Paris inattendu

I work at a small company. The owner of this company is fairly aloof and secretive, especially around the topic of the other companies he owns or owns parts of. He's a very focused man. If what you have to say doesn't apply directly to the situation of the moment, he doesn't listen to you. He doesn't even hear you. It is difficult at times to work with him or for him. But he owns the company, on payday he moves the money from his account to ours, and the checks have never bounced. And, in the 5 years that I've been here I've discovered that he bonuses us in our 401(k) plans when times are good (and they've been good), and he's given us life insurance policies on his dime. But still, it's difficult to like the man.

He has owned this company for over 25 years, starting as a very young man. Yet he made very little mention of his longevity in an industry that has largely dried up in Chicago. Then one day in early November of 2004 he acted strangely. It was a Friday, and I had been asked to drop off a package to one of our clients whose offices were sort of on my way home. They closed their doors a half hour before we close ours, so I had to leave the office early, and my supervisor had given the okay for me to just head home after the delivery. I walked past the owner's office and, rare as it was, his door was open. I poked my head in and said an obligatory, "Good-bye," and "Have a nice weekend," and he became very animated.

"Are you leaving now?" he asked.

He's a bit of a stickler for putting in your time. He hates clock-watchers, those who come in right on the dot at 8:30 and leave on the dot at 5:30, so, as it was 4:30, I felt compelled to tell him I was dropping off something for a client.

He brushed that off. "Don't leave, yet. I have something for you to take home. I'll meet you at your car."

When you have no history of personal interaction with somebody, and then suddenly he's arranging private time with you, you might get a little nervous, like I did. I went out to the car, but then realized I had forgotten something at my desk, so I went inside. He saw me and thought I was being impatient, and he repeated that he would meet me out in the parking lot.

It was an unseasonably warm day for November, so I sat in the car with the windows open, wondering if he had devised a really new, different, exceptionally cruel way of firing me. He walked up, placed a small, green, lunch-sized bag on the passenger seat, and said "Don't open this until you get home. Then, when you open it, call me."

WTF?! He's going to fire me by bag? I drove to the client's office building, walked the half-mile from the parking garage to their office, dropped off the package, and finished the mile round trip back to the car. I got in and stared for a few moments at the bag and thought to hell with it! I opened the bag and inside was an envelope and a book about Maui. We had been to Maui on the job earlier in the year, so I thought nothing of it, perhaps something from the client as a thank you. I opened the envelope to find a card inside. The first printed paragraph read something to the effect that in order for a company to survive for 25 years, it takes good, loyal, hard-working people. The second paragraph read "You are invited to join [my wife] and me in Maui December 27th to January 1...."

As noted earlier, it was an unusually warm day for November, so when I got back in the car I had rolled the windows down again, which allowed my exclamation of "HOLY FUCK!" to echo and reverberate throughout the entire parking garage! It was awfully close to quitting time, so someone must have heard me. My hands flew up to my mouth when I heard my voice coming back to me. I reread and reread the card to make sure I understood it clearly, that it wasn't referring to "The Maui Gardens" restaurant in some hokey northern Illinois town.

I arrived home and showed my wife the bag, which I had repacked as original, save for the opened envelope. Her reaction was quiet disbelief. She was waiting to hear the "but," the punchline to the joke. The only "but" was that there wasn't one. He was taking all of his employees and their immediate families to Maui for a week at New Year's!

I called him, as instructed, and he told me that he felt he had the best staff now than he ever had since he started the business. This was a one time deal to celebrate 25 years of success, a huge thank you to the people who worked hard, kept the company together, and who happened to be here on its 25th birthday.

The trip was cool. There were company-hosted dinners, but activities were on our dime. My wife and I got his 'n hers mani- & pedicures, caught an awesome, if distant, shot of a whale breaching, and took a stupid, crazy, funny, COLD drive up to Haleakala Crater. My wife, who had never been there prior to the trip, definitely wants to go back in the future.

Sooner than we wanted, the trip was over, and we went back to our regular lives.

This year I was looking forward to our usual holiday dinner, hosted by my boss and his wife, usually at some nice, out of the way place, where we're free to order anything on the menu, and drink just about as much as we dare. Then one day this past October, after one of our work trips, I took a Monday off. Something occurred at the office that required me to come in briefly to take care of it. I stopped at my desk and found resting atop it a colorful box, the kind that folds closed at the top to form a little handle. I opened it and discovered inside little chocolates and cookies wrapped in packages with designer-type names on them. And a card.

I opened the card only to discover two messages, each printed on paper and pasted onto the inside of the card, facing each other, each in French. The others in the office had already gotten theirs, and someone had already run the text through an online translation site, and handed me the transcript. One was a poem, the other was the message of import. It basically read, "Thank you for another tremendous year. Without the hard work and dedication of our staff, we couldn't do it. Please come with us for a week in Paris December 26th to January 2...."

I looked at my co-worker and said, "You gotta be fuckin' kidding me! What happened to the 'one-time deal?'" My worry is that the boss will establish a precedent, and next year, when we just go back to the holiday dinner, people will be pissed off that we're not going someplace exotic or romantic or cool. But, in the meantime, we're going to Paris! (and yes, the one in France, not Illinois). In a job that requires a heavy travel schedule, one might think the gift of travel would be hard to swallow.

It's getting difficult not to like the man.



dassall