secretary knew that I was out of town. Nevertheless, she called Lynda to find out if she knew a way to reach me in Ontario but Lynda had no idea either. Luckily, one junior guy in the department was smart enough to fix the problem and everything worked out okay.
As soon as I was briefed, I asked my secretary if both the missing folks were in yet. She said they just arrived. I asked her to give them a couple of minutes to settle down then tell them to come and see me.
When they arrived in my office I asked them if everything was fine with them. They said yes. Then I asked them how their weekend was. They said everything was just fine. I said please help me understand. You disappeared on Friday around 10:00 AM, leaving your jackets hanging in your office, giving the impression that you must be in some kind of long meeting. Nobody knew your whereabouts to get in touch when there was a production problem. They said they were sorry. I said what were they sorry about? Leaving the office without telling anybody or not being available to do your job when you were needed? Perhaps more importantly, are you sorry that you got caught? They said for those things. I said was there any family emergency? They said no. I finally asked if they had anything to say in their defence. They said no.
I called my secretary and asked her to get the security guard right away. She said I am on it and it only took a few minutes for somebody to be knocking on my office door. I said come in. I told security guard to take those two gentlemen to their office and let them pick up their personal stuff. Take their office keys away from both of them and make sure that they are out of the premises ASAP. I turned around and said to both of my senior guys that I will be willing to see you as soon as you find a union representative to represent you.
I went out and asked my secretary about my next meeting. She said they are already in the conference room waiting for you.
As soon as I came back from the meeting, my secretary said there was a telephone call from the office of the Deputy Minister, Supply and Services, who was Gord’s boss. She said he wanted to see you at 10:30 AM. I was totally confused. Why would he call me directly? If he wanted to see me for something, he should have asked Gord to arrange that meeting. I thought I am not going to fall for this. I called Gord and his secretary told me that he was with his boss. I asked her if was there any emergency? She said that all she knew was that Glen (Deputy Minster) called Gord to come and see him right away.
It was almost 10:25 AM. I put my jacket on, grabbed my writing pad, and came out of my office. I asked my secretary to cancel my next meeting and headed to the elevator. She asked me when she should expect me to be back and I said I had no clue.
As soon as Glen’s secretary saw me, she said this way Mir. I didn’t even know that she knew my name. She knocked the door before she opened it and said Mir’s here. I entered the office. It was a huge office, indeed. Glen and Gord were sitting in the meeting area of the office. Glen got up to shake hands and said I never had the pleasure of meeting with you Mir but I heard lots of good things about you. I said thanks and sat on the chair across from Gord. Once three of us sat down Glen asked me if I wanted coffee or water and I said no thanks. Glen said congratulations on your promotion to a newly created challenging position. Gill Marco briefed me about the details and Gord just told me that you are doing a wonderful job. He also told me that you worked for him in Toronto. Furthermore he told me that you took a big cut in your salary to come to work for us here in New Brunswick. I said everything was worthwhile for us as we both are immigrants from different countries. My family is learning a great deal about the people of this province as well as different parts of Canada. Perhaps more importantly my kids are learning French in the only province which is officially bilingual.
I said I guess there must be something else you wanted to talk to me about. Glen said yes there is. I wanted to talk to you about Les and Jack. I was surprised to hear that. He said before I say anything else on that subject, Gord also told me that working with you he learned not to interfere with your business. He did once and he ended up calling you in the middle of the night to apologize. I didn’t say anything. Glen continued talking and he said Les and Jack were with me on Friday. He said I went to school with both of them and they are my friends. The weather was so nice on Friday I decided to take a day off and invited them for a pool party. We had done this before several times but nobody even noticed their absence. However, now that you are in charge, they got caught.
I said what do you expect me to do, sir. Les and Jack must know better. I am busting my behind to get things straight in the department and they thought they could get away with this simply because I was out of town. Most importantly there was a technical problem in the middle of the afternoon and nobody knew where to find them. That is not acceptable as long as I am running the show. But Mir, they have been there forever and more importantly you need their skills to run the department. I said I am going to say only two things on that subject. One – they should have thought about how long they had worked there before they took off to party with you and two – I cannot possibly rely on expertise if they are not dependable. I cannot afford to take that kind of risk to jeopardize the integrity of our operation. It also means I would be risking the production of thousands of cheques on time for the people who are on welfare or thousands of people who are on our provincial payroll.
