MARCH 10, 2024 – (Cont.) Two weeks later, the newly anointed boss came to town to meet his former peers, now subordinates. He was as inscrutable as ever. I imagined that behind his back he carried a sharpened ax.
From his perch in Dan’s old office, he began a series of one-on-one meetings with his new minions. While waiting my turn, I was immersed in responding to an RFP (“request for proposal”) that a sub-group of my division had recently received. It was for a significant piece of business, and Lon, the manager in charge of the response, wanted my active input. Our proposal had to go out before the end of the day. In materials spread out all over my office, he and I had been working intensely all afternoon on the final draft.
At around 4:00, Jeff, the new boss, knocked on the doorframe of my quarters. “Can I see you down in my office?” he said.
I hesitated. The proposal wasn’t quite finished, yet we had to get it in the hands of FedEx by 5:00. We’d be cutting it very close.
“Keep going,” I said to Lon, who was already working frenetically. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I then caught up to Jeff, who was halfway down the corridor to his office.
After I’d entered, he closed the door, grabbed a white packet off his desk, and took a seat at his conference table. I sat down opposite him.
He wasted no time in getting to the point. “I’ve decided to merge your group with Public Finance,” he said, “and eliminate your position.” Before I could feel the ax blade slicing into my neck, he dropped the white packet onto the table. I’ll never forget the two words in large bold lettering on the outside of the thick envelope: “DISPLACMENT PACKET.”
What I heard next were the words, “Tell your staff this afternoon and clear your stuff out tomorrow morning. I want you gone by 10:00.” In my shock, however, my first thought was, So that’s what they call a severance package. My second thought was, I can’t change the title of my book from Severance Package to Displacement Packet—no one would read it! (Recently I’d completed writing a satirical business thriller named after the financial parachute handed out to fired employees above a certain rank.)
He didn’t bother to shake my hand, and I certainly didn’t want to shake his. I took the “displacement packet” and raced-walked back to my office, where I’d left Lon hard at work on the proposal. We’d worked together closely for the past five years, and right then as he was working frantically to get a major proposal on its way was not the time to tell him I’d been relieved of my job. He presented me with the final draft, ready for the hand-off to FedEx.
“All you have to do is sign it,” said Lon.
“Why me?” I asked.
“At the last minute,” Lon said, “I decided that it would be best if it went out over your name. You’ve got the more superior title, and it would show that we’re serious about the proposal.”
“Uh, yeah, maybe, but I don’t think so. Trust me. You don’t want my name on it.”
He protested and I relented. “Lon,” I said. “You can’t breathe a word to anyone yet, okay? Promise me on a stack of Bibles?”
“Yeah, okay, but what’s going on?”
“I’ve just been axed.”
“What?”
“Jeff just cut me loose. My name can’t be on the proposal.”
I knew few people who used expletives as rarely and judiciously as Lon did, but on that occasion he released a barrage of F-bombs.
“Now I have to make a call,” I said. “We can talk more later. Jeff wants me to tell people this afternoon and pack up my stuff tomorrow morning, but I’m going to do both first thing tomorrow.”
With that he took the proposal and the FedEx envelope and exited my office. He was fuming.
I closed the door, placed the “displacement packet” on my desk and made the call. I was too chicken to call my wife. Besides, she’d be on her way to pick up our sons—at the now private school that we could barely afford even when I was employed. No, the call was to my good friend Tom Kimer, the lawyer at Faegre & Benson with whom I’d worked so closely for years on the “billion-dollar” ELIC case (See 2/17/24 et seq. posts).
Tom was intimately familiar with my writing efforts and had read from top to bottom the fully edited manuscript of my novel, Severance Package. I’d been searching for an agent, and Tom had taken a keen interest in that as well.
“You’ll never guess what happened to me, Tom.”
“An agent picked up your book!”
“No, it’s better than that: I was given a real severance package.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“No, but get this: they’re not called ‘severance packages.’ They’re called ‘displacement packets.’”
“Lunch tomorrow at the Minneapolis Club,” said Tom. “Noon.” (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
