She's the Boss (23 page)

“I can help you with that, sir. First, I need you to right-click on your desktop.”

“OK,” said the caller.

“Now, do you get a pop-up menu?” asked Becca.

“No.”

“All right, sir. Can you right-click again?” There was a fraction of a pause. “How about right now? Do you see a pop-up menu?”

“Nope,” said the caller, sounding decidedly irritated.

“Hmmm. Can you tell me what you’ve done up to this point?”

“You told me to write ‘click’ and and I did.” The caller made an exasperated sound. “I got out a piece of paper and wrote down ‘click’.”

Becca looked to me with tragic eyes.

I gave her a respectful few seconds of silence so she could gather her thoughts and pull herself together. Then she resumed walking the caller through the steps until she hit another road block.

“I’m stuck!” The caller’s voice was increasingly agitated. “What the hell do I do now?”

“Can you tell me what you see on the screen?”

“It says, ‘Hit ENTER when ready’.”

“So click ENTER.”

“Now?”

“NOW,” said Becca through gritted teeth.

“B-but,” the caller stuttered, “how do I know when it’s ready?”

I really didn’t know whether to laugh or weep with frustration. And I wasn’t even the one helping the caller. Becca’s frayed nerves were almost at the end of their tether and she looked like she was on the verge of throwing in the towel. With shaky hands, she placed the caller on MUTE and turned to me. “I can’t do this, Karsynn.”

“Yes you can, Becca. Take a deep breath,” I coached. “Deep breaths. Happy thoughts. Yes. Breathe out the sad . . . now breathe in the glad.”

“Breathe out the sad,” she repeated slowly, “breathe in the glad.”

“Better?”

“A little.”

“Good.” I reached over and patted her hand. “You can go back to the caller now.”

“Right,” said Becca. “I can do this.” She gathered all her remaining strength and released the MUTE key. “Sir, just click ENTER whenever
you
are ready.”

“Finally,” said the caller with a big sigh of relief, “I’m there.”

Becca breathed out an even bigger sigh of relief. “Have I answered all of your questions today?”

“No!” the caller snapped. “Can you tell me how I can get to the Program Manager?”

“Of course, sir. Press the CONTROL and ESCAPE keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Then type the letter ‘P’ and it should bring up the Program Manager.”

“What P?” the caller demanded with a shrill of annoyance. “I don’t see a P.”

“On your keyboard, sir.”

The caller sounded ever more confused. “What do you mean?”

“P . . . on your keyboard!”

“You SICK, SICK young woman,” scolded the caller, “I’M NOT GOING TO DO THAT!”

Later, after that call had ended, I decided to give Becca a ten minute break from the phones. By the look on her face, she might well have been in danger of committing bloody murder, though given the circumstances, I couldn’t really blame her.

And then I was on to the next call. The agent, Siew Mei, was already halfway into the call.

“Sir,” said Siew Mei. “Let me repeat your password once again. That’s F as in Fried Chicken, A is in AIDS, B as in Botulism, C as in Cancer and Q as in Cucumber?”

I bit back a smile. Siew Mei could sure benefit from using NATO phonetic alphabet.

After the caller had clicked off, I gave Siew Mei the standard drill. “Write this down: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-Ray, Yankee, Zulu.” I spoke slowly and clearly, pausing to enable her to catch up. “You got all that?”

“I think so,” Siew Mei murmured, madly scrawling away in her notepad.

“Good. In the future, that’s the alphabet code you should be using. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yes?” Siew Mei looked at me anxiously.

“Cucumber starts with a C.”

Chapter Fifteen

Carter had kept to his promise. I became his protégé and started attending meetings in his shadow. And it was great to see Carter in his element. He was like Yo-Yo Ma, playing the clients like a concert cellist on an opening night at Carnegie Hall.

As we were heading to the boardroom, Carter turned to me and said, “One of the best ways to impress a client is to take an hour of his time when he’s expecting you to take two. One of the worst is to take three hours.”

“In other words,” I said, “keep it short.”

“Keep it short and you’re giving your client the gift of time.”

I nodded in what I hoped was an intelligent manner. “So who are we meeting today?”

“Tomohisha Sato from Narita Teleservices,” he said briskly. “He just flew in from Japan.”

“Why are you meeting him?”

“We’d like to buy a stake in his company. “

“Why?”

“We’d like to take Lightning Speed Communications to the next level. Become a global telecom provider. And right now, every telecom provider has increased their appetite for Japan’s telecom pie. Lightning Speed, being one of them. And if this deal goes through, we’ll gain a significant foothold in Japan.”

“No. I meant, why
you
? Why are
you
heading this meeting? Shouldn’t some executive VP of operations be negotiating this deal?”

“While I’m here in South East Asia, it just makes sense for me to handle it.”

“Mmmm.” I frowned to myself. I had the strangest instinct that I had missed something important but I just could not put a finger on what it might have been. But before I had time to prevaricate, Carter opened the door to the boardroom and stepped back with exaggerated courtesy, waving me to go in front of him.

