Terry walked into the corporate offices of Parker's Perfect Pizza. She stopped in front of the desk where Dan's secretary was reading a magazine. The fact that she was at her desk was not a good sign. She usually spent a good percentage of each workday going over the summary reports with Dan. Frowning, Terry said, "Hello, Susan."
"Hello, Terry," Susan answered putting down her magazine.
"I'm here to talk to Dan," Terry said.
"He's not here," Susan answered.
"Where is he? We're supposed to have a meeting this afternoon," Terry said.
Susan shrugged her shoulders and answered, "I don't know. He called in early this morning and said that he wouldn't be in until later today."
"Is he mad at me?" Terry asked. He hadn't been answering her calls for the past two days and it was really starting to bother her.
"Not that I know of. In fact, he said that you could use his office to check over the sales figures and work on your proposal," Susan answered.
"Is he okay?" Terry asked.
"He hasn't been in much this week," Susan answered. It was a little unusual for him to miss that much work.
Terry shook her head as if trying to clear it. She said, "I guess I'll go over the sales figures now."
"Have fun," Susan said picking up her magazine. She was feeling a little bored, but Terry typically didn't require her help.
Terry went into the office and pulled up the sales charts on Dan's computer. The figures all looked good to her. There was one store that wasn't performing as well as the others. She made a note in her book to remind Dan that he needed to see what was going on there. She checked the profits and mapped them against her planned expansion schedule. Everything was right on the money. Now all she had to do was to get Dan to agree to it.
There was just enough time before the meeting to go over her proposal once more. She unpacked her laptop and turned it on. While it was booting, she dug through her briefcase for her list of 'Dan Questions.' She pulled it out and glanced over it. She opened the proposal and scrolled down through the various sections applying the questions that Dan would ask. Every time she sat down to work, she thanked Tom's mother for her advice.
Dan cleared his throat and said, "I'm here."
Terry looked up from her laptop startled. She said, "Oh, sorry. I was just going over the expansion plans."
"That can wait," Dan said with a smile. It was nice to see Terry sitting behind his desk. She looked very comfortable there. It was nice not to be sitting there for a change.
"Okay," Terry said sitting back in the chair.
"I need to hire a new accountant," Dan said.
"What?" Terry asked sitting up and staring at him. She asked, "Did I do something wrong?"
"No," Dan said shaking his head.
"Are you firing me?" Terry asked frantically. She wondered what could have possibly happened since the last time they had talked. She recalled how Tom had warned her against pushing Dan too hard about expanding the business. She had gotten him to open nine more pizzerias over the past year bringing the number of stores up to twelve. She was ready to move to an even larger number of stores.
"No," Dan answered holding up his hands. He added, "Calm down, Terry."
"Why hire a new accountant then?" Terry asked. There was an edge of desperation in her voice. She was watching a perfect opportunity disappear on her.
Dan answered, "Well, I've got a special project that I want you to work on for me."
"A special project? What kind of project? What about the expansion plans?" Terry asked feeling like the world was spinning out of control.
"Would you like a root beer?" Dan asked thinking that she was way too flustered to discuss business.
"Root beer? Sure, I'll have a root beer," Terry said. She took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
Dan went over to the mini-refrigerator in his office and pulled out two cans of root beer. He handed one of them over to her and said, "All I have are cans. Let me see if I can find a cup around here."
"That's okay. I'll drink it out of the can," Terry said.
Dan sat down in the chair and popped the top on his can of root beer. He said, "I've got a special project I'd like you to devote a hundred percent of your time on."
"What?" Terry asked thinking that this was the end of her dream for Parker's Perfect Pizza. She opened her can of root beer and took a sip.
"Well, I want to change jobs. I'd like to be the guy at the top. I'd like to be making the major decisions, but I don't want to deal with running the day to day operations at the corporate level. Daily summaries of what is going on would be fine for me. I don't want to have to get on the phone and talk to the manager of store number nine to find out why his sales aren't improving. I don't want to have to travel to some other city to check out locations for new stores. I don't want to have to monitor the inventories of twelve different stores to make sure that everyone is adequately supplied. I want someone to tell me that it is happening and what steps are being taken to correct any problems that might arise," Dan said.
"What do you mean?" Terry asked.
"I don't want to be the President of Parker's Perfect Pizza. I want to be the CEO of Parker's Perfect Pizza. I need you to figure out how to make that happen," Dan said sitting back in his chair to watch the reaction of Terry.
