Chapter 61

Terry walked into the corporate offices of Parker’s Perfect Pizza. She stopped in front of the desk where Dan’s secretary was reading a magazine. The fact that she was at her desk was not a good sign. She usually spent a good percentage of each workday going over the summary reports with Dan.

Frowning, Terry said, “Hello, Susan.”

“Hello, Terry,” Susan answered putting down her magazine.

“I’m here to talk to Dan,” Terry said.

“He’s not here,” Susan answered.

“Where is he? We’re supposed to have a meeting this afternoon,” Terry said.

Susan shrugged her shoulders and answered, “I don’t know. He called in early this morning and said that he wouldn’t be in until later today.”

“Is he mad at me?” Terry asked. He hadn’t been answering her calls for the past two days and it was really starting to bother her.

“Not that I know of. In fact, he said that you could use his office to check over the sales figures and work on your proposal,” Susan answered.

“Is he okay?” Terry asked.

“He hasn’t been in much this week,” Susan answered. It was a little unusual for him to miss that much work.

Terry shook her head as if trying to clear it. She said, “I guess I’ll go over the sales figures now.”

“Have fun,” Susan said picking up her magazine. She was feeling a little bored, but Terry typically didn’t require her help.

Terry went into the office and pulled up the sales charts on Dan’s computer. The figures all looked good to her. There was one store that wasn’t performing as well as the others. She made a note in her book to remind Dan that he needed to see what was going on there. She checked the profits and mapped them against her planned expansion schedule. Everything was right on the money. Now all she had to do was to get Dan to agree to it.

There was just enough time before the meeting, to go over her proposal once more. She unpacked her laptop and turned it on. While it was booting, she dug through her briefcase for her list of ‘Dan Questions.’ She pulled it out, and glanced over it. She opened the proposal and scrolled down through the various sections applying the questions that Dan would ask. Every time she sat down to work, she thanked Tom’s mother for her advice.

Dan cleared his throat and said, “I’m here.”

Terry looked up from her laptop, startled. She said, “Oh, sorry. I was just going over the expansion plans.”

“That can wait,” Dan said with a smile.

It was nice to see Terry sitting behind his desk. She looked very comfortable there. He thought it was very nice not to be sitting there for a change.

“Okay,” Terry said sitting back in the chair.

“I need to hire a new accountant,” Dan said.

“What?” Terry asked sitting up and staring at him. She asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Dan said shaking his head.

“Are you firing me?” Terry asked frantically.

She wondered what could have possibly happened since the last time they had talked. She recalled how Tom had warned her against pushing Dan too hard about expanding the business. She had gotten him to open nine more pizzerias over the past year bringing the number of stores up to twelve. She was ready to move to an even larger number of stores.

“No,” Dan answered holding up his hands. He added, “Calm down, Terry.”

“Why hire a new accountant then?” Terry asked.

There was an edge of desperation in her voice. She was watching a perfect opportunity disappear on her.

Dan answered, “Well, I’ve got a special project that I want you to work on for me.”

“A special project? What kind of project? What about the expansion plans?” Terry asked feeling like the world was spinning out of control.

“Would you like a root beer?” Dan asked thinking that she was way too flustered to discuss business.

“Root beer? Sure, I’ll have a root beer,” Terry said. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

Dan went over to the mini-refrigerator in his office. It was stocked with seven different brands of root beer. He pulled out two cans of root beer.

He handed one of them over to her and said, “All I have are cans. Let me see if I can find a cup around here.”

“That’s okay. I’ll drink it out of the can,” Terry said.

Dan sat down in the chair and popped the top on his can of root beer. He said, “I’ve got a special project I’d like you to devote a hundred percent of your time on.”

“What?” Terry asked thinking that this was the end of her dream for Parker’s Perfect Pizza. She opened her can of root beer and took a sip.

“Well, I want to change jobs. I’d like to be the guy at the top. I’d like to be making the major decisions, but I don’t want to deal with running the day to day operations at the corporate level. Daily summaries of what is going on would be fine for me. I don’t want to have to get on the phone and talk to the manager of store number nine to find out why his sales aren’t improving. I don’t want to have to travel to some other city to check out locations for new stores. I don’t want to have to monitor the inventories of twelve different stores to make sure that everyone is adequately supplied. I want someone to tell me that it’s happening and what steps are being taken to correct any problems that might arise,” Dan said.

“What do you mean?” Terry asked.

“I don’t want to be the President of Parker’s Perfect Pizza. I want to be the CEO of Parker’s Perfect Pizza. I need you to figure out how to make that happen,” Dan said sitting back in his chair to watch the reaction of Terry.

