“Hello, Alan?” she said to me. “It’s so nice to meet you,” she continued without waiting for me to confirm my identity, extending her hand for a powerful shake. “I’m Pamela Thornsby.”
Pamela ushered me gracefully into a small conference room just off the lobby. Once inside, she shut the door, motioned for me to take a seat and then sat opposite me. How was your flight yesterday? Did you have dinner in the city last night? Any trouble finding the office? Her polite questions came in quick succession, each in a tone meant to communicate that she really cared, but with barely a chance for me to even grunt in between.
“Now, Alan,” she said, turning deadly serious, “here’s how things are going to go today.”
She then proceeded to tell me that in a few minutes I would be sitting down with the retiring executive of the organization whose top job I had come to interview for.
“Wait,” I tried to interrupt, “you mean I’m going to be interviewed by the person whose job I’m trying to win?”
Yes, yes, Pamela said dismissively, clearly indicating with a wave or her hand that such things happened all the time in Beantown. His name was Thompson, Mister Richard Thompson, and he had been the organization’s executive for something like thirty-five years. He would be speaking to me for no more than twenty or thirty minutes, really just to get a sense of who I was, and then I would be returned to this small conference where I was to wait until Mister Thompson had had a chance to brief the Executive Committee on his discussion with you and the other two candidates.
“Wait,” I interrupted again. “There are two other candidates? Here? Today?”
Yes, yes, but not to worry, not to worry. Pamela was there to ensure that everything went smooth as silk and none of the candidates accidentally encountered each other. One was meeting with Mister Thompson as we spoke and the other would be arriving in about twenty minutes, when they would be sequestered in another conference very much like this one, but not quite as nice as this one. Just between me and her, I was told as if Pamela and I were co-conspirators, my conference room was the nicest of the three and she had put me there because I was her leading candidate. She was pulling for me, she really was.
“Wait,” I had to say again. “Who are you again? Don’t you work for the organization hiring me?”
Oh, heavens no, no. Had she forgotten to tell me? She was an executive recruiter that the organization had hired to pre-screen and submit candidates that met the right qualifications to the real decision-makers, Mister Thompson and the Executive Committee. Now, please, stop interrupting, she needed to tell me a few other things before checking on some other arrangements.
And then she took an actual breath, looking at me severely, as if waiting for me to acknowledge the difficulty of her task and apologize for my thoughtless attempts to make it even more difficult.
“...okay…” I said eventually.
Fine, fine. Now, once Mister Thompson has briefed the Executive Committee there would be a determination made, and there was a chance, a chance, mind you, that not all three candidates would be asked to meet with the Executive Committee. She would come and deliver the news either way, but in my case she was sure it would be fine, that there was no possible way I would fail to make the same impression on Mister Thompson that I had made on her, but a chance nonetheless. If things went the way she expected, I would be granted an audience with the Executive Committee. That conversation would likely not last more than thirty minutes, but every one of those thirty minutes would count in the final analysis, she could assure me.
“Do you have any questions?”
It took me a few seconds to realize she had stopped speaking and was now waiting for me to respond.
“Ummm, what happens after that?”
Excellent, excellent. Keep thinking like that and you’ll do fine. After that it was frankly anybody’s guess. The Executive Committee would go into a private session with Mister Thompson and a decision would be made. That decision could be a hiring decision, or it could be a decision to extend the process further. She wasn’t exactly sure.
The silence that followed was short-lived. Clearly uncomfortable with her own inability to affect the process any further, Pamela rose from her chair and quickly excused herself from the room, promising to return when it was time for me to meet with Mister Thompson and asking me to not leave the nicest of the three conference rooms until she came back for me.
Then the door clicked shut and I was left alone. For the first time, I started looking around the room. It was small and windowless, really just big enough for the mahogany table and the six chairs that surrounded it. In one forgotten corner was a green office plant, and on each wall was hung a tasteful piece of office art. I could have been anywhere, I realized, in any of a million little conference rooms in a hundred thousand office buildings, in ten thousand different cities across the globe and everything would look exactly as this one did. I noticed a framed photograph on the wall next to the door -- something black and white of people standing around in coats and ties -- and I had just decided to get up and take a closer look when the door opened and Pamela came rushing back in.
