Sound Business Advice

Copyright 2009 by PostScriptor

*

It was around 6:00 PM when I walked into the house to the smell of dinner cooking. Nothing fancy, I suspected, but tasty — one of those 5-bone pot roasts, cooked for hours in the slow-cooker with potatoes, onions and carrots. Wouldn't be surprised if Audrey had picked up one of those salads from the store with all of the fixings including pieces of cheese, corn, taco pieces — the little add-ons that make a salad unique — as well as the dressing.

Not that labor intensive cooking was normal around our house during the week. Both Audrey and I worked, and not having kids yet, there was no reason that we had to be home early from work. We'd been talking about changing that recently, as Audrey's biological clock was, as they say, ticking.

Yeah, those 5-bone roasts weren't the finest cut of meat, but they're flavorful.

When I walked into the dining room, Audrey came over and smiled and kissed me.

I suspect that I didn't look too happy at that moment.

"Hey Jim, what's wrong? You look kind of upset," she asked.

"I am," I replied, "I could really use some of your advice."

Audrey looked at me and nodded. It wasn't that unusual for me to ask her for her wisdom. She was one of those really bright people who ate school up; before we were married, she had completed a combined MBA/JD degree that they offered at the university. That's right — she had both a law degree and an MBA with an emphasis in accounting.

Out of school, Audrey had gone to work for one of the larger regional CPA firms, and after passing her exams and spending her two years doing audit, was a CPA as well. Audrey Masters, CPA, JD, her cards read. She was working in business law, where her accounting credentials added a bunch to her salary.

"Let's eat first, and then after dinner, you can run your problem by me, and I'll put my two-cents in!" she laughed as she spoke and we headed towards the dining room.

We had a pleasant dinner, telling each other about what had gone on during our day, chatting about the news, a few tidbits about friends, and the normal sort of discussion that we had around the table every evening. The roast was falling off the bone, and I was certainly satiated when we pushed our chairs back from the table, and did the clean up after dinner.

Living in the warm and humid environment of Florida meant that we had bug issues — everything from fire ants, to huge cockroaches — so Audrey and I were meticulous about cleaning off our plates and utensils, and putting them into the dishwasher right after we ate.

Audrey grabbed a diet soda, walked into the living room, and sat in the brown leather sofa where she could tuck her feet up under her, and sit kind of sideways with a couple of pillows to keep her comfortable. I had actually stopped in my office briefly to grab a yellow notepad, before following her into the room. I took the upholstered chair opposite the couch so we were facing each other. Had we not been talking about business I would have shared the couch with her, and some personal contact sport might have followed.

"OK," Audrey started, "tell me what's bothering you."

I looked at my wife, her dark, wavy hair and green eyes twinkling as they always did when she knew that she would be presented with a difficult problem. Her light complexion always accentuated her lips, and somehow in the light there in the living room, they always looked fuller and redder. Her smile could light up any room for me. It was hard to imagine that we'd been married almost seven years already.

"Honey, its concerns George," I started, and I could see Audrey's slight grimace as soon as I said his name. George Green was my partner in our citrus business, "Finest Kind Citrus Company" — an inside joke on the phrase used in the original MASH movie.

I was pretty much expecting Audrey's response, because I knew that she had never really cared for George, but he and I had been partners in the business predating my marriage to Audrey. It was a good partnership, with George running the sales and marketing as well as the packing house operations, and I ran the groves (including getting the crop picked and to the packing house), and the finances for our operation.

Not to brag — I did mention that Audrey was smart, but I had an undergraduate degree in Ag from Gainesville, and had an MBA in Finance as well, so I could hold my own.

"I've run across evidence that George is doing some unreported deals on the side, shipping off product and getting paid under the table. What do you think I should do about it?" I asked.

"How long has it been going on?" she asked.

"Since the beginning of the season — maybe three months," I replied, "but I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it started earlier and I just didn't hear about it."

"How many customers do you think he's making these side deals with?"

"I think only one. But at this point who knows. Maybe this isn't even the first time. But I'm hard pressed to believe that, because you can't keep something like this secret, at least for long. Someone talks to someone, someone sees something that doesn't look kosher; you know. Word gets around," I concluded. Audrey was nodding sagely in agreement with me as I spoke.

I continued.

"I don't think George understands all of that new technology that we've been using, either. My suspicion is that he does his deals when I'm out of town for the day — like last week when I had to go to Miami for that Ag Department update on citrus canker, or he does a run when he thinks that it's too late at night to expect me to swing by the packing house. I don't think that he grasps that each load of the fruit is tracked with GPS units and computer ID chips that have to tie to our shipments. If he doesn't enter a load into the computer system manually it doesn't mean that it goes unnoticed. It leaves a big gap in the sequence that an audit will pick up.

"Plus, he clearly doesn't have a clue how the minicams that we installed last year to prevent thefts from the packing house work either. He is of the impression that once the security company removes the old tape and puts a new one in, that after a day or two, it is destroyed. But they're not; they are filed for a year in case we need to go back over them.