He said you are a tough man, Mir. I said it had nothing to do with my toughness or fairness. It had to do with the responsibility that you gave me to run the department and I am doing my best to fulfill that obligation. If you’re not happy with my decision or my attitude please let me know. I would be delighted to go back to Toronto and make more money. I stood up and said have a wonderful day gentlemen and left his office.
It was a reasonably busy day for me but I tried not to think about the meeting that I had with the big boys. Every time my secretary popped in my office I thought she had a message for another meeting with Mr. Deputy Minister but it never happened.
I was away last week and Lynda may have been too busy to take the kids out for supper. I called Lynda before I left the office and asked her to get the kids ready and we would go out for a nice supper. She asked me if I would like to get changed into casual clothing before we went out. I said no I will just pick you guys up and get changed when we get back.
It was a beautiful day in August and the kids were hungry by the time I picked them up. We went to a nice place in the downtown of Fredericton and enjoyed our meal.
When we got back and I was getting changed in the bedroom, Lynda popped in and asked me what’s up with you. You appeared to be a little off this evening. Furthermore, she said I called your office around 11:30 AM this morning and your secretary said you were in a meeting. When I asked her when do you think he will be back she said it’s hard to say he’s with the Deputy Minister. I said let’s go down and watch TV a little bit before they go to bed. After that we will talk.
When the kids said good night and went to their bedrooms, Lynda said well. I said we may be going back to Ontario sooner than we thought. She said spell it out my man. I told her everything that happened in that meeting. She said the only part that she didn’t understand was why Gord had to call you and apologize. I said to make a long story short a year or so before Gord left Beaver Lumber Company we had a little disagreement. You know Tony he was in charge of the systems and I was responsible for the total computer operations. Whenever Tony had to make changes to the existing programs/systems or implement a new program, he had to go through a process with me in detail to seek my approval. She said she understood that part.
I wanted to make it less complicated to help her understand the next step. I said one fine afternoon Tony showed up in my office with a bunch of programmers and asked me to sign an acceptance form to allow my people to put a bunch of programs in production. I told him exactly where to go as I had seen no evidence of the test results to convince me that those programs were risk free. He got mad at me and before he left he said to me, you will be sorry for doing this Mir as I already had Gord’s approval. I said I am just trying to do my job. As you know, if something goes wrong, I will get the call in the middle of the night. Sometimes I don’t feel like driving to the office at that time of the night only to correct somebody’s stupid mistakes. Tony left my office totally upset.
I knew that Tony worked for Gord for a long time. He worked for him in Newfoundland and when Gord accepted a job with the Molson Brewery, Tony came to Toronto to join the company, too. But I was confident that Gord would understand my reasoning for rejecting Tony’s application based on lack of evidence. Guess what, I was wrong. It didn’t take more than 4 minutes for Gord to show up in my office and asked me if I had a minute. He was very upset and said you don’t seem to appreciate the fact that we have deadlines for implementing this sub-system and in my opinion Tony had done anything and everything to make it acceptable. I may be totally out to lunch on this but I absolutely disagree with you. Tony never provided me with any adequate evidence of any testing results. I learned a very hard way not to take things at face value but to demand proof before I accept any program in the production environment. I thought you promised me your support for this approach the day we agreed about this control. I remember Gord asking me if I didn’t trust him. I said to be totally honest with you Gord, I don’t trust myself to take unnecessary risk and jeopardize the integrity of the production systems. Of course, you are my boss and you have that privilege of overriding my decision by adding a qualifier which stipulates that if something goes wrong with the newly implemented programs, you will get the call not me. You will be responsible for fixing the problem or problems. He said please write it down and I will sign it for you. Once he signed the papers, I said this is not personal, Gord. I don’t enjoy saying “NO” to you but believe me I will sleep better tonight.
I said please let me say one more thing before you go. He said go ahead. I said do you remember what you told me at the time you hired me. He said please refresh my memory. I said, you told me that not too many folks in your department understand the criticality of production system. If something goes wrong and we do not produce the packing slips for the warehouse by 6:00 AM, there will be dozens of people sitting in the warehouse getting paid for doing nothing, simply because they cannot pick any merchandise to ship to all those stores in all the provinces. That also means those stores cannot sell anything they don’t have to their customers. He said I may have said that. I said I am not trying to change your mind. All I am trying to say is that preaching is one thing and practicing is another. That makes me sad. I can tell that he didn’t like my statement and he said if I am wrong, Mir, I will humbly apologize to you. I came very close to saying what good is that going to do for those people in the warehouse who will be waiting for their packing slips and doing nothing but getting paid. But I decided not to further upset him.