“Okay, Alan, it’s time, it’s time. Mister Thompson is ready for you.”
I picked up my padfolio and followed Pamela out of the room, round a corner, and down the side of what was a busy office complex. A sea of office cubes, a little like Don’s Ergonomic Pods, but more tasteful and understated, greeted me, and in each one, it seemed, a well-dressed young person was hard at work, only a handful looking up to see what kind of creature was being marched past. We traversed the length of the office floor and stopped just outside a corner office.
“Mister Thompson?” Pamela said, again proceeding without waiting for any kind of response. “Alan Larson is here to see you.”
She looked at me and cocked her head to the side, indicating that I should go in. Taking a deep breath, I did, and Pamela quietly shut the door behind me.
“Come in! Come in!” an elderly man from behind a wide desk said, rising slowly and somewhat painfully to his feet. He was dressed in a rumpled three-piece suit, the kind of thing likely last worn by Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon, watch-chain and all. But unlike Mister Greenstreet, Mister Thompson was thin as a rail and had a full head of white hair, combed severely to one side and standing up a bit in the back.
“Hello, Mister Thompson?” I said, stepping forward and extending my hand.
“Yes, I am Richard Thompson,” he said, taking my hand limply in his. “And you are Alan Larson?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Alan Larson, please have a seat.”
We both sat, he behind his desk and me opposite. I could not help but notice that his desk was colossal, easily the biggest I had ever seen, seemingly more a block of concrete than a piece of furniture.
“So, Mister Larson...” Thompson began, looking down at me through a pair of glasses perched on the end of his nose. “Or may I call you Alan?”
“Alan is fine with me, Mister Thompson.”
Thompson smiled. “Thank you. And please, dispense with this ‘Mister Thompson’ nonsense. My name is Richard -- has been since I was born seventy-eight years ago. There is no reason for anyone to call me anything else.”
I nodded, laughing nervously. “Okay.”
“Now, Alan,” Thompson said quickly. “Tell me. How did you first come to hear about my position coming vacant.”
I answered as best I could. “Actually, Mister Thompson, it was my wife who found the advertisement for the position and who brought it to my attention. I did not know until just a few minutes ago that you were vacating the position. Your retirement, I assume?”
Thompson studied me closely in silence for a few uncomfortable seconds. Yes, he was retiring, he said suddenly, and with a hint of frustration in his voice. Retiring after thirty-seven years of service to this organization, thank me very much, thirty-seven years in which the organization had steadily grown in size and influence. How much research had I done on the organization before coming there today? Did I know when it was founded and what its essential purpose was? Did I know anything about its accomplishments and the people who had worked so hard to make them happen? Because it wasn’t just him, I was to be sure about that. He had had the pleasure of keeping his hand on the tiller for so many years, but without the volunteers, and without the staff beneath him, the organization would have had no rudder, and it would have been impossible to steer it in any direction at all. Did I understand that? Did I understand exactly what kind of situation I thought I was walking into?
He took a breath, but thankfully it wasn’t out of any desire for me to answer any of the questions he had just asked. Instead, it was just a breath, and in a moment he was lecturing me again.
He had had a lot of young men in his office of late, and a few young women, too, all thinking that they were ready to step into the shoes he was vacating, and without exception he had been singularly unimpressed with them all. Most hadn’t done any homework at all, waltzing in here evidently thinking that they could get by on their charm and the strength of their resumes. That wasn’t going to fly with him and it wasn’t going to fly with the Executive Committee. This organization was a sacred trust. Yes, that’s what he said. Call him old-fashioned, but the sacred did still exist in this increasingly secular world, and organizations like his were there to protect the sacred, to preserve it, and to bring it forth into all the years that were still to come. Did I understand that? Was that the kind of commitment that I was prepared to make?
