“Why are we paying her this much?” the new VP sneered as he abruptly restructured my role without consulting the board. I had clearly warned them about one specific critical clause in my contract, but legal dismissed it outright. By the next morning, the company had lost one point five billion.
“Are we seriously paying someone this much to babysit spreadsheets?” Carter Wells’s voice cut through the glass-walled executive suite with the precision of a surgical blade. He stood at the head of the conference table, one hand gesturing dramatically at the projection screen behind him, the other clutching a tablet like it contained irrefutable evidence of corporate waste. The spreadsheet displayed on the wall showed my compensation package highlighted in aggressive red: $685,000 annually, plus benefits and deferred bonuses tied to client retention metrics spanning fourteen years of meticulous work.
I was standing near the beverage cart approximately thirty feet away, ceramic mug suspended halfway to my lips. The executive floor’s open architecture meant privacy was an illusion constructed from politeness rather than actual walls. Through the transparent conference room barriers, I had an unobstructed view of our new vice president of strategic operations holding court before our chief financial officer, two members of the board’s audit committee, and our recently installed company—Carter Wells.
Carter Wells was thirty-four years old. His LinkedIn profile prominently featured his Wharton MBA, a brief stint at McKinsey, and three years as a consultant specializing in corporate restructuring. He joined Crest Global Solutions exactly seven weeks ago, arriving with the kind of supreme confidence that comes from dismantling organizations without having built anything lasting yourself.
“This represents exactly the kind of bloated legacy spending that’s strangling our operational efficiency.” He continued, expanding the spreadsheet to show departmental comparisons. “We’re hemorrhaging resources on positions that made sense in 2010 but are completely redundant in today’s automated environment.”
I remained motionless, watching this performance unfold with the detached interest of someone who’d witnessed similar corporate theater at three previous companies. The difference was that previously I’d observed from a safe distance as other departments faced the efficiency axe.
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