“We’ll see,” I said. “Just depends on how much work I get done today and tomorrow.” Over Matt’s shoulder, I saw the elevator doors open and my aging father stepped
out with a frown on his face and a hunch to his shoulders. He made a beeline for my office, and Matt cleared out of there before our dad could stop and lecture him too. I promptly started typing nothing on my keyboard in an attempt to look as if I was hard at work. My father didn’t even bother saying hi to my receptionist or asking if he could enter my office. Instead, he just walked in and stood there with folded arms until I acknowledged him.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “Just one second….” I typed a little more nonsense, then hit the spacebar with a little extra zest, and then turned to face him. “Just had to send that last email, sorry.”
“I thought you said you would be in meetings all day.”
“I have been,” I said. “I had two this morning and there’s another one I am supposed to be at starting in about ten minutes. Is there a particular reason you came into the office today, something I can help you with?” I knew these sorts of questions bothered my dad, and that was precisely why I asked them. He didn’t like to admit out loud that he only came into Becker Tech to check up on me, even though we all knew that’s what he was doing.
“As a matter of fact, there is a particular reason I came into the office today.” I watched as the frown melted off his face, and I could tell he was feeling pretty proud of himself. Whatever he was going to say next was going to irritate me, I was sure of it, so I pushed my back into my chair and braced myself. “I ran into Harris Stone at the club earlier this morning, and he told me that he no longer does business with Becker Tech. He said he just couldn’t justify it anymore. So, would you care to explain to me how you lost one of our most important clients? A client I brought in when this company was just a few years off the ground and who has been doing business with me ever since?”
“Why don’t you ask Harris why we aren’t doing business anymore?”
“I did,” he said, walking further into the office and sitting down in the chair on the other side of my desk. “That was the first thing I asked him, and he told me that you were no longer honoring the same prices you once did. He said that when he went to renew his contract with Becker at the beginning of the year, you were charging him $5,000 extra for the basic security package.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But I don’t see how this is coming as such a surprise to you. You know that we raised prices last year. Everyone who had a current contract with us got to keep the same rate for the remainder of their contract, but then, as we informedallour clients, our prices were going to go up. Harris knew it was coming, and he chose not to do business with us anymore, which is his right, but we can’t just bend over backward every time a client doesn’t want to pay us our going rate.”
“This isn’t just any client we’re talking about, this is Harris! You should’ve given him a better deal,” my dad said. “This isn’t how you do business son, you don’t screw over your most loyal customers. Yourewardthem for sticking with you for so long.”
“Dad, Harris is a son of a bitch who has been getting good deals out of us for nearly two decades. At some point, he had to expect that we would be raising our prices—the costs have simply gotten too high. He’s an entitled idiot if he thought he would be getting a cheaper rate from us until the end of time.”
“He’s a friend.”
I gave my dad a look. “Oh c’mon.”
“He is! Or should I say, hewas. You should’ve seen how angry he was at the club this morning. Which reminds me, a little heads up next time you’re going to ruin a business relationship of mine would be appreciated, thanks.”
“I’m not trying to ruin your business relationships,” I said. “I am trying to run a company, and guess what, to run a company, the CEO has to know when to raise the prices. It was the only way we were going to be able to continue growing at the rate we have, and when the numbers for this latest quarter come in, I think you will see that.”
“Numbers.” My dad mocked. “All you do is talk about numbers. The business world is all just numbers to you, isn’t it? I started this company in our shed, don’t you remember that? Your mother had to work extra shifts at the school library so that I could build nothing into something, and I did that, in part, by making friends with the right people and by honoring those friendships through fair business deals. Now, you’re undoing all my hard work, all in the name of better ‘numbers’.”
I sighed and rubbed my temples. “Dad—you can’t have it both ways. Either you want to remain one of the richest men in the country, and keep benefiting from all the perks that come with it, or you want to be a small-fish business owner who can give kickbacks to his friends simply because you go back a few years. Either one is honestly fine with me, I just think it’s time you decide which. Because, and I repeat,you can’t have both.”
My dad pointed a mean finger at me. “That,David,is where you’re wrong. I had both before I gave the company over to you, which tells me that this isn’t an issue of having cake and eating it too. This is about incompetence.Yourincompetence.”
I was about to openly laugh in my father’s face, and openly push this low-voiced argument into a full-blown fight, when my secretary, Leanne, poked her head into my office and buried the tension like a hatchet.
“Mr. Becker,” she said, looking only at me. “I’m just reminding you of the meeting you have starting in a few minutes. You should head down to the third floor.”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you, Leanne.” I smiled at her and reminded myself to give her a raise because she knew thatI knewwhen my meeting started, so that was just her way of providing me with an escape from this conversation. Then, I stood up and started to gather my things. “Well, this has been a very productive conversation, thank you for dropping by dad, and letting me know your concerns. Please be aware that they have been duly noted.”
“This conversation isn’t over,” he said.
“It is for now.” I headed for the door. Then I paused and looked over my shoulder at him. “You really should get out of the city, go for a weekend trip or something. I think it would be good.”
“Good formeor good foryou?” he asked.
“I don’t see why it has to be either-or,” I said, then I walked out the door before he had a chance to say anything else.
* * *
Friday rolled around, and five minutes after clock-out time, my brother caught me on my way to the break-room to get myself some more coffee. I had at least another two, maybe three hours of work to get done, and I was in desperate need of caffeine.
“Wow there,” Matt said. “Where are you off to? Elevator is that way.”
“Coffee,” I said. “I need coffee, and then I need to get back to work.”
“Nope.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around, then started pushing me towards the exit. “You are not staying late again. No way in hell. We are going to get a beer, and guess what? All that work will still be waiting for you on Monday morning, I promise.”