The GO-GIVER
Still, sometimes it felt as if the harder and faster he worked, the further away his goals appeared. For such a dedicated go-getter, it seemed like he was doing a lot of going but not a lot of getting.
Work being as busy as it was, though, Joe didn't have much time to think about that. Especially on a day like today---a Fri-day, with only a week left in the quarter and a critical deadline to meet. A deadline he couldn't afford not to meet.
Today, in the waning hours of the afternoon, Joe decided it was time to call in a favor, so he placed a phone call---but the conversation wasn't going well."Carl, tell me you're not telling me this . . ." Joe took a breath to keep the desperation out of his voice. "Neil Hansen?! Who the heck is Neil Hansen? . . . Well I don't care what he's offering, we can meet those specs . . . wait---c'mon, Carl, you own me one! You know you do! Hey, who saved your bacon on the Hodges account? Carl, hang on . . . Carl!" Joe clicked off the TALK button on his cordless phone and made himself calmly set down the instrument. He took a deep breath.
Joe was desperately trying to land a large account, an account he felt he richly deserved---one he needed, if he wanted to make his third-quarter quota. Joe had just missed his quota in the first quarter, and again in the second. Two strikes . . . Joe didn't even want to think about a third.
"Joe? You okay?" a voice asked. Joe looked up into the concerned face of his coworker Matthews. Melanie was a well-meaning, genuinely nice person. Which was ex-actly why Joe doubted she would survive long in a com-petitive environment like the seventh floor, where they both worked.
"Yeah," he said.
"Was that Carl Kellerman on the phone? About the BK ac-count?"
Joe sighed. "Yeah."
He didn't need to explain. Everyone on the floor knew who Carl Kellerman was. He was a corporate broker looking for the right firm to handle an account Joe had nicknamed the big Kahuna, or BK for short.
According to Carl, the boss at Big Kahuna didn't think Joe's firm had the "clout and leverage" to put the deal together. Now some character he'd never heard of had underbid and outperformed him. Carl claimed there was nothing he could do about it.
"I just don't get it," Joe said.
"I'm so sorry, Joe," said Melanie.
"Hey, sometimes you eat the bear . . ." He flashed a confi-dent grin, but all he could think about was what Carl had said. As Melanie walked back to her desk, Joe sat lost in thought. Clout and leverage . . .
Moments later he leaped up and walked over to Melanie's desk. "Hey, Mel?"
She looked up.
"Do you remember talking with Gus the other day, some-thing about a big wheel consultant giving a talk somewhere next month? You called him the captain or something?"
Melanie smiled. "Pindar. The Chairman."
Joe snapped his fingers. "That's it! That's the guy. What's his last name?"
Melanie frowned. "I don't think . . ." She shrugged. "No, I don't think I've ever heard it mentioned. Everyone calls him the Chairman, or just pindar. Why? You want to go hear the talk?"
"Yeah . . . maybe." But Joe was not interested in some lecture happening a month away. He was interested in only one thing---and that one thing needed to happen by the following Friday, when the third quarter came to an end.
"I was thinking, this guy is a real heavy hitter, right? Gharges huge consulting fees, works only for the biggest and best firms? Major clout. I know we could handle the BK account, but I'm gonna need some big guns to win the deal back. I need leverage. Any idea how I can get a line to this Chairman guy's office?"
Melanie looked at Joe as if he were proposing to wrestle a grizzly bear. "You're just going to call him up?!"
Joe shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"
Melanie shook her head. "I have no idea how to contact him. Why don't you ask Gus?"
As Joe headed back to his desk, he wondered how Gus had managed to survive this long at Clason-Hill Trust. He never saw him do any actual work. Yet Gus had an enclosed office, while Joe, Melanie and a dozen others shared the open space of the seventh floor. Some said Gus had gotten his office because of seniority. Others said he'd earned it on merit.
According to office rumors, it had been years since Gus had sold a single account, and management kept him on purely out of loyalty. There were also whispers about Gus that went to the other extreme---that he had been supersuccessful in his younger days and was now an independently wealthy eccentric who stashed his millions away in mattresses while living a pensioner's lifestyle.
Joe didn't believe the rumors. He was pretty sure Gus brought in some accounts. But it was hard to picture him as a sales superstar. Gus dressed like a high school English teacher and reminded Joe more of a retired country doctor than of an active businessman. With his relaxed, easy manner, his long, rambling phone conversations with potential clients (conversations that seemed to touch on everything but business) and his erratic, extended vacations, Gus seemed like a relic of times long past.
Hardly a go-getter.