I stepped inside and found several high-ranking executives seated at the table with their intimidating files in front of them. For the first few minutes, there was a general hubbub of greeting all around and there was much ceremonious handshaking. After the standard formalities, Carter sat down, adjusted his tie, cleared his throat, and then he was off.

Mr. Tomohisha Sato had brought along a translator so Carter spoke slowly and clearly, pausing to enable his interpreter to catch up and accurately translate the conversation.

I sank further back into my seat, painfully aware that I was tossed out of my depth here. As the meeting progressed, I watched Carter with an envy tantamount to awe. He was a masterful negotiator—skilled, focused, professional and confident without being too overpowering. There’s a very fine line between confidence and arrogance and Carter never once crossed that line.

He entertained when it was appropriate and became grave when required. He sang to the tunes Mr. Sato wanted to hear, getting him excited about future projects and prospects. Somehow he even managed to make ‘reluctant’ concessions so Mr. Sato felt like he was walking away with the big prize. It was obvious to all and sundry that Mr. Sato was rice pudding in Carter’s hands.

Konnichiwa and Holy Mochi Balls! Was Carter Lockwood a geisha in his previous life? I half-expected him to kneel before Mr. Sato in a silk kimono and pour him a cup of sake.

“What I hope,” Carter finished, “is to reach an agreement that is mutually advantageous to both parties.” He paused to let that sink in for a moment. “Can I have your commitment?”

A kind of dramatic silence occurred as Carter and Mr. Sato looked at each other to see who was going to respond first. Neither did.

The silence was deafening, but Carter just let it sit there.

Carter didn’t restate his case. He didn’t lobby. He didn’t let Mr. Sato know it was a tough decision. He simply sat there, making a pyramid of his hands, waiting for Mr. Sato to say something.

It was a brilliant and gutsy move. A game of wits, so to speak. Who was going to be the first to lose theirs? I wondered, staying glued to my seat in fascination.

Eventually Mr. Sato began to talk, and he must have talked without pausing for a full fifteen minutes while his interpreter rushed to keep up with him. By the time Mr. Sato was done talking, he had come around. Basically, he had talked himself into agreeing with much of Carter’s position.

Carter met my eyes across the table and regarded me with a complacent grin.

I smiled a wide, relieved smile and wished I could feel that confident in my own abilities.

Suffice it to say, it was a slam dunk.

The deal was sealed.

After the meeting, I hung back while Carter tidied up his files.

“Do you know that Mr. Tomohisha Sato can speak and understand English perfectly well?”

Taken aback, I asked, “Then why did he bring along an interpreter?”

Carter gave a short shrug. “It’s common practice for Japanese businessmen. A translator buys them time. It gives them more time to frame their reaction and form a response.”

“I see.” There was a small silence and then I said, “You sure gave Mr. Sato plenty of time to frame his reaction with all those pregnant pauses.”

He smiled wryly. “Silence is a void and people feel an overwhelming need to fill it. For me, it’s always served one of two purposes: it either lets the other person talk or it forces the other person to talk.”

“And you wanted Mr. Sato to talk,” I stated matter-of-factly.

“Of course. I always want the other guy to talk because eventually he may say what I want to hear.”

“Hmmm.” I stared into space with a still expression on my face. “Interesting . . .”

In the meantime, Carter was already striding out of the boardroom at breakneck speed. I scrambled to my feet, bolted out the door and belted down the hallway. Huffing and puffing, I soon caught up to him. “Must you always walk so fast?”

Carter said with a certain amount of irritation, “Must you always walk so slow?”

“So . . .” I let out a puff of air and stated the blindingly obvious, “Silence is your weapon.”

“It is. It’s also my defense. When I remain silent, it allows me to collect my thoughts and that lessens my chances of saying a lot more than I need to, mean to, or want to.”

“I see,” I said needlessly to buy some precious thinking seconds. “But what if Mr. Sato had said
no
?”

“If people have a need to say
no
, let them,” Carter said simply. “A few well-placed
no’s
can create the right environment for a
yes.
”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded to register immense respect for all this information. “So Carter . . .”

“Yeah?”

I fixed him with a pointed look. “Can I have a pay raise?”

“No.” His refusal was automatic.

“That’s OK.” I smiled sweetly. “I’ll just keep on asking and someday you might just say
yes
. So . . .” I cleared my throat and adopted a more serious tone. “Can I have a pay raise?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

“No.”

I fluttered my eyelids at him. “Pretty please with sugar on top?”

He stayed silent.

“Pretty please with sugar on top and a cherry? And a dollop of cream?”

He still said nothing.

I kept on adding more and more toppings—Reese’s Pieces crumbles, Oreo crumbles, chocolate sprinkles, coconut flakes, nuts, sour gummy worms, mini gummy bears, generally making a total nuisance of myself.

Carter looked pained. “Karsynn?” he said at last.

“Yeah?”

“Please stop talking.”

“OK.” I grinned.

“Thank you,” said Carter with a slight inflection in his voice that indicated that he might have in fact enjoyed our playful banter.

Chapter Sixteen