Rant & Raves

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” a very soft-spoken voice loomed the room. The door opened, a young, tall, handsome gentleman in his early thirties appeared at the front door, and he walked briskly into the room. From the way he dressed, acted and talked, he appeared to be highly educated and leading quite a successful career.

“Dad,” the young man said over the thundering noise outside the room. There was a riot outside the building where thousands of people were protesting.

“Yes my son,” the old man said, with the forever gentle smile on his face.

“Dad, there are lots of protestors outside, and there are blood spilling everywhere! What can we do?” the young man asked.

“Well, there is nothing I can do, my son. I have already given stern warnings to the managers of their racist remark,” said the old man, the smile was etched on his well seasoned face, and he added, “And I have given instructions to our PR departments on my stern warnings to those managers.”

“Dad, people saw what went on during the live telecast of our shareholders meetings, and those managers said something rather disgusting, not only racist, but seditious and it is sending out the wrong message to our staff,” the young man pledged.

“Yes, and that is the reason why we are not going to live telecast our meetings in the future,” a voice loomed behind the young man. Heads turned, and the Chief Operation Officer walked in, “We certainly don’t want to create discomfort among our workers.”

The young man’s eyes widened, and he asked in bewilderment, “But… Isn’t it more appropriate if we punished those who made the seditious comments more severely instead of not telecasting the event? So does that mean the next round of meetings will be strictly closed-doors whereas those managers still allowed to make those seditious remarks? Then how about creating true harmony in the company?”

The COO smiled, and said, “This our decision, and what happened inside the meeting room remained in the meeting room. That’s for the best of our staff and shareholders. They don’t need to know our company meeting.”

“But…”, the young man was about the complained but the CEO of the company interrupted him, “This is final decision, my son.”

The young man looked defeated, but he kept his cool. “Okay. But how about the percentage of market value of the company? You published a number which is much lower. A lot of those staff and shareholders know about it and they hired world-class accountants, finance gurus and all that to do a research on it, and they found the value to be higher.”

The COO answered before the old man could, and he said, “Well, we are not going to discuss about this matter anymore, young man.”

The young man was unhappy with the answer, and the old man noticed that, so he said, “My son, the number is based on best method available, and it is based on what is best for our people.”

“Dad, the numbers indicated that the calculation is based on par value, which is way off the actual market value! So why is that? Do you know that a lot of our staff is not happy about the company publishing fake and biased reports? Furthermore, after more than 30 years of effort, a small percentage of increment indicates the lack of competence of our company, and it is seemed that the effort we poured in has been nothing but a big failure!” the young man raised his voice, just a little.

“Furthermore, our staff is demanding that we publish the method of calculation and make it public,” the young man added.

The COO smiled, “Don’t you remember that I had already made a public statement that the number was final, and later announced that our departments will publish the method of calculation?”

“Yes,” the young man answered almost instantly, “And it has been more than a month since your announcement but there are nothing coming out from your department! If your department has done the calculations just so you could publish the numbers, then what is the difficulties to take that same report and publish it to the public?”

The COO looked at the old man, and the old man looked back. Silence overtook the room, and no one was making any movement. It was as if the world had came to a still.

Finally, the COO broke the ice. “We published a lower than actual number is so that we could continue our plans. Remember that our initial plan was to hit a certain target? Well, we don’t want to stop there, so we must publish a low number so we could continue to increase the actual market value.”

The message sent a chill down to the spine of the young man. He didn’t expect the truth to be like this. He was about to say something when the COO added, “By the way, just wait for a few weeks or so, and our staff will forget about this matter. Or at least our PR people will forget about this issue. So just let this issue drop and we go back to our own business.

Before the young man could say anything, old man interrupted, “Keep this in this room, my son. We are not going to let our staff and shareholders to know of this.” And the old man looked at the COO.

“Don’t worry, sir. Our PR people will know what kind of statement to publish,” the COO assured the CEO.

The old man smiled, and said, “That is great. Besides, can you please call the guy at the 4th floor to come up here? I need to ask for his advice on certain matters.”

“Yes sir,” with that, the COO walked out the room, not even looking back at the young man. He certainly did not like the confrontation from the young man. All he ever wanted is to mind his own business and make a fortune out of it while he is at that position. His mind drifted back to his young days, and his ambition to make a legacy for himself, for the company, and for all the staff in the company. He smiled to himself, “I was so naive.” And with that, he disappeared out of sigh from the room.

“Dad, there are so many things that are not right,” the young man tried to plea with his father to do some good.

“Oh yeah? Like what?” the old man, in clear puzzlement, asked.

The young man looked up to the old man, and said, “First of all, like your PR department. You clearly made an indications to all the staff that the PR department has freehand to do what they are needed to do, but it seems like those freehands are the freehands to publish statements to criticize and discredit the former CEO of the company! But when the PR people probed deeper into our company, you gave them a stern warning not to interfere! When our staff questioned you, you fired them!”

The old man smiled, and he didn’t reply.

“How about the mega projects! Why were there no open tender? Everything was done by closed tender. Our staff are questioning the integrity of our purposes!” the young man, in deep frustration and felt troubled by the recent development, asked.

“My son, do you remember Uncle James?” the old man asked.

“Uncle James?”

“Yes, Uncle James.”

“No. I can’t say I remember him. Do we have a Uncle James?”

The old man, upon hearing that remark, smiled, “Yes. Uncle James is the brother of your grandma’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s cousin. You have met him once when you were two!”