"You already are CEO," Terry said although that wasn't exactly true. He was the guy at the top. He was the owner of a privately held corporation.
"In title only," Dan replied looking across the desk at Terry. He pointed at her and said, "I want the real thing."
"Who is going to run the daily operations?" Terry asked. The number of things that she was going to have to consider was almost over whelming. There were sales, purchasing, site planning, account management, payroll, and legal to name a few.
Dan gave her a big smile that brought a chill down her spine and said, "That's for you to figure out."
"Oh," Terry said feeling like her brain was about to go into total shutdown. She realized that she should have been taking notes and grabbed a pen.
While taking a sip of his root beer, Dan watched her scribble a bunch of notes across her pad of paper. He felt that she was writing down a lot more than he had actually said to her. He was very curious as to what kind of answer she was going to find for him. He hoped that it was a good one. He waited for her to look back up at him before he asked, "Do you have any questions?"
Terry stared at him for a second trying to organize her thoughts. Finally, she asked, "Do you have a daily work checklist?"
Coming to the conclusion that he had made the right decision, Dan smiled and said, "I'll have Susan give you a copy of all of my checklists."
"Good," Terry said thinking that was at least a good starting point.
Dan rose from his chair and stretched. He said, "Well, I guess I'll be going."
Terry looked at him and asked, "Where are you going?"
"Ann is going back to Chicago to work on a mural at the end of the week. Sally is heading off to school soon. I thought I'd go home and spend a little time relaxing by the pool with my wives," Dan said with a smile.
She looked at him puzzled for a moment wondering when he had gotten married. She would have asked, but there was a more important question that demanded her attention. She asked, "What about running the company?"
"You'll have my checklists. Run the company for a few days and see what is required to do the job," Dan said with a smile.
"Okay," Terry said without much enthusiasm.
"I'll call you in a day or so and see how things are going," Dan said. He winked at her and left the office feeling a thousand times better.
Terry couldn't believe what she was hearing. She was floored that he just walked out of the office without talking about the expansion plans. She stared at her laptop thinking of how much work she had put into the proposal.
Ten minutes later, Susan came in the office with a thick manila folder. She placed it in front of Terry as she said, "Dan asked me to copy his work sheets for you. Here are your copies."
"Thanks," Terry said staring at the folder. The longer she looked at it, the thicker it looked. She didn't want to open it.
Smiling brightly at Terry, Susan said, "Dan sure was in a good mood when he left here. Did you have a good meeting?"
"It was just peachy," Terry said. She opened the folder and cringed when she looked at the first page of notes. She looked up and said, "We didn't even get a chance to talk about the expansion plans."
Susan looked very surprised. She said, "That's odd. Dan doesn't forget details like that."
Terry looked at the folder and then over at her laptop. Something tickled the back of her brain. She looked over at the laptop and then back at the folder. She was hit with a sudden epiphany as she realized what Dan had done. Sitting back in the chair she shouted, "I'm such an idiot!"
Surprised at the volume of Terry's exclamation, Susan asked, "Why do you say that?"
"This whole meeting was about my plans for the expansion. I missed the most basic Dan question of them all!"
"What?"
"What does this plan do to Dan's life?" Terry answered wondering why that question had never made it to her list of Dan's Questions. She felt pretty stupid at having missed such an essential question.
Susan laughed and waved a hand at Terry. She said, "That's an easy one to answer. It increases the number of items on his to-do lists."
"Exactly," Terry said. She lifted the folder and said, "He just gave me his job for the next two days to make that point. That sneaky bastard."
Tom was rolling on the floor laughing. He couldn't stop it no matter how hard he tried. He had the image of one of those cartoon ton weights crashing down on Terry in the middle of the meeting. Even Amanda was more than a little amused by Terry's description of the disastrous meeting. Tom said, "Dan got you good."
Terry stomped her foot and said, "It is not funny."
"Yes, it is. This is Dan at his best," Tom said and burst out laughing.
"He's never done anything like this," Terry said putting her hands on her hips.
"Sure he has. He does it all of the time."
"No way," Terry said. She had worked with him for two years and not seen him do anything like this.
Dan knew his destination and wasn't going to let any roadblocks get in his way of getting there. He'd go around them or through them. He'd do whatever it takes to reach his goal. Tom calmed down and said, "Do you remember me telling you that if you get in Dan's way that he'll go right through you? He doesn't let anything stop him from achieving his goals. He's tenacious that way."
"Sure," Terry said.
