Delayed Reaction

Doogie was my eyes and ears in the marketplace. He was responsible for marketing support. That is, making sure that problems or opportunities that arose in the field were promptly addressed and action taken. It was a "make work" job in its origin: a place to put an underachieving sales manager. Doogie changed all that and made it something very valuable. He was a conduit to management and the other departments and he was very good at his job.

He would give you the impression he was a carefree playboy, but I knew differently. He had a long-standing lady friend whom he had finally convinced to move to Canada and accept his proposal. Sandra Smith-Pelly was pure London, through and through. She'd been to the best schools and was expected to marry into one of the prominent English families. Her parents didn't count on Doogie getting in the way.

"Sassy," as she was generally known, was a strong-willed woman who was having none of her parents' plans for her future. She was tall, slender, regal in her posture, and attractive but not spectacular. Considering Doogie's penchant for busty, extroverted women, she was a strange choice. Yet, there wasn't any doubt that he loved her and that his comments directed at her opposite type were just talk. She had arrived in Vancouver only a few weeks ago and promptly moved into Doogie's condominium on False Creek. As far as she was concerned, this was heaven and she never planned to leave.

I complained to Doogie, "Wray is expecting me to present the plan for next year at the management meeting in November. I'm not very pleased with what I see. I've inherited a 'do nothing' plan as far as I can tell. Maybe you can give me some ideas, Doogie."

"Most of my worries are how we're going to deal with the Chinese invasion. The buggers are going to show up sooner or later. I hope we're ready for them. You know what they're like. They'll blitz the bloody market first with pricing to knock off the weak links."

I nodded. "I'm getting everyone's attention but the ones that count. I have a feeling we're going to have to do something radical to survive that bombing."

"How radical?"

"Maybe close and consolidate operations?" I suggested.

"That won't exactly fit with the boss-man's ideas for growth, will it?"

"Nope ... but to grow, first you have to survive. We can warn the troops, but if they aren't believers then we're shouting into the wind."

Doogie nodded. "You'll come up with something, Cam. I know you. You'll find something ... somewhere."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I've only been in this job for a few weeks and I'm not sure I'm going to get a receptive audience. No one wants to hear from Chicken Little.

I picked up the last of my ale, briefly considered ordering a second, then decided against it.

"Time to go home, Doogie. Sassy will be waiting for you, no doubt."

"And who's waiting for you, Cam?"

"Not a soul."

"You need to do something about that, my friend. I don't know what I did without Sassy here for the past year or so. What are your plans for the weekend?"

"Nothing, right now. November isn't the best time for golf and it's too damn cold to go sailing with Lew. I swear he'd break ice to get out on that boat of his."

"I don't blame him," Doogie said. "That's a lovely craft. I'd go anytime ... and Sassy would too. She loves to sail."

"Lew knows that," I laughed. "You only hint at it every time you see him."

"Do you think he'd sell a share in it? You know ... sort of a time-share?"

I shrugged. "Ask him. What's the worst he can say?"

Doogie nodded, drained his Scotch and set the glass down.

"Time to go, Cam. I'll see you Monday," he smiled. "Try and have some fun this weekend, will you?"

"Will do, Doogie. Say Hi to Sassy for me. See you Monday."

For a change, Saturday morning dawned clear and bright. Fresh snow on the Lions and Grouse Mountain set off the spectacular view from my apartment. I'd chosen this particular unit because it had a view of both the North Shore mountains and English Bay. It came with a price tag, but my needs were simple. One bedroom with a den that I could use as an office, a compact kitchen (I'm not much of a cook), a full-sized bathroom and a large living room with a window-wall and balcony facing north-west.

We were well into the "rainy season" in Vancouver, but it beat the hell out of the snow and cold winds of the east. It wasn't the most convenient location for a head office, but it was the traditional home for Emerald Precision Instruments and it would remain so for the foreseeable future. I didn't mind at all. A couple of extra hours flying time to the various plants was a small price to pay for the pleasure of living on the West Coast. Or, as we referred to it at this time of year, the "Wet Coast."

