Page 38 of Irresistible
Something was different, though. He usually took great pride and satisfaction in putting out the small fires that inevitably come up on a daily basis when running business the size of Local Citizens Bank. But today, there was no pleasure in it for him. He was just going through the motions. The lights were on, but no one was home.
A call came through on his cell phone. It was one of the senior vice presidents who had a bad habit of contacting Richard about every little problem that he should have been able to handle himself.
“Hey, Ben. What’s going on?”
“Richard, I’m sorry to bug you on a Saturday.”
“It’s never stopped you before. How can I help you?” Richard snapped.
“Are you okay? You always encouraged us to call you if we ever had a problem, day or night, and now you’re on the verge of biting my head off?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry, Ben. You’re right. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. What’s the problem?”
“Seriously, are you okay? This really isn’t like you,” Ben asked.
“Yeah. I’m fine. I was just up half the night with food poisoning. I think I ate some bad meat at this restaurant last night,” Richard lied, although at the diner last night, he did not think that was the least likely outcome.
The two talked about a minor issue that came up in human resources. The bank was looking to terminate an employee, and the higher-ups were working with their lawyers to make sure that the guy wouldn’t be able to come back and sue them later. Of course, everything was in order, but Richard always insisted on having the final sign-off on these things. The issue was quickly resolved and Richard apologized to Ben once more for being so irritable. He hung up the phone and got back to work.
“See? You’re even letting her mess up your work. You’re never mean to your employees, and you came that close to ripping Ben a new one. You need to get your act together. It’s stuff like this that starts the beginning of the end for leaders. People turn on you when they feel they’re being disrespected. Once the mutiny starts, you can’t stop it,” he furiously said to himself.
He continued working well into the late afternoon. It was going to be a long weekend, and he resorted to working on tasks that he had put off for quite some time. He didn’t want to do anything that involved leaving the hotel. There was too much risk of running into Scarlet. As usual, he busied himself with work, as he would until he had to go to the branch on Monday morning. He thought that if he could work as long and as hard as possible, he could avoid dealing with his emotions over how things had turned out with Scarlet the night before. Of course, he also realized that he would have to see Scarlet on Monday morning. Nonetheless, he carried on.
