
TURN ABOUT
The following story was told to me by a friend:
Mr. Marc Frederickson was the CEO of the company I worked for. He was, by in large, a happy man except for one challenge. He had a disagreeable wife and after many struggles, they finally divorced. After a time, he began to date again and finally proposed to a beautiful woman named Stacie. She was beautiful on many dimensions, not just externally but also had an honest and true heart.
After the early death of her parents, she had been raised by her Uncle Donavan Evans and they were as close as a real father and daughter, however, to avoid the appearance of favoritism, the fact that Donavan was Mr. Frederickson’s father-in-law was kept secret.
Donavan worked for Mr. Frederickson in a junior managerial position and at a staff get together he introduced Stacie to him. It was an abiding love from that very first meeting. The Senior Vice president of the company had recently retired and Mr. Frederickson was looking for someone to replace him and it was rumored that he was considering a Junior Vice President by the name Naman Judd, a conniving and self serving man.
It seemed that everyone knew the real character of Naman except for Mr. Frederickson. Naman was very careful to always show himself in the best light, but many in the company knew of his deceit.
Naman and Donavan did not get along well. Many past disagreements in handling people had led to their distrust of one another. Because of Donavan’s responsibility for public relations, the company had many times avoided bad press despite the devious people skills of Naman.
Naman was also careful not to let Mr. Frederickson know of the excellent performance of Donavan but took credit for it himself. Naman had attempted to get Donavan fired on several occasions but was never able to pull it off, but had decided on a plan.
Financial reversals had prompted the company to cut back its employee force. Mr. Frederickson gave Mr. Judd the responsibility to trim ten managerial positions from the workforce. Mr. Judd had never liked Mormons since his mother had divorced his father for being one. Naman knew Donavan was a Mormon, but of course could not fire him on those grounds, so he fabricated false information to indicate that Donavan was lazy.
He likewise did so for nine other employees. All were to be discharged on false pretenses and all just happened to be Mormons.
An assistant to Donavan happened to overhear of Naman’s plans and told Donavan, who told Stacie that if she did not do something at least ten Mormons would be unfairly fired. Stacie herself was raised Mormon and her new husband was even receiving the Mormon missionary discussions from the Mormon Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as they are formerly called.
While all this was occurring, Mr. Frederickson had a sleepless night and while rummaging through some paperwork, discovered the many times that Donavan had literally saved the company through his public relations efforts. He became determined that he should award his father-in-law somehow.
Stacie finally concluded that the best way to avoid the challenge of Naman was to invite him to dinner and inform her new husband of Naman’s plans. Once he arrived she would let her husband lead the discussion toward Naman’s plans to trim employees. She would then excuse herself while the two men, “talked business.”
On the appointed night, Naman was thrilled to be eating dinner with the CEO and his wife and after some social interchange; Mr. Erickson asked him, “As you know, I am looking for a new Senior Vice President. How do you think he should be introduced to the company?”
Naman thought Mr. Frederickson was speaking as if he were about to offer the position to himself, Mr. Naman Judd, and besides, why else would he be invited to dinner?
Naman responded with, “It might be nice if the new Senior Vice President were invited to a formal meeting with the Board of Directors and named at that time.”
“Good idea,” said Mr. Frederickson, “and I’ll let you introduce my choice, Mr. Donavan Evans, to the group. Oh, by the way, don’t worry about trimming the employee force after all. I’ve made some other adjustments instead.”
Mr. Nathan Judd said very little the rest of the evening. He was feeling rather ill. He was feeling even worse two months later, when he was fired. (Based loosely on the Book of Ester in the Bible).
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