My apartment was on the south-west edge of Stanley Park, not far from the beach at English Bay and only three blocks from the park. I could ride my bike or walk or jog my way around the seawall on a moment's notice. I hardly needed my car during the week. The office was less than a mile away, and a brisk walk or a bike ride on most mornings was good exercise for me. My building had an indoor pool and an exercise room which I used regularly to keep fit. What more could I want?

I'd been living here now for almost five years. I'd been promoted to Assistant to the Vice President of Operations when I returned from Manchester and then, three months ago, I was given the title of Vice President of Operations. The former Vice President had retired and my new boss, Senior Vice President Wray Henderson, had picked me out to succeed him. It was quite a surprise, considering I was barely thirty-three years old. But apparently, I'd been noticed and followed and tested enough that they were willing to take the chance with me. I was flattered to be sure.

I had my reservations about working for Wray. He'd been in his job for years and had a reputation for being very conservative in his thinking. My predecessor, George Christiansen, had been the closest to Wray of anyone in the organization. George got the unfortunate tag of being a "brown-noser" somewhere along the line and it had stuck. He was constantly waiting for Wray to tell him what he wanted and then running around trying to deliver it.

Wray was the buffer between the CEO and the three vice presidents: Operations, Finance and Marketing. There were times when I wondered just how important that role was, but it had been established long before I arrived and everyone seemed to accept it.

When I sat with Wray to discuss my promotion, he made it plain I was to report to him and no one else. I didn't have any problem with that. It was the way a corporate hierarchy was supposed to work. I was clear with him that I considered close cooperation with sales and marketing to be important and while he wasn't exactly enthusiastic, he at least acknowledged the need to stay in touch with our sales people and our customers.

Wray was also a loner, from what I could see. I had only met his wife, Marion, a couple of times at social functions. She was a lovely lady with a warm personality when it was drawn out or when she wasn't standing in Wray's shadow. She seemed to be such an opposite of Wray, but then I thought the same about Sassy and Doogie as well. In the office, Wray's other contacts were his executive assistant, Donna Witherspoon, and our CEO, John Hoffer. From what I could tell, few of us knew Wray Henderson very well at all.

As I gazed out the window at the splendid vista, my thoughts drifted back to Karen. My one and only love affair. I was taking my MBA at Western Ontario and she was in her third year of Commerce. We'd met at a friend's social and almost instantly hit it off. I got her phone number that night and called her the next day. Within a month, we were inseparable. I wasn't a virgin when I met her and neither was she, but we both had a lot to learn it turned out.

When I finished my MBA, I returned to my former job in Toronto, already working for Emerald. They had generously allowed me time to get my post-graduate degree and while most of it was on my own time, they were anxious to see me complete my studies and made sure they cleared the path for me. I owed a great deal to Emerald and their management and I wanted to repay them in my work.

I was positive I was in love with Karen, but she was in her senior year at Western and I couldn't possibly commute from London to Toronto. I would make the three hour drive every Friday night and return on Sunday night, spending at least two days with her each week. It wasn't ideal, but I was very serious about her and nearing the end of her school year, I proposed.

She turned me down.

"I'm sorry, Cam. I'm not ready to marry. I want to live a little and work on my career for a while. It's been wonderful to be with you, but I'm not the girl for you."

"When will you be ready?" I whined.

"I don't know. I'm certainly not in a rush, as you can tell. You're a good guy and we've had a very nice time together, but it's not going to be permanent. I'm sorry."

"Yeah," I said, defeated. "I am too."

And that was the end of my one and only love affair. It had been one-sided and I hadn't even recognized it. I was a convenience to her, nothing more. I felt like a fool for some time after that, alternating between anger and self-pity. A few weeks later I forced myself back into the dating game and took a much less serious attitude toward women. If they could play, I could play too.

