Chief

by Sigurd J. Strand

 ‘Apparently he’s short, but wears stacked heels’, someone whispered as we waited for the lift lights to blink their way up to floor 40. We craned our necks to see him as he exited. Rubbish, I thought. He was tall, with a long skinny neck. He was however followed by a guy who was less than 170 cm and walked with the gait of a man in heels. They came from Diversified Services, a department we didn’t even know existed. They weren’t on LinkedIn.

‘Immaculate’ said the new boss. He sat at the middle of the table as though he chaired a Cabinet meeting. The heels guy beside him.

‘Reports, notes, presentations. We apply six-sigma standards. Appearance too. I can’t tell you not to have beards…, but trimmed neatly please. Stay fit, too. Slim slays!’  He looked at me. ‘No business casual – no such thing. Nor dress-down Friday. Every day is business day. Nobody buys advice from slobs.’

One couldn’t have said these things a year ago.

He looked at Jennifer and was about to say something but instead smiled in a way that conveys no happiness. His gaze was oriented towards her right ear where various studs were pinned into the helix. He whispered something to Mr. Heels, who took a note.

‘You call me Chief,’ he said at the end of the meeting. ‘My door is always open.’  

He rose, nodded, and walked out of the boardroom, across the open-plan workspace and into the glass-panelled office of his recently deceased predecessor. The short-stepping adjutant followed him and shut the door with a solid click behind them.

An electric-powered opaque white screen descended across the glass, evidently installed during the weekend whilst everyone was at home wondering what the new boss would be like.

 ‘What the fuck’ whispered Jennifer to the cluster of colleagues standing around her desk.

‘Is that what he cares about? What we wear. Did he really tell us to diet?’ said Jimmy.

‘Shhh! They might be listening! He put those blinds in on the weekend. God knows what he’s installed. Bugs and shit.’

‘I heard he’s a trouble-shooter and hatchet-man,’ said Pamela, an introvert whose eyes gleamed with the excitement of telling her colleagues something they didn’t know. ‘Stefan in Stochholm told me. The Fund sends him around to different businesses for a couple of years. They call it integration. That’s all I got.’

‘What trouble? We’re profitable. Twenty-one percent EBITDA last year. Best performers in the group!’ Jennifer pointed to a graph on her screen.

‘But down two percent from’23. Even if last year was our second-best ever, it wasn’t as good as ’23. We’re doomed by our success.’ Jeff the bookkeeper drew his finger across his throat.

Jennifer asked ‘Do Diversified Services even know what we do here? They’re bankers.’

A buzz emanated from the Chief’s office. The blind rose. Standing behind it, side by side, revealed from the feet up, were the two men. Both, not smiling. But neither were they frowning. Nevertheless, the message was clear.

Everyone shuffled back to their workstations.  

Five weeks later

Chief and Heels wore navy-blue blazers, charcoal-coloured wool-flannel trousers, shirts with buttoned-down collars, and ties with diagonal stripes. ‘Messrs. Brooks Brothers’ Jeff called them when they were out of earshot.

‘We’re appointing you Supervisor.’ The Chief sat at his desk, across from me. The sidekick, whose name was Mike, perched at its end with nowhere to put his knees, so it was lucky his legs were short. He awkwardly leant forwards to take notes on the desk. I imagined he didn’t want to jot notes on his lap, lest he might resemble a secretary – which essentially is what he was.

‘I thought that was your job’ I ventured, not very prudently.

The Chief coughed. ‘Interesting. I’m Managing Partner. I design strategy. I need someone to execute!’

I digested the unfortunate phrase and after restraining a chuckle, I said ‘We’re only 12 people here. If you tell them what you want them to do, they’ll do it. You don’t need me to intermediate your vision. We’ve never had a supervisor before.’

His eyes narrowed. Clearly, he neither appreciated being contradicted, nor the implicit comparison with his predecessor’s less complicated management style.

‘That’s evident. People ignored the advice on dress codes I gave on my inaugural day. They don’t wear ties. They wear jeans, and they bare tattoos and piercings publicly. It’s unprofessional, insubordinate!’

‘And this is what you want me to communicate; to enforce – your vision.’

He nodded. Mike, at the end of the desk, also nodded.

‘We’ve always been free to choose what we wear here. It’s normal in our industry. We don’t want to inhibit creativity.’

Mike guffawed. Chief shot him a stern sideways glance, followed with a sly wink that I probably wasn’t supposed to notice.

‘I want you all to dress like Mike. I expect to see a change by Monday team-meeting.’

Monday

Chief beamed at me as I greeted him at the elevator. ‘Snap!’ he said and pointed at my tie. Mike followed with an encouraging thumbs up.  

They entered the meeting space, set up auditorium style, for the weekly kick-off meeting. The seven men of the office stood waiting for them, all wearing navy blazers, white shirts and striped ties.

The two executives sent from Diversified Services nodded and smiled, but less certainly now.

Then the women filed in.

They, too, wore blazers, buttoned-down shirts and ties.

Chief and Mike looked at each other, brows raised.

The assembled team chanted in monotone robotic unison ‘Good morning, Chief. Good morning, Mike.’

Chief inhaled the stale air of the office and exhaled slowly through his nostrils.

They turned towards me, not smiling now.

I bowed.

Once I’d straightened, Mike peered upward towards the crown of my head, as though taking a reading from it. He perhaps noticed just then that I stood a couple of inches taller that morning.

He looked at my feet. My heels, more precisely.

He reddened.

Chief sat.

Mike sat.

We all sat.

Where would this end, I wondered.