Oakes.
“13th floor please,” I said. He stared back and I realized he must be deaf too. I tried to figure out how to hold up 13 fingers and gave up.
“13th floor,” I shouted. He nodded and pushed a button on the console. He was asleep before I turned around.
The corridor had an eerie silence about it when I got off the elevator. Creepy. The reception area was dark and locked up tight so I turned down the hall to go in the back entrance. The smell of cigar smoke hit me as soon as I opened the door. Lovely, just lovely. Chris Oakes was on the premises. Well, at least I’ll be able to smoke with my door open. I made a mental note to check that there was a fire extinguisher handy. Chris had a habit of leaving burning cigars wherever he felt like it. He had once fallen asleep and started a fire in his bed in one of the poshest hotels in San Francisco. The cause, of course, was his cigar. He blamed the hotel. His ranting and raving in the lobby of the hotel almost made the front page of the newspaper. The hotel was very nice when they let us know that they didn’t want him back. Ever.
I took a shortcut to my office so I could avoid executive row because the last person I wanted to see on my day off was Chris Oakes. I stripped off my windbreaker and tossed it on the guest chair and sat down in my chair. I swivelled around to turn on my computer and swivelled back to check my voice messages. I was getting dizzy. There were no notes on my desk from Didrickson with instructions or information so I figured he’d left me a voice message. The voice mail system told me I had two messages, both of which were hang ups. Love it, love it. Two less phone calls I had to return.
The only other place Harold would have left me anything was in his out-basket on his desk so I rummaged around in my desk for the keys to his office. The man was so paranoid about confidentiality he kept his office locked whenever he wasn’t in. The cleaning staff were not allowed to clean his office in the evenings and the furniture in his office was always dusty. Every couple of days or so he would put his wastebasket out in the hall for the cleaners and every couple of months we’d have them in during the day to dust and vacuum.
One of my favourite jobs was shredding all his waste paper. I’d have to schlep the paper in boxes down to the photocopier room and stand in front of the shredder feeding it paper. The dust from the machine was incredible and typically, I would be wearing a black suit. I was waiting for the day that he asked me to eat the paper, rather than shred it to make sure it was properly disposed of. He caught me one day getting one of the secretaries to do the shredding and I almost lost my job. For his next birthday, I was going to buy him a personal Ollie North desktop shredder to save my lungs.
There was nothing of any importance in his out-basket so I locked his office and thought about where I might find Grace.
Grace O’Grady was our internal auditor and she was my hero. Capital H. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Grace. She was one of the smartest, toughest and funniest women I had ever met. Grace told it like it was and didn’t care who she was telling it to. She had been hired out of retirement by the Chairman of our company’s Audit Committee of the Board of Directors and she reported directly to him, and no-one else. Grace knew the dirt on everyone in the company and knew what closet every skeleton was in.
Her job was to make sure financial controls were followed, procedures were implemented, the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. As a public company we had legal and financial obligations to our shareholders and Grace made sure we followed the rules. Her only disappointment was that the Chairman of the Audit Committee rarely acted on her recommendations. But she kept at it and took her job very seriously.
Grace was rarely seen around the head office because she was on the road most of the time
“13th floor please,” I said. He stared back and I realized he must be deaf too. I tried to figure out how to hold up 13 fingers and gave up.
“13th floor,” I shouted. He nodded and pushed a button on the console. He was asleep before I turned around.
The corridor had an eerie silence about it when I got off the elevator. Creepy. The reception area was dark and locked up tight so I turned down the hall to go in the back entrance. The smell of cigar smoke hit me as soon as I opened the door. Lovely, just lovely. Chris Oakes was on the premises. Well, at least I’ll be able to smoke with my door open. I made a mental note to check that there was a fire extinguisher handy. Chris had a habit of leaving burning cigars wherever he felt like it. He had once fallen asleep and started a fire in his bed in one of the poshest hotels in San Francisco. The cause, of course, was his cigar. He blamed the hotel. His ranting and raving in the lobby of the hotel almost made the front page of the newspaper. The hotel was very nice when they let us know that they didn’t want him back. Ever.
I took a shortcut to my office so I could avoid executive row because the last person I wanted to see on my day off was Chris Oakes. I stripped off my windbreaker and tossed it on the guest chair and sat down in my chair. I swivelled around to turn on my computer and swivelled back to check my voice messages. I was getting dizzy. There were no notes on my desk from Didrickson with instructions or information so I figured he’d left me a voice message. The voice mail system told me I had two messages, both of which were hang ups. Love it, love it. Two less phone calls I had to return.
The only other place Harold would have left me anything was in his out-basket on his desk so I rummaged around in my desk for the keys to his office. The man was so paranoid about confidentiality he kept his office locked whenever he wasn’t in. The cleaning staff were not allowed to clean his office in the evenings and the furniture in his office was always dusty. Every couple of days or so he would put his wastebasket out in the hall for the cleaners and every couple of months we’d have them in during the day to dust and vacuum.
One of my favourite jobs was shredding all his waste paper. I’d have to schlep the paper in boxes down to the photocopier room and stand in front of the shredder feeding it paper. The dust from the machine was incredible and typically, I would be wearing a black suit. I was waiting for the day that he asked me to eat the paper, rather than shred it to make sure it was properly disposed of. He caught me one day getting one of the secretaries to do the shredding and I almost lost my job. For his next birthday, I was going to buy him a personal Ollie North desktop shredder to save my lungs.
There was nothing of any importance in his out-basket so I locked his office and thought about where I might find Grace.
Grace O’Grady was our internal auditor and she was my hero. Capital H. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Grace. She was one of the smartest, toughest and funniest women I had ever met. Grace told it like it was and didn’t care who she was telling it to. She had been hired out of retirement by the Chairman of our company’s Audit Committee of the Board of Directors and she reported directly to him, and no-one else. Grace knew the dirt on everyone in the company and knew what closet every skeleton was in.
Her job was to make sure financial controls were followed, procedures were implemented, the i’s were dotted and the t’s were crossed. As a public company we had legal and financial obligations to our shareholders and Grace made sure we followed the rules. Her only disappointment was that the Chairman of the Audit Committee rarely acted on her recommendations. But she kept at it and took her job very seriously.
Grace was rarely seen around the head office because she was on the road most of the time
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