But that got old fairly quickly. When I was sent to Manchester, a combination of a difficult work situation and the ever ebullient Doogie Cruickshank helped bring me out of that phase. I dated off and on, got lucky more than a few times and generally didn't take myself too seriously. I didn't think English women could hold a candle to Canadian women, but then I was biased, wasn't I?

When my time was up in England, I insisted that Doogie be included in our corporate plans and laid out my reasoning with chapter and verse to Wray Henderson and Clarence Woolfolk, the Marketing V.P. Happily, they agreed, and Doogie was offered the job of marketing support. He made that job something important with his actions, not his words. Time and again he saved the company from making fundamental mistakes in the marketplace. I give him credit for steadfastly turning what was an operational environment into a customer-responsive environment. It took a while to show results, but when they came, Doogie got the well-deserved credit as well as a raise and a promotion. I suspected they were grooming him for bigger things, perhaps V.P. of Marketing.

Monday morning dawned dull and rainy. Dark enough that I didn't want to ride my bike for fear of being run down by some unwary commuter. I decided that my umbrella and raincoat would do. If it got too ugly, I could hop a bus for the few blocks I had to go.

As I stepped off the elevator on the ninth floor, I could see lights on in the area of my office. Usually, I was the first one on the floor, but not this morning. As I hung up my wet raincoat in the closet and stowed the umbrella, I wondered who would be here this early. It was barely seven o'clock. I walked down the hall and almost immediately encountered Siobhan Mulcahy.

She looked spectacularly bright and shiny in the gloom of that morning. She was immaculately dressed in another business suit and greeted me with a cup of coffee as I approached her desk.

"Good morning, Mr. MacDonald," she smiled.

"And good morning to you, Ms. Mulcahy. But ... would you mind if I called you Siobhan and you called me Cam or at the most Cameron?"

"Very well, but not when the brass are about, okay?"

"Good thinking, Siobhan. That's how it will be then. So what are you doing here this early in the morning?"

"I'm your personal assistant, Cameron. I'm expected to be here when you are. I only had to ask one person to find out what your hours were. Hopefully, with my help, we can cut them back a little," she grinned.

"A worthy objective, to be sure. I'm not work obsessed, just in case you're wondering. Right now I'm still trying to learn this job and determine where the biggest problems are located."

"That's where I come into the picture," she stated simply. "We will begin to prioritize your concerns immediately."

There didn't seem to be any doubt in her voice. But then, when I had gone over the papers I had taken with me on Friday evening, she had made a faultless judgement that each of them was important. I assumed then that the lesser things could be dealt with when opportunity or time permitted.

"I reviewed the items you segregated on Friday," I said, "and I've put them in priority order. Let's go over them so you'll know my thinking."

She nodded and I began with the first item. For the next two hours we reviewed each of the items in order and she made some brief notes when appropriate. She also asked some penetrating questions for background, and paid close attention as I explained my thinking. I could almost see her storing this information away in her head ... or was I imagining it?

We stopped for an early coffee break and I broke tradition and got the coffee myself for both of us.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" I said as we sat and sipped the coffee.

"That depends on how personal."

"I'm curious. I'm not allowed to ask your age, but I can see you're quite young. How in the world did you get this much experience and professionalism at your age?"

I got a nice smile in reply.

"Thank you for the compliment. My father was CEO of a mid-sized distribution firm in the electronics industry. He had a heart attack at an early age and was forced to try and run the company from home. In the evening, I would help him do what you and I just did; sort out the priorities. He would fax them off to his office that night and his VP of Operations would see that his instructions were carried out. I learned a lot from him before I went off to college."

"You were very lucky," I noted. "You had the perfect teacher and he taught you well. I'll have to call him some day and compliment him on that."

I saw the look on her face change immediately and knew something was amiss.

"I'm afraid you're too late. He died not long after I left home. He never really recovered from the first heart attack, but he wasn't sick enough to get on the transplant list."

"Oh ... I'm very sorry. You and your mother must miss him a great deal."

She nodded. "Yes ... I really miss him. I'm trying to do all the things that he did ... except for the heart attack," she smiled shyly through some tears.