Audrey continued to think quietly about what I was telling her.

"So how did you catch on to what he was doing?" she asked, wanting clarification.

"A combination of things, really. First, one of the women at the packing plant said something about suddenly having to work late all the time to her brother, who works on the grove. Then he mentioned it to me, because it sounded a little odd to him, and he knows that this business is rife with theft. Once I started looking, it wasn't hard to use the GPS data, and the minicams to confirm what was happening. Plus, as if that wasn't enough, I started asking around, and it turned out that there were a lot of folks who had heard rumors to the effect that George was stabbing me in the back. None of them had proof in hand, but the grapevine was correct.

"In fact, honey, I'm really appalled to say this, but he hasn't just done this with other folk's crops that we were brokering; he's pulled his little stunt with fruit from the family grove!" What we called the 'family grove' was the section of mixed citrus that I'd inherited from my father when he passed, a couple of years before I met Audrey. Selling fruit from my family grove would mean that he wasn't just taking the 10% brokerage fee; he'd be pocketing the entire price for the fruit — which was stealing directly from me.

"So now the big question: what do I do about it?" I said as I sat back, and got my yellow-pad ready to take notes as my wife gave me her thoughts, in her stream-of-consciousness style.

"First," she began, "the partnership is over. You can't go on with doing business with someone who you can't trust, who has tried to pull a fast one on you already. You can't ignore what he's done, so the status quo isn't an alternative, but once you confront him with the fact that you know how and what he's doing you can't just let it go. If you do he'll just avoid repeating his mistakes that let you catch him and conceal it better the next time.

"Second, luckily, you run the company finances, so you should pay off all of the bills, and take out all of the money that you are entitled to from the accounts. That includes the draw you should be getting, and compensation for the fruit that he stole from you. And you need to cut off the credit cards, ASAP."

George was a gambler, and once several years ago he had used one of the company credit cards to take a cash advance when he'd run short at a casino in the Bahamas. He had repaid the money, and I'd told him not to do it again. But Audrey remembered, and could never quite bring herself to trust that he might not do it again in the future, and run up a big gambling debt on the company card — in effect leaving me with his gambling debt.

I started writing down on my pad:

"Pay off outstanding bills; Withdraw cash that I'm entitled to; Close credit card accounts — ASAP"

Audrey's list was getting longer, and started including all of the little legal niceties that I would need to do to split the partnership. Actually I had no intention of doing those things myself; I would leave that to the lawyer.

It was about an hour later when Audrey was finished with her strategy for ending the partnership. It had involved both what needed to be done, and also the timing, in order that I not tip my hand too early and have George grabbing assets to which he was not entitled. Unfortunately, despite what the courts say, possession is frequently the greater part of the law.

We both sat there, silent for a moment, before I started to speak.

"Audrey, are you sure that breaking up the partnership is the only solution? I mean, George and I have had a successful working relationship for longer than you and I have been married. As far as I can tell, until a couple of months ago, he never did anything like this," I queried, my voice low and getting emotional over the idea of having to destroy the partnership.

"Jim Masters, you are just too soft. This is one of those situations when you will be better off if you just deal with it, get it over, put it behind you, and get back to living your life. You can hire other salesmen, and get other people to run a packing house for you. You still have your grove, and I'll bet that most of the farmers whose fruit you've been brokering will go with you and not George," she exclaimed.

"For one thing, you know George, and he has never saved a dime in his life. What he earns he spends. I suspect that without you, he would have a hard time qualifying for his bonds or insurance. And without those he can't even sell anyone else's fruit!" she told me with a surprisingly hard look in her eye.

I looked at her.

"Do you think that would be fair? I want to be fair to George; I'm not out to destroy him," I retorted, "I could easily let him keep the bond and insurance until he could get himself established on his own."

"Your loyalty is admirable, Jim, but misplaced. He hasn't shown you the same kind of loyalty. It's just not your problem anymore. What he's done is unforgivable," she concluded, with an air of finality.

"Oh no," I whispered, with tears rolling from my eyes, "I may not forget what's happened, but I hope that I will be able to forgive someday."

Audrey looked at me like I was crazy; crying for a lost partnership. I was choked up for a couple of minutes. I went in to the kitchen and got a glass of water and took a couple of sips, and returned to the living room, glass in hind.

When I was able to speak again, I put down my pad of paper, and turned to Audrey to speak.

"Audrey, I apologize, but I've misled you tonight. I'm not having any problems with George or our partnership. It isn't George cheating in the business, or giving away what's rightly mine. The real problem is you, and what you're doing with your 'managing partner.' That is what we've really been talking about."

Audrey was looking horrified, and her open hand flew up to her face, covering her open mouth. As she understood what I was telling her, tears began to flow down her cheeks. The way she just started crying, without even bothering to deny it, would have told me everything I needed to know.