He took another breath, and this time it looked like he did want some kind of response from me. But I wasn’t ready. Throughout his lecture, it was all I could do to maintain eye contact with him, keep the expression on my face placid, and nod sympathetically from time to time like I knew what he was talking about.
“Alan, do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I said, slowly releasing the grip I had taken on the arms of my chair. “Yes, I think I do. You feel very strongly about this organization, and you want to make sure that its essential mission is in good hands.”
It felt like I was just stringing words together. If Thompson would have asked me to repeat myself, I’m not sure I could have.
He looked at me craftily again -- more like Peter Lorre than Sydney Greenstreet, with the same kind of crazy in his eyes. In my mind I counted the seconds passing by, waiting for him to ask me another question or pull a gun out of his drawer and shoot me -- and not sure which would surprise me more.
“Here,” he said eventually, pushing himself with difficulty up and out of his chair. “Come here, Alan. I want to show you something.”
He led me over to a corner of his office where several photos were framed and hung on his wall. Thematically, they were similar to the one I had almost had a chance to study in the best of the three conference rooms. People, almost entirely men, mostly in coats and ties, standing around and posing stiffly for a cameraman in some bygone era. Most were black and white, but some of the newer ones were in color -- and by newer I mean from the 1980s, judging only by the hairstyles and the patterns on the sport coats.
One by one, Thompson began pointing them out to me and telling me his story behind each. The stories themselves were barely even anecdotes, just long lists of forgettable names and places. This was Harvey Withers, he said reverently, the first chairman of the Board that Thompson served under, standing with other members of the Board at their meeting at the Greenbrier in 1965. And this was Tom Donnor, who led their capital campaign in 1973, at the award banquet at their annual conference in Naples. And this was Jack Reardon, the first chair of their foundation, with his ceremonial gavel at its Board meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1982. And, of course, unmentioned but there nonetheless, Thompson himself was in every single one of these photos. First a young Thompson with black hair and a bow tie, then a middle-aged Thompson with a mustache and a paunchy belly, and finally a thinning and aging Thompson with a wrinkled face and eyeglasses.
But the oldest of all the Thompsons was the one standing right in front of me, his hand with its swollen joints and age spots trembling ever so slightly as he held it up to point out the people he had not forgotten in all those photographs. Through the long litany -- and long it certainly was, my feet growing sore in my polished wingtips as it dragged on and on -- through the long litany I did the best I could to remain attentive, to show deference and respect, but all the while I was wondering what the hell was going on and what kind of sick test this could possibly be. My attention kept going back to Thompson’s hand, his ancient hand with its manicured but still yellowed nails, and slowly I think I began to realize how sad this whole thing actually was. There was not going to be any test here, no gotcha questions designed to trap me into confessing the specific kind of monster I was. There was just a lonely old man in his corner office, preferring to remember the times he did the things that mattered than to engage the younger man they had sent to replace him.
Eventually, there was a knock at the door.
“Mister Thompson,” Pamela said, pushing the door open and her head into the room. “Mister Thompson, it’s almost time for your next appointment.”
We both turned towards the door. As we did so our eyes met.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Alan,” Thompson said to me, almost as if the last twenty minutes hadn’t happened. He extended that same crippled hand to me as his parting gesture.
“Same here, Mister Thompson,” I said, gripping his hand as tightly as I dared. “I really appreciate your time. You’ve got a lot to be proud of here.”
Thompson nodded.
“Come on, Alan,” Pamela said, now pushing the door all the way open and stepping fully into the room. “Let’s get you back to your conference room.”
As we left the room I gave a backward glance and saw that Thompson had turned back to his photographs, now simply looking at them with both his hands hanging forgotten at his sides.
Pamela began walking me briskly back through the office.
“How did that go?” she asked. “Well, I hope?”
“Perfect,” I said, smiling, and wondering the name of the planet I had just found myself on.
+ + +
“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.
This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.
Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/
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