"If first impressions mean anything, I think he would be very proud of you."

"Thank you. I'll try and live up to that."

The next six months were hectic and full of travel. Siobhan and I had to visit each of the operations and determine how they were doing on a first hand basis and not just from the reports and results we received monthly. We became far too familiar with airport lounges and hotel rooms as a result. We both flew business class and stayed in the better hotels, although not always the five star ones.

I was surprised and delighted how easily Siobhan slipped into her role and how professional she was among our staff and key customers. Part of my ambition was to visit our key clients and hear directly from them the things we did well and the things we needed to improve on. I got the impression that there had been very little of that from the previous senior management. It had been left to the local management to show the flag. I felt they needed more support and that was my objective.

Siobhan was at my side at all the visits and customer calls. As she became more comfortable and confident in her job, she began to participate and interact with both groups. I was impressed and delighted when she would ask about something I had missed or forgotten. She never lacked for preparation or curiosity. She was as happy on the shop floor with the workers as she was in the boardroom with CEOs. I had found a gem and I knew it.

All along, however, our relationship was strictly business. As much as I was tempted, I kept her at arm's length. I was sure that was what she expected and I wasn't about to mess with success. God knows I was tempted, however. She was quite a woman. Dark brown penetrating eyes, flawless complexion, lightly applied makeup, a variety of perfectly tailored business dresses and suits that never failed to appear as if they were being worn for the first time.

It was early on in our travels that I discovered some other things about her. I was in the habit of using the exercise facilities in the hotels we stayed at. In fact, I asked Siobhan to make sure those facilities were available if we were staying at a new location. I would normally rise early, spend forty-five to sixty minutes exercising, then return to my room for a shower and shave before putting on my business clothes.

On our first trip to Chicago, we were staying at the Marriott Oak Brook as I had in the past and I was down to the gym facilities before six that morning. Five minutes later, a bright-looking Siobhan arrived wearing a track suit and a scarf around her head.

"What are you doing here at this time of day?" I asked with a smile.

"The same as you," she said. "Getting my daily exercise. Keeping myself from getting fat on this hotel food we're going to be eating."

"Yeah ... I know what you mean. Even their healthy choices aren't really that healthy."

"Is this part of your normal routine?" she asked.

"Absolutely. You already know I either ride my bike or walk to work. There's an exercise room in my apartment building that I can use when I want to. I've also got Stanley Park almost at my doorstep, so I've got no excuses when I'm at home. On the road, this is usually all I can find."

"I think it's a good habit, Cameron. I'll make sure I check up on you each morning," she kidded.

"Thank you. You're my incentive then," I said.

I saw her look at me with a wrinkled forehead and a slight frown for a moment and I wonder what I might have said wrong. I put the ear buds for my MP3 player back in my ears and continued pedalling on the stationary bike.

Whatever I did to cause her to look at me that way seemed to disappear almost immediately and she began her workout on the rowing machine. She had removed the track suit and was wearing a t-shirt and snug-fitting shorts. It was the first time I had really seen what she looked like out of her office uniform. She was even more voluptuous than I realized. I began to fantasize without even thinking about it. When I became aware of it, I tried immediately to purge my thoughts, but it wasn't easy.

When we left to return to our rooms, we agreed to meet at seven-thirty in the restaurant before heading to the office in Lombard. When she appeared exactly at seven-thirty she was immaculately dressed and coiffed and showed no signs of the vigorous workout she had engaged in as little as thirty minutes ago. She was obviously very fit.

And that became our routine on the road. We would be picked up, usually by the general manager, for a plant tour and a meeting with the staff. Then the remainder of our stay would be taken up dealing with any problems and visiting any nearby customers. In some cases, we would stay an extra day or two in order to visit key clients who were not close to the specific plant or distribution center. Our trips were generally from three to five days and their frequency about once a month.

At the end of six months, I submitted my review on Siobhan, and Wray received it with raised eyebrows.

"Is she really this good or are you being swayed by a very lovely young woman?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow and what I almost took for a smirk.