“You already are CEO,” Terry said although that wasn’t exactly true. He was the guy at the top. He was the owner of a privately held corporation.

“In title only,” Dan replied looking across the desk at Terry. He pointed at her and said, “I want the real thing.”

“Who is going to run the daily operations?” Terry asked. The number of things that she was going to have to consider was almost over whelming. There were sales, purchasing, site planning, account management, payroll, and legal to name a few.

Dan gave her a big smile that brought a chill down her spine and said, “That’s for you to figure out.”

“Oh,” Terry said feeling like her brain was about to go into total shutdown. She realized that she should have been taking notes and grabbed a pen.

While taking a sip of his root beer, Dan watched her scribble a bunch of notes across her pad of paper. He felt that she was writing down a lot more than he had actually said to her. He was very curious as to what kind of answer she was going to find for him. He hoped that it was a good one.

He waited for her to look back up at him before he asked, “Do you have any questions?”

Terry stared at him for a second trying to organize her thoughts. Finally, she asked, “Do you have a daily work checklist?”

Coming to the conclusion that he had made the right decision, Dan smiled and said, “I’ll have Susan give you a copy of all of my checklists.”

“Good,” Terry said thinking that was at least a good starting point.

Dan rose from his chair and stretched. He said, “Well, I guess I’ll be going.”

Terry looked at him and asked, “Where are you going?”

“Ann is going back to Chicago to work on a mural at the end of the week. Sally is heading off to school soon. I thought I’d go home and spend a little time relaxing by the pool with my wives,” Dan said with a smile.

She looked at him puzzled for a moment wondering when he had gotten married. She would have asked, but there was a more important question that demanded her attention. She asked, “What about running the company?”

“You’ll have my checklists. Run the company for a few days and see what is required to do the job,” Dan said with a smile.

“Okay,” Terry said without much enthusiasm.

“I’ll call you in a day or so and see how things are going,” Dan said. He winked at her and left the office feeling a thousand times better.

Terry couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She was floored that he just walked out of the office without talking about the expansion plans. She stared at her laptop thinking of how much work she had put into the proposal.

Ten minutes later, Susan came in the office with a thick manila folder. She placed it in front of Terry as she said, “Dan asked me to copy his work sheets for you. Here are your copies.”

“Thanks,” Terry said staring at the folder. The longer she looked at it, the thicker it looked. She didn’t want to open it.

Smiling brightly at Terry, Susan said, “Dan sure was in a good mood when he left here. Did you have a good meeting?”

“It was just peachy,” Terry said. She opened the folder and cringed when she looked at the first page of notes. She looked up and said, “We didn’t even get a chance to talk about the expansion plans.”

Susan looked very surprised. She said, “That’s odd. Dan doesn’t forget details like that.”

Terry looked at the folder and then over at her laptop. Something tickled the back of her brain. She looked over at the laptop and then back at the folder. She was hit with a sudden epiphany as she realized what Dan had done.

Sitting back in the chair she shouted, “I am such an idiot!”

Surprised at the volume of Terry’s exclamation, Susan asked, “Why do you say that?”

“This whole meeting was about my plans for the expansion. I missed the most basic ‘Dan Question’ of them all!”

“What?”

“What does this plan do to Dan’s life?” Terry answered wondering why that question had never made it to her list of ‘Dan Questions.’ She felt pretty stupid at having missed such an essential question.

Susan laughed and waved a hand at Terry. She said, “That’s an easy one to answer. It increases the number of items on his to-do lists.”

“Exactly,” Terry said. She lifted the folder and said, “He just gave me his job for the next two days to make that point. That sneaky bastard.”

Tom was rolling on the floor laughing. He couldn’t stop, it no matter how hard he tried. He had the image of one of those cartoon multi-ton weights crashing down on Terry in the middle of the meeting. Even Amanda was more than a little amused by Terry’s description of the disastrous meeting.

Tom said, from flat on his back, “Dan got you good.”

Terry stomped her foot and said, “It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is. This is Dan at his best,” Tom said, and burst out laughing again.

“He’s never done anything like this,” Terry said putting her hands on her hips.

“Sure he has. He does it all of the time.”

“No way,” Terry said.

She had worked with him for two years and not seen him do anything like this.

Tom calmed down, sat up as he crossed his legs semi-yoga style and said, “Do you remember me telling you that if you get in Dan’s way that he’ll go right through you? He doesn’t let anything stop him from achieving his goals. He’s tenacious that way.”

“Sure,” Terry said.