Just Business

Ber Carroll was born in Blarney, County Cork, and moved to Australia in 1995. She worked as a finance director in the information technology industry until the release of her first novel,
Executive Affair
. Ber lives in Sydney's Northern Beaches with her husband and two children. Occasionally, in search of inspiration, she dons a business suit and briefcase and returns to the world of finance.

If you would like to know more about Ber, you can visit her website at www.bercarroll.com

Also by Ber Carroll

High Potential
Executive Affair

Ber Carroll

First published 2005 in Ireland by Poolbeg Press Ltd
This Pan edition published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited
1 Market Street, Sydney

Copyright © Ber Carroll 2005

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

Carroll, Ber, 1971–
Just Business/Ber Carroll

ISBN 978 0 330 42431 8 (pbk.)

A823.4

This story is entirely fictional and no character described in this book is based upon or bears any resemblance to any real person, whether living or deceased, and any similarity is purely coincidental.

Typeset in 11.5/14.5 pt Granjon Roman by Post Pre-press Group
Printed by McPherson's Printing Group

Papers used by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

These electronic editions published in 2008 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Just Business

Ber Carroll

 

Adobe eReader format  978-1-74198-230-5

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Epub format  978-1-74262-483-9

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For Rob

Many thanks to Cate Paterson, Julia Stiles and everyone at Pan Macmillan for your support and enthusiasm. Thanks to Brian Cook, Anna Kassulke, Paula Campbell, Gaye Shortland, Jane Newbury, Amanda Carroll and Koren O'Donnell for your invaluable comments and suggestions. For much appreciated technical assistance, thanks to James Young, Scott Mortimer, Denis O'Mahony, Matthew Longmore, Tomoko Katakura and Ann from Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family and friends who went to such amazing lengths to spread the word about my books.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Niamh Lynch sat in her office, staring out the window. The view showed an enticing slice of the bridge and harbour: blue sky, sparkling water, and a passing yellow and green ferry. Skyscrapers were superimposed on either side, arrogant columns of stone and glass. The scene was a masterpiece of contrasts, the man-made splendour of the buildings against the natural beauty of the harbour, unyielding greys next to transient blues.

There was a knock on her door. She knew before looking that it was Sharon, her personal assistant. Sharon's hair was peroxided to death and it clashed with her cheerful red face. But despite her haphazard appearance, she was an excellent PA.

‘Are you ready?'

Niamh pulled a face. ‘As ready as I'll ever be.'

She stood up and smoothed down her black pinstripe skirt. Her curly blonde hair, usually with a mind of its own, was tied back from her face. The freckles that smattered the curves of her cheeks made her look younger than her thirty years. Being a
female in a male-dominated industry was hard enough without looking too young for the job.

The two women walked through the executive area towards the lifts.

‘This is the only part of my job that I hate,' said Niamh as she pressed the button for the ground floor.

‘I know,' Sharon replied in a voice that was uncharacteristically subdued.

The auditorium hummed with nervous conversation as five hundred employees filed in. No reason had been offered for the impromptu Monday morning gathering but most knew it wasn't good news. The back rows filled up first. The front rows, where eye contact could be made from the lectern, were less popular. On the podium, five empty seats stared into the expectant crowd.

Niamh walked across the platform and sat in the far seat. She was followed by her colleagues, their faces solemn as they took their seats. Malcolm Young, the CEO, only appeared when his executives, his buffer, were all in place. He stepped up to the lectern and addressed his minions.

‘Good morning.'

His greeting was met with a suspicious silence. He cleared his throat and looked down at his notes. ‘Today we will lose ten per cent of our workforce. I am sure that each and every one of you is aware of the downturn in the IT industry. HDD must respond to that downturn and adjust its staff levels accordingly. This is a business decision, nothing to do with the individuals who will leave our employment today.' He glanced up to reiterate his point. ‘It's
just business
, nothing personal …'

As head of Human Resources, Niamh had tried to counsel Malcolm on the most sensitive way to deliver the bad news. It
seemed he was disregarding her advice. She sighed to herself and folded her arms across the front of her fitted jacket. Of course it was personal. She could see the faces of the people in the first few rows and it was clear they thought it was personal too. It was their jobs he was talking about, their livelihood.

Niamh had been with the company for almost a year. She had got on really well with the last CEO, Malcolm's predecessor, but when he left cracks had started to appear. The problem was that the executive team didn't gel. They were a disparate group of individuals who seemed to lack the initiative to find a common ground outside work. They didn't go for drinks, or dinner, or do anything together that was fun. It didn't help that Malcolm was so new, only three months in the job, and that team-building didn't appear to be one of his strengths.

Malcolm moved away from the lectern out to centre stage. His oversized frame had been brought about by too many liquid lunches and didn't fit comfortably into his suit. His words were bald, as was his head. ‘You must view this restructure as the first step towards profit and a strong share price …'

Phil Davis, the finance director, sat next to Niamh. He nodded on cue when Malcolm mentioned ‘profit'. Phil was also new to the company. A protégé of Malcolm's in a previous life, he was complacent in the knowledge that he didn't need to prove himself. Tall, with the physique of a rugby player, his good looks were being threatened by an unhealthy lifestyle: late nights, too much booze, not enough exercise. His attention span was short at the best of times and his eyes soon wandered to the shapely legs of Lucinda Armstrong who sat tantalisingly close.