Tom said, "Dan doesn't want to be the head of a conglomerate. He wants a nice little place to work where he's surrounded by people having a good time. He wants to run a pizzeria. You and Mr. Harrison keep trying to push him in a direction he doesn't want to go. This is the first time that he's pushed back. Next time it is going to be even worse."
"Oh," Terry said. Tom was always trying to make sure that she understood that about Dan. She didn't understand because she couldn't believe it. It just wasn't rational for Dan to be sitting on a billion dollars and not be interested in it at all. The only way to make sense of it was to assume that his disinterest was all an act.
Tom couldn't keep the grin off his face and said, "He also knows that your goal is to grow a conglomerate. You want to make your presence felt in the business world. He knows that you're going to keep pushing that as an agenda."
Terry shrugged her shoulders and said, "So."
"He just set you up so that you both can achieve your goals," Tom said and burst out laughing. He had to admire Dan's elegance in solving his problem.
"I don't see that," Terry said getting upset.
Realizing that Terry didn't get it at all, Tom said, "He just told you the conditions under which you can grow the company as large as you want. He wants to make the key decisions, but be left out of the day to day operations of the corporation. He wants to spend an hour or two saying yes or no to your plans so that he can go downstairs to sell pizzas the rest of the day. If you can figure out how to achieve that, then Dan will let you do as you want."
"Oh," Terry said with a frown. She wondered how she had missed that. Then it dawned on her that she had been so busy that afternoon going through Dan's checklists that she hadn't been able to think about much else.
"If you want an example of where Dan did something similar, go talk to James Vic and Mr. Foreman. James Vic bid on and won a contract from Dan never realizing that it was an audition to be the number two man in the largest construction company in the area. Dan does things like that," Tom said.
"Don't forget Ernie. He put that guy through hell and Ernie blesses him for it every day," Amanda said.
Terry realized that Tom was right; this was vintage Dan. She said, "He dumped the whole problem in my lap."
"Of course he did. He did it because it is your problem. He doesn't have a problem with Parker's Perfect Pizza being one little store," Tom said.
"Can't I get even a little sympathy from you?" Terry asked with a pout.
"No," Tom said, "I'm not going to give you any sympathy. Dan has given you the chance of a lifetime."
"He's right," Amanda said.
"Then why am I so scared?" Terry asked.
Tom smiled at the question and asked, "Do you know what you need?"
"What?"
"You need a root beer. Everything looks better with a root beer in your hand," Tom said with a grin.
Terry and Amanda exchanged a glance knowing that everything was going to be okay. She said, "Yeah, I could use a root beer."
Having Dan at home almost the entire day, Alison had decided to make it a celebration. She made a few telephone calls and then hid in the kitchen cooking up a storm. Thus it was that at dinner time in the middle of the week, Dan sat down to dinner at his home with his three lovely ladies, his parents, and Diana. Looking at everyone gathered there, he said, "This is nice. We haven't had dinner together in ages."
"I know what you mean," Diana said.
Alison brought out the roast beef and set it on the table in front of Dan. She said, "You get to carve it."
"Oh," Dan said. He glanced down at the other end of the table where his father was seated and asked, "Would you rather have the honors?"
"That's okay son. Every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas I always felt like an idiot carving that turkey at the table. It is going to be fun watching you struggle with it. Of course, a roast beef is a lot easier than a turkey," his father answered.
"Thanks, Dad," Dan said as everyone else laughed.
"You're welcome."
Dan stood up and started to slice the roast beef. The knife wasn't very sharp, but there wasn't a sharpener handy. As he sawed away at the meat with the dull knife, his mother said, "Alison, this is a wonderful looking meal."
"Thank you, Mrs. Parker," Alison said with pride. She really enjoyed setting a nice table.
"Call me, Mom," Dan's mother said for the thousandth time.
"Yes, Mom," Alison said. It wasn't the first time that Dan's mother had said it to her, but she just didn't find it coming easily to her.
His mother turned to Ann and Sally and said, "You two are going to have to work on Alison to get her to call me mom."
"We will, Mom," Ann said with a grin. She grinned over at Alison and, in a teasing voice, said, "That's going to be a little confusing since we already call Alison, Mom."
Dan's mother squealed and turned to look at Alison. Excited, she asked, "Are you?"
"Not yet," Alison answered knowing exactly what was being asked.
Diana asked, "So when are you going to get pregnant?"
"We're working on it," Alison said smiling over at Dan.
Dan's father looked across the table at Dan struggling to cut the roast beef. He said, "Son, it is not that much work."
