Thursday Morning

Todd got to the office and had enough time to grab some coffee and get his laptop set up before his 8 AM meeting. A couple of minutes beforehand he made the quick jog past the few rows of cubicles that separated his desk and the Director’s office. He knocked quickly and peeked his head inside the door, and we beckoned in by Thornton waving his arm in an inviting motion.

“Take a seat, we’re going to wait for a second for someone else to join us.” Thornton said as Todd was situating himself.

“Oh?” Todd replied. He wasn’t expecting anyone else to be joining them, but guessed it was probably going to be someone from Legal to discuss the MotorBoys contract.

Before Thornton could reply, Hunter barged emphatically into the room. “Hey guys.” He said in his usual confident and deep bass voice.

“Hey Hunter.” Todd had no clue what Hunter was doing here, but he noticed he was suddenly feeling much less comfortable than when he walked into the office just moments ago. Something about the situation felt off.

“Okay guys, let’s get started. Hunter, grab the door behind you, okay?” Thornton said, wasting no time getting the meeting underway. By the time the door was shut, the pit in Todd’s stomach was already starting to squeeze tighter.

“Todd, I wanted to chat with you about the MotorBoys deal.” Thornton sounded more nervous than usual, in fact Todd had never seen him act so uncertain and it was adding even more to a feeling that was rapidly approaching panic.

“First off, I want to acknowledge that you’ve done a uh, great job working the account. But, uh, I realized as I was reviewing the notes I realized that I had flagged this account for Hunter hear to take over once he got up to speed.”

“Okay?” Todd responded. The feeling of panic had been replaced by genuine confusion. Even if Thornton had flagged the account, the order had come in directly to him, based on his proposals. “But I made the sale.”

“Yes, well, as I said you did a great job. There’s another thing though. Based on their value as customers, I… we’ve uh, developed a new strategic plan to handle enterprise-sized accounts. From now on, we’re always going to have two account managers assigned to them. So that’s why Hunter is here, since he was already going to be on the account anyway. So, you guys will split the account 50/50.”

Todd sat in silence processing what he’d just heard. On one hand it didn’t seem as catastrophic as he was worried it would be seconds ago, and at face value the reasoning made at least some logical sense, but it certainly wasn’t good news either. He’d still be looking at a very solid increase in pay, but not quite as dramatic as he’d built his hopes up to. If he fought it, there was always a chance it could get contentious and make it difficult to work there. If he left the company, he obviously couldn’t take the client with him and would get nothing.

“The initial commission for the sale. That should still be mine though, right? I mean, I can see where you are coming from going forward. But I’m the only one who worked with the customer for the last 4 years… It doesn’t seem fair if I have to split that.”

Thornton cleared his throat and started to reply, “Well, uh, I think…” He was interrupted before he could continue as Hunter leaned over and clapped his big hand onto Todd’s chest.

“Absolutely bud.” He said jovially. Then he leaned in closer and grabbed Todd by the shoulder in a friendly way. “They were talking about giving me a split of the initial commission under the new plan, but I said, no. That's all you!”

Todd was a little taken aback. That one time they worked out together, Hunter had been friendly enough, but since then they’d mostly avoided each other as usual. Hunter had his clique and Todd both: A, wasn’t in it and B, had no desire to change that. His tone now struck Todd as a little over the top, but he didn’t see an immediate reason not to go along. The initial commission is what he was most concerned about right now.

“Okay, well, thanks, I guess.” He said, still with hesitancy. This was a lot to take in.

“Awesome, bro!” Hunter now grabbed Todd hand in arm wrestling style handshake, flexing his large biceps that looked like they were about to tear though his sleeves. “We’re going to make a great team!”

Todd glanced back to Director Thornton, who looked noticeably more relaxed now. “Okay then.” He said, as his normal cadence started to return. “No need to talk much more about it right now, you guys can strategize about it whenever you want.”.

Hunter and Jack both stood up from their chairs and turned towards the door to leave. Hunter gestured for Todd to head out first but grabbed him again by the shoulder with a firm grip as Todd moved past.

“Hey bud, we should go grab some drinks or something after work to celebrate.”

The last thing Todd felt like doing right now was celebrating. He still wasn’t sure exactly how to feel, but he knew going out with Hunter was the last thing in the world on his mind. He reached for the first possible excuse that jumped into his head.

“I’d like too, but my girlfriend has soccer practice tonight, she’s a coach. She won’t get back until after 7, and we’re both probably pretty beat tonight.”

“Oh, that’s perfect.” Hunter said with a broad charismatic smile. “You should bring her along. You and I are going to be working together all the time now. I’d love to meet her.”