Lucinda, the internal legal counsel, was rigid in her chair, her beautiful face inscrutable as she listened to Malcolm. She had been with the company three years and this wasn't the
first restructure she had seen in her tenure. Lucinda agreed with Malcolm: it was ‘just business'. It was a natural part of the company's evolution – if you didn't change then you didn't survive. The beautiful woman with the long legs possessed a sharp practical mind with just the right element of ruthlessness to make her a formidable lawyer. She worked long, hard days and psychologically had more testosterone than any of her male colleagues. Phil Davis leering at her legs didn't go unnoticed but it didn't bother her in the slightest.

Bruce Knight, the services director, sat next to Lucinda. Divorced and bitter, Bruce smoked too much and worked too hard – his lined face bore the effects. Maybe it was just his pessimistic nature, but he wasn't as confident as Malcolm about returning to profitability. Bruce had a deep understanding of the market behind their product – hard-disk drives – and knew that investment in technology was low on the priority list of customers as they struggled with the slowdown in the economy.

The last seat in the row of executives was occupied by Yoshi Murasaki, the Japanese liaison director. In any other culture he would be called a spy; to the Japanese he was a crucial cog of doing business outside the mother country. Yoshi was about the same age as Bruce but he looked much younger; he didn't have either a current or an ex-wife to cause him worry lines.

‘HDD has a solid future in this country – Japan is committed to its investment in Australia. Shedding ten per cent of our workforce will make us much more competitive and will ensure that the head office earns a return on their investment here.'

Yoshi could pick up the insensitivity of Malcolm's words even though English wasn't his first language, but he acknowledged that achieving the right balance was difficult – how to show
empathy for those who were leaving while motivating those who were staying.

The executives, like the audience, were getting fidgety. Niamh saw their legs and arms cross and uncross. Some of their faces she could read, some not. She felt fundamentally different to them and this wasn't the first time she wondered why. Was it nationality? The discerning ear could identify Irish origins in her accent but her name was the more obvious clue. When she had started with the company, her new colleagues had struggled to get their tongues around the strange Celtic name. Niamh. Nee-uv. Most of them could say it correctly now. Yoshi was the other non-Australian on the team, his cultural differences much more pronounced than hers. Set apart from the others, it didn't mean they were close and neither did it mean there was a distinguishable inner circle.

Malcolm was winding down and he returned to his earlier position behind the lectern. ‘We'll be sorry to see the ten per cent – um, the people – leave us. Human Resources will meet with those impacted today. We're hoping to make it as painless as possible. It will be business as usual tomorrow.'

Niamh thought that Malcolm had inadvertently made it as
painful
as possible. He had blithely belittled the people who were losing their jobs by repeatedly referring to them as a percentage of the total workforce. His involvement ended with this speech; the dirty work, facing the people involved, was her department. Don and Jessica, two of her managers, had already labelled the day as Black Monday.

The auditorium emptied, the staff disgruntled and edgy. Niamh returned to her office but she didn't reach straight for the phone. She needed a few minutes to psych herself up. There
were twenty people on her list, fifteen each for Jessica and Don, fifty in all. That sounded a lot more than Malcolm's ‘ten per cent', particularly when those people had names.

She didn't need to look at her list to remind herself of the first name. It was Scott Morgan, one of her staff. She had hired him a few months ago to manage the recruitment function. She wasn't at all happy about losing him, but last in, first out seemed to be the fairest policy in the circumstances. She took a deep breath and dialled his number.

Scott's workstation was just down the hall and it wasn't long before he was standing in her office, his handsome face set in a scowl, the broad shoulders beneath his white shirt taut with tension. He was tall, made even taller by his anger. Niamh felt as though there was no room left in the office for her; she needed him to sit down.

‘Can you take a seat, please?' She nodded at the only spare seat, should he not see it.

‘I don't need to sit down to be told I'm losing my job!'

‘I …'

Looking up at his barely contained fury, Niamh was thrown off course. Up until today they had spoken only with the polite distance that came with a new working relationship. She'd seen him smile and laugh. She'd seen fleeting grimaces and frowns, and prolonged looks of concentration. She had never seen him like this and she was distracted by the virility of his anger.

‘Come on, Niamh. After that debacle in the auditorium, I can only assume that I'm one of the unfortunate
ten per cent
.'

His blue eyes were livid and piercing in his tanned face. Disconcerted, she looked downwards to her notes.

‘Yes, I'm sorry to say that your position has been made
redundant in the restructure. We've looked throughout the organisation for alternative positions –'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, cut out the standard script – I know it off by heart – I work in Human Resources, remember?'

‘I'm sorry.' He was right; there was no need to read the script word by word.

‘And I'm pissed off,' he retorted.

‘That's understandable,' she said, wishing that she knew him better so she would have some chance of mollifying him. She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally sat down.

‘You hired me,' he accused. ‘Only two months ago you offered me this role. How the hell is it redundant in the space of two months?'

‘You're the last person to join our department so your role was the first one we examined to see if we could manage without it,' she explained. ‘We're going to decentralise recruitment to the business units …'

‘And when was this inspired decision made?'

She ignored his sarcasm and answered him as honestly as she could. ‘A few weeks ago the head office realised we would have to restructure in order to make a profit for the next two quarters. The decision to decentralise recruitment has been really difficult, considering the great work you've been doing, but we had no choice.'

‘I understand all that, but someone in this company must have known this restructure was coming when I was hired.'

Niamh now saw why Scott was angry and where his argument was headed. What he was saying made perfect sense, but if the company was at fault this wasn't the place to admit it.

She avoided answering his question directly and said, ‘That's not necessarily true.'

He ran his hand through his hair. It was longish, streaked from the sun and the ocean. ‘Look, I appreciate that you were probably not