Laughing, Dan asked, "Cutting the roast or making babies?"
"Both," his father answered with a grin.
"I've never done this before," Dan said with a grin.
"Which? Making babies or cutting the roast?" his father asked with a huge grin. He earned a love tap on the shoulder from his wife for that little comment.
"Both," Dan said. Winking at Alison, Dan added, "With regard to making babies, I thought we'd practice for a while."
Diana held up a hand and said, "That is too much information."
"How about you two?" Dan's mother asked turning to look at Ann and Sally. She had accepted long ago that she was going to have grandchildren from all three of the young women in Dan's life.
"I'm waiting until next year," Sally said. She wanted to time it so that she'd have the baby at the beginning of summer when school went on break.
"I'm waiting for the year after that," Ann said, "We don't want to have all of the kids at once."
"Smart," Dan's mother said.
Dan finished carving the roast and looked down at the mess he had created. Gesturing to the table cloth, he said, "Sorry about that."
"Don't worry. I can clean that up," Alison said provoking a little laughter around the table. Her cleaning prowess was well established in the household.
As Alison and his mother traded cleaning tips, Dan watched everyone around the table pass the dishes around the table and serve themselves. It was a very family kind of moment. He smiled to himself thinking that this was his family.
Noticing the little smile on Dan's lips, Diana leaned over and asked, "What are you thinking about?"
"I was just thinking that moments like this are the core of my definition of happiness," Dan answered. It was impossible for him to imagine anything better than being surrounded by friends and family while enjoying good food and conversation.
"Yeah. Mine too," Diana said.
"Why didn't you bring Coder along?" Dan asked.
Smiling, Diana answered, "He's in Colorado. He's moving his business there to be closer to me. Can you imagine that?"
"That's nice," Dan said. He wasn't going to mention that they were going to miss his business at store number one.
"Yeah. He's just adorable," Diana said with a tone of satisfaction in her voice. She had missed him over the past school year and had looked into ways that she could move closer to be with him. She had been shocked when he volunteered to move closer to her.
"You really like him," Dan said looking at his sister. She got a dreamy look on her face whenever she talked about Coder.
She shook her head and said, "I love him. He's just so ... everything to me."
"Are you looking to add to your posse?" Dan asked.
Diana shook her head and answered, "No. He's all that I need."
"I'm glad to hear that," Dan said. It was good to see his sister in charge of her life.
Dan's father asked, "So what are the plans for Thanksgiving?"
Alison said, "We could have it here. I'd love to do a big Thanksgiving Day feast."
"That sounds nice," Dan's mother said. It would be nice to enjoy Thanksgiving without having to do all of the preparation and cleanup.
"Coder could come, too," Alison said. She thought about it for a moment and then said, "I'll invite my family too."
"That sounds great," Ann said. The more that came to the dinner the better as far as she was concerned. She knew that Alison wouldn't let her near the kitchen for such an important meal.
Sally said, "We'll even let Ann make the gravy."
"Oh, please," Ann said rolling her eyes.
"Not that," Dan said in mock horror. The three women in his life laughed.
"I'll be away at school," Diana said thinking that it would be too expensive to return home for the holiday.
Sally said, "Don't worry about missing school. You and Coder can fly down here the night before and stay until Sunday. That's what I'll do."
"I guess," Diana said less than enthusiastic about flying. She knew that it would cost a fortune for her and Coder to fly down. She said, "Coder is still building his business and money is a little tight, particularly with the move."
"Don't worry about money. I'm getting paid an obscene amount of money for my mural up in Chicago," Ann said dismissively. There was no reason that the whole family couldn't be there for the holidays.
A little upset that Ann had beaten him to making the offer, Dan's father said, "We can pay for the tickets. Her education is costing us nothing."
"Thanks, everyone," Diana said.
"Don't mention it," her father said.
Dan smiled and said, "You know, I've enjoyed today so much that I think I'll take tomorrow off as well."
The entire table went quiet as all eyes turned to look at Dan. He hadn't take two days off back to back since starting the pizzeria. Diana asked, "Who's going to run the company?"
"Oh I gave that job to Terry yesterday afternoon," Dan said with a smile.
"You didn't," Sally asked laughing. When Dan had threatened to turn the company over to Terry she hadn't believed him. She figured that Terry was probably bald by now. She was pretty sure that the woman must have been tearing her hair out all day.
"Yes, I did," Dan answered. Looking over at his three ladies, he asked, "Are you up to a visit to the lake tomorrow?"
Lazlo Zalezac