I looked at Lynda and said you know the rest. She said I don’t, complete your story. I continued by saying that I had a telephone call around 11:00 PM and I was told that the new programs were a total disaster and they failed terribly. I said to my guy on the phone that I was sorry to hear that and I wanted him to call Gord Scott right away as he promised to take the call. I tried to go back to sleep but it didn’t work for me. Around 3:30 AM, our phone rang and Gord apologized sincerely and told me that there were 17 people from Tony’s department including Tony who were running around desperately for the last four hours to do anything and everything and nothing worked. Then they decided that I should call you and ask you to come down to the office and look into the problem. I said I will be there in 30 minutes and if you don’t mind please get rid of all of them. Please go home and I will take care of everything. He said I am so sorry Mir that we wasted four precious hours of the production time by just being bamboozled. He said he never felt so incompetent in his life and he didn’t even know what to say to those people in the warehouse. I said go home Gord. I know how to bypass some of the programs to produce picking slips. I may not recover all four hours but I will do my best. Anybody hanging around in the computer room will not help me to do the trouble shooting. If you want me to produce results, please go home. He said I owe you one, Mir.
Lynda said I wonder if Gord had to repeat this story to the Deputy Minister in detail. I said I don’t think so. I guess he must have told him enough to convey the message that please don’t mistreat Mir as he knew that if Glen started jerking me around, I would tell him exactly where to go and I would have walked out.
I am sorry babe, if I sounded like a “superman” but I stated the facts as I remembered them. Lynda said you don’t have to convince me as I know you’re good and I am sure Gord knows that too otherwise why would he stick out his neck for you. She said the question now is – where can we go from here? I said all I know is that tomorrow I am going to find out whether Glen will insist that I take Les and Jack back . If he does, we would have to start packing our bags and Toronto here we come. Your mother will be delighted with this news.
Lynda said I love my mother and I would be pleased to go back to Ontario but it’s important for me to see how things work out here first. She said I am not asking you to change your mind about taking those jerks back but what I am saying is that it’s their culture and you cannot change them overnight. They run the government affairs just like their own family affairs which we should have realized that is a Maritime ethos. She said to be perfectly honest with you I heard my sorority sisters talking about that Deputy Minister. They thought he was a skulk. Also, they said he had all his extended family working for him, not to mention he had granted huge road construction contracts to his relatives. Looks like he can do anything he likes and I am sure he will try your patience.
I said the only thing that is important to me is that we promised Gord to give him two years of our time. I am not afraid of finding another job anywhere but I don’t like to disturb the kids in the middle of their academic year, if I can help it. She said don’t worry about them. They are resilient enough to handle the situation.
However, she said I have another question for you. What would happen to the clause in the agreement that you signed which says if you didn’t stay with the government for a minimum period of two years? I said it’s clearly stipulated in the agreement that we will have to pay back almost $10,000 for the moving expenses which they paid for us. Perhaps the only angle, I said, I can think of is – if I get fired, I may not have to pay back. Otherwise we are bound to pay back. It’s just my interpretation. Can Gord help us with this, she asked. I don’t think so, I said.
I said I got another angle to deal with this delicate situation. She said I am all ears. I said I can just walk in the Deputy Minister’s office tomorrow morning and punch him in the face. That would unquestionably qualify me to be fired. She said I wouldn’t support that notion and do you know why? I said you tell me. She said you will be blacklisted in all Canada for doing that and I don’t think you would be able to find any jobs in Canada no matter how talented you think you are. Thanks for the reality check. Nevertheless, I said we can always go to the States. She said I left my country and my parents with the dream of living in Canada and I don’t think I am ready yet to compromise my dream. I said what are you trying to tell me. She said I know you don’t want to compromise your integrity by allowing those jerks to come back to your department regardless. Therefore, we should be prepared to pay back $10,000. Think this way, it’s a price of what you believe in and the important thing is that we can afford it.
I said thanks for the words of wisdom; I can sure sleep better tonight.