I wiped away the tears in my eyes with my knuckles.

"Did you really think that you could keep it a secret? You thought that if I was out of town, or if you suddenly had to 'work late', I wouldn't catch on? That no one would notice, and that the rumors wouldn't get around, and back to me? Do you know how easily you were tracked with a GPS unit on your car, or the pictures and video of you going into your bosses' condo for hours 'working'?

"Well?" I asked her, "You've recommended a pretty hard-line approach — at least when you thought that George was the subject of your analysis. What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Oh god, Jim," she finally sputtered out, "Jim, I never meant... it wasn't really anything important...I don't love him...Oh god!" From that point forward, I couldn't really understand what she was trying to say, she was too choked up, the way you get when the tears and emotions swell up your throat, and your nose begins running.

Audrey was an emotional wreck still sitting on the couch, unable to even stand up. My impulse, my inclination, even now, was to go over to the couch and comfort her. But that didn't seem to be an appropriate role for me anymore. After all, I was devastated too, and there was no one to whom I could turn for comfort.

She understood that she had condemned herself with her own words. Split up the partnership; cut my losses and move on; play hard-ball, and never forgive.

I stood up, and handed her a set of papers. They weren't official; she would be formally served with the 'official' set in the next couple of days. Audrey didn't even need to look at them to know what they were. Then, I took a tissue out of the box and wiped her eyes, and nose for her like you would a child, and handed her a second tissue which she took into her hand, which was now clenched into a fist.

"Audrey, dinner was real tasty. I guess if I'm doing my own cooking it will be awhile before I eat that well again," I mentioned, as I turned to leave. Like Audrey, my throat was closing from the emotional stress.

"Jim," she called after me, in the kind of hoarse voice that comes from crying, "where are you going? Don't leave me. Could you please stay? Can we please talk? We need to talk!"

I couldn't answer, I couldn't speak. I just closed the door gently behind me.

George had helped me move a used AirStream travel trailer out onto the grove, next to the barn where we kept the tractors and other farm equipment. We'd hooked it up to water, electrical, septic system — even to cable TV. So it was comfortable enough. I'd replaced the old mattress with a fairly decent new one, with a thick layer of that comfort foam, just like I'd had at home. Or maybe I should say my former home.

Honestly, I'm a pretty forgiving guy. Despite what Audrey had said, if I'd caught George selling fruit on the side, I would have confronted him, and we would have split up the partnership, but I wouldn't have tried to crush him. Betrayal by good friends, a group into which I would have counted my wife, seems to make me sad, rather than angry.

Funny thing, too — although Audrey had advised me to take a hard line with George, George actually pleaded with me against being too quick to dump Audrey. We had been his idea of a perfect couple, and he thought that I should at least make an effort to see if I could salvage my marriage. He reminded me that he and I had done plenty of stupid things in our lives, and that in a number of cases there were other people who had plenty of forgiving to do before we were back in their good graces.

Heck, once or twice even the local Sheriff caught us doing one fool thing or another. He let us know that if we ever did something that stupid again, there would be hell to pay; but for now just get out of his patrol car and go home and hope that our dads never heard about our shenanigans.

Jesus, just thinking about it still scares me — my dad would have walloped me good. But that was in 'the good old days' when the law could be enforced with some common sense; today, there would be lawsuits, official complaints and who knows what else, if the Sheriff didn't go strictly 'by the book.'

Anyway, neither Audrey nor I have been doing anything to move the divorce along. She quit her job, and found work in a CPA office run by a woman. She's pleaded with me to move back into the house with her, but I'm staying in the trailer for awhile.

We talk on a regular basis, and Audrey makes sure to get me over a couple times a week for dinner. She knows my weakness for a home cooked meal. She claims that she just wants to be sure that I'm eating right, and not living on fast-food.

She has told me about her affair (without going into all of the gory details, at my request), and it sounds as if there was less to it than my imagination might have conjured up, but still enough. I explained the amount of pain that I was suffering with a quotation: Romeo says, "Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much, " to which Murcutio replies, "No, 't is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 't is enough, 't will serve." She smiled a sad little smile at me quoting from Shakespeare, but she understood that I meant it.

I still love her, and I believe her when she tells me that she loves me. She tells me that she would do anything to bring us back together and repair the damage that her thoughtless acts have caused. She has expressed a desire to have a child, if we could reconcile.

But in truth, I can't think of what she could possible do that would somehow 'fix' things up again. The biggest roadblock remains what Audrey, herself, told me, in slightly different words:

"The partnership is over. You can't go on in a marriage with someone who you can't trust — who has tried to pull a fast one on you by having an affair. You can't ignore what she's done, so the status quo isn't an alternative. And if you confront her with the fact that you know what she's doing, and you let it go this time, she'll just avoid making the same mistakes, and conceal it better the next time."

Alas, it was damn good advice.