One Company – Four Men: Part IV

Joseph had spent most of his adult life with our company. He had given it all he had. Sure he made money, and I’m sure he did quite well financially, but there was more to Joseph than money – or else you’re reading a writer who is about the dumbest man you’ll ever know. As I said in my first post in this series, either Joseph was naive and he didn’t know about the fraud, or I was naive and I didn’t know the real Joseph. To this day I don’t think he knew what was happening right under his nose. Should he have known? Yes, he was president and he should have known – I can’t argue with that.

The VP of sales and marketing was also fired – you can be damn sure he knew about the fraud - and he was replaced by a boy-wonder from our national office, who was actually a pretty nice guy. Joseph was replaced by Charles which created the opening for Mike and Sammy to vie for, and you know from a previous post that Sammy got the job and I ended up working for Sammy. I’ll have more about both Sammy and Charles in this series.

When Joseph was fired it sent him into a tailspin. He had a wife and children and I would think that he was set for life financially – but he couldn’t get over the fact that this company that he had given so much to had pushed him out the door. Maybe there was no alternative to terminating him, after all he was the division president and he should have known what was happening in his division – on the other hand the fraudulent practices were so widespread – it affected other divisions and perhaps even other firms  in our industry were engaging in it – that you have to wonder what was going on…but he still should have known about it.

Joseph went into depression. He’d take off from home and not be seen for weeks. He’d call his wife from the West Coast. It was a mess. During this time I thought about trying to connect with Joseph – but I felt out of my league so I didn’t…I regret not trying.

Joseph committed suicide out in California. I couldn’t believe it. This professorial gentle man who had considered becoming a priest had gone and killed himself, leaving behind his wife and kids.

I recall looking at the corporate headquarter's representatives at the funeral and wondering what the heck they were doing there. Why didn’t they get him help? He had grown up in the firm with some of those very men, he’d known them for years – why did this happen? How could this have happened?

Now maybe they did try to help at some point, the fact is that I don’t know, I’m just sharing where I was then and what my thoughts were. Hey, if Joseph should have known what was going on, perhaps some of those guys in corporate should have known too – after all, the fraud wasn’t confined to our division.

I realize you didn’t know Joseph, but I think if you had known him that you’d agree that he didn’t know about the fraud.

One Company – Four Men: Part III

Joseph, our division president, had wanted to be a Roman Catholic priest in his early life. However, after graduating from college he went into sales for a national company and then moved into sales with our firm. He had been with our company virtually all his working life. I imagine Joseph was 45 or 50 when I met him – when you’re a young adult it seems that you have your chronological peers, then there are the old people, and everyone else is in-between; but I’d say Joseph was late 40’s or early 50’s.

A comment folks would often make after having met Joseph for the first time was, “He is professorial.” And indeed he was; slightly built and around 6’1”, dark neatly trimmed brown beard with hints of gray, glasses, soft-spoken, relaxed, and he even wore Harris Tweed. Being president of a division in our firm was a BIG deal, lots of money and, of course, lots of responsibility.

Joseph treated me well. He was always courteous and when I worked on the litigation project and he and I were meeting with lawyers and other executives he made sure I was part of the discussion. Considering I was shy and unsure of myself in social and some business settings this meant a lot to me – it means even more now in hindsight.

One day I was informed that Federal auditors were coming to the office and that they’d be with us for a while. I also learned that Federal auditors were at our national office and at other division offices. It appears that during the economic downturn that had resulted in personnel layoffs, that when our sales were “in the tank”, that some of our salespeople had taken some liberty with Federal regulations in order to close deals – taking “liberty” with Federal regulations is illegal – it is criminal, and the Feds frown on the practice.

I don’t recall how long the audit took, but after it was done I was told by Sammy that Joseph would be leaving the company – someone had to be the corporate fall-guy for the regulators and it was Joseph – there may have been similar scenarios at other divisions, I don’t know. What I do know is that a prince of man was destroyed.  To be continued….

One Company – Four Men: Part II

Mike had a lot more responsibility with his new company than he’d had with the previous one we’d both been with. It was a fairly autonomous operation than ran into the millions of dollars. My role was coordinating operations and serving as backup to the various front-line managers in our region. We had a fun and hardworking group of men (and the occasional woman) and vendors and contractors. Ours was a business that had you either on top of the world or in the septic tank; there wasn’t much in-between.

During this time I was enrolled in a graduate-level program in legal studies. This became significant when Mike was visiting our division office one day and was made aware of litigation the firm was involved in up in Baltimore. Our division had just absorbed the company’s Baltimore region and had inherited a lawsuit. Mike mentioned to the division president that he might want me to take a look at the litigation and the next thing I knew I was asked up to the division office to meet with Joseph, the president of our division.

This litigation project, which involved substantial sums of money, was an opening into the world of contract law, civil procedure, and dealing with professionals and executives on a level that I had rarely done before. I became our national firm’s ball-carrier in this matter, to the point of briefing our corporate legal counsel flown in from out-of-state.

During the months I worked on this project I developed a relationship with Joseph, the division president. I’ll come back to Joseph in a future post.

Before I close out my thoughts about Mike there are two things I want to be sure I mention. The first is that I was exceptionally loyal to Mike and that when a Division VP position opened up and he was one of two men considered for the job – I really wanted him to get it. While I didn’t really know the other candidate, from what I had seen of him I thought Mike was the better candidate, and I frankly didn’t know how well I’d work with Sammy, the other candidate. Mike didn’t get the job, Sammy did, and I ended up working for Sammy. Sammy has been a dear friend for over 30 years…you just never know…do you?

Our industry was cyclical, as I mentioned you could be on top of the world one minute and the next in the septic thank. When we hit an economic downturn the word came down from our national headquarters that overhead had to be cut – that meant management. Our division had some deep cuts. During this time an opening arose in the division office – it was as an assistant to Sammy. One day Mike asked me to go up and see Sammy and the next day I was working for him – it was a great job and really advanced my career, and as you now know Sammy and I became great friends.

One day, months later, I was with the new president of the division, Charles, and Charles looked at me and said, “I don’t know what you ever did for Mike, but I can tell you than when we had those personnel cuts a while back that he called up here and lobbied hard for you to get the job you’ve got.”

Mike never said a word to be about that, not once, not even a hint.

The last time I talked with Mike has been so long I can’t remember. He had started his own company and seemed to be doing well. I don’t know if he ever thinks of me, but as you know, I think of him.