The young man scratched his head, and asked, “What? Who? I am confused!”

The old man gave out a soft laugh, still smiling, and said, “Its okay. The main point is this: Uncle James is interested in those projects, and since this is our company’s money, why not benefit our own people?”

The young man, weak in knees, asked, “So this is how you run the company? To benefit our own? How about the staff? They are all in this company. What about their benefits?”

“My dear son, this is how things are here,” the old man gave the very kind smile to the young man, and he said, “The ex-CEO has done that, and I am just doing what has been done for ages. Besides, a lot of those in the management position are allowed to allocate certain projects to their relatives or friends.”

“At least the ex-CEO wasn’t so obvious, dad. But the decisions you made nowadays are so obvious that almost all the staff knew about it,” the young man felt like looking for a seat to rest his weak knees. He certainly did not expect to confront such truth.

“That’s how it is, my son. So let’s drop this matter,” the old man smiled.

“Fine. But how about those extra activities that the company initiated? Isn’t all those money better spent on something more beneficial to our very own staff? Don’t you think it is a bit expensive to send one of the staff overseas just to perform some local games? Shouldn’t the staff be doing technology research during these overseas trip? Isn’t that the money could be better spent on our own staff training on something more constructional? How about building the bridge that links to our office next block? You said the capacity is full so a new bridge is inevitable. I agree, but isn’t it more efficient to improve on the current bridge, expand the capacity? Isn’t that cheaper to do than building an arc bridge that extended out unnecessarily, and how about the viewing deck? With the viewing deck, isn’t that going to make people to stop and that will increase the slowness of human traffic because of blockage from those people viewing the scenes on the bridge?”

“Young man, our company wants to be the biggest, the first in everything. Don’t you see our company’s World of Record book downstairs? We want to be the first in everything, and the biggest in everything,” answered the COO, whom apparently has been standing near the door to listen to every words of exchange.

The young man turned his sight to the COO, and the voice was once again raised, “Yes, but how about the best in everything? Do you intend to spend those money into training of our young staff, to make them better so our company can compete in the international form? No? Then how about the recent merger of our subsidiaries to make the biggest company in the world. Our nearest competition has one third capacity of one of our subsidiaries, but their production efficiency is to like 150% better than us. So why not we merge those companies to increase the efficiency than just for the sake of making it the biggest company in the world?”

The CEO and COO laughed upon hearing that, and the COO exclaimed, “So what? One of our subsidiaries is making shitload of money, so much so that we could build the tallest building in the world, and we certainly can afford to spend those money to create as many world records as we want to!”

The young man felt a sudden burden on his shoulder. He couldn’t take that as an answer, so he confronted his father, “Dad! Listen to this! One day our subsidiaries will run out of money, then what? Don’t you think we should plan for our future, make our company more competitive in international level to compete with other companies and to attract investors?”

The old man kept quiet, and he was still smiling.

“Watch it, young man! Watch the way you speak to your father! You are not to question your father, and you certainly are not to question how the company is being handled. You have to take it what it is! If not you will be fired from this company!” the COO gave a stern warning to the young man.

Ignoring the COO, the young man looked at his father, and said, “Dad, so you are just going to stay quiet? What is the use of displaying harmonious quality on the surface? How are you going to answer to your customers if you decide to remain quiet on so many things?”

The 4th floor guy stood near the door, and had remained quiet for so long. He knew about his status in the company, so he kept standing there, planning and calculating his next move. He won’t make a move to jeopardize his own benefits in the company. He decided, at that moment, that he should step up for his boss, and also his father-in-law.

“Young man, the CEO will give you an answer later. Our CEO is a very busy person and he has no time for this kind of childish debate. The CEO will give you an answer when he is ready.”

“Yeah, after he has consulted you and after you have written the speech for which he will just read it out, is that correct?” the young man pointed a finger at the 4th floor guy, and felt the anger raising to a dangerous level.

The 4th floor guy wanted to retaliate but the old man interrupted him.

“My son, I will give you an answer when I am ready.”

A tear, as bright and shinny as the mist in spring, sprung out from the young man’s eyes. He felt that his heart sunk deeper into the abyss, and he was extremely disappointed with the outcome of the meeting. He walked to the door, and before he exited, he turned back and looked at his father once more, and said, “Dad. I hope you can understand this. The staff of our company are very disappointed. We had worked so hard to achieve what we had achieved today, yet the decisions you made certainly favor certain parties, and you are allowing your cronies to takeover all the important task. The information you gave out misleaded the staff, your very own staff who has been here forever, and all those decisions you made, or at least endorsed by you, are creating disharmony in the company. Right now, the protestors outside are the very bloodline of our company; our staff. And your cronies are spilling blood on the street by harming those innocent staff because all they wanted was to find out the truth, and hoping that you would do something to help the company to achieve a higher level. All these blood spilling is caused by you, and your cronies. One day those shareholders will pull out all their investment in the company, and by then the company will become nothing but an empty shell. Right now a lot of investors are investing elsewhere because of all these, and one day we will run out of investors. I begged you, dad, to make things right. Please make the company a better place to be, to make us more competitive so that we could attract from investors to invest in us. Disharmony in the company will only scare investors away, and we need to spend wisely as our fortune will not last us forever.”

With that, the young man walked out from the room.

“Young chaps. They have no idea how things work here,” the COO said.

The 4th floor guy exchanged looks with the COO and CEO, and they started to laugh. But the laugher was shielded deep inside the CEO’s room, and no one outside hear the laughter.

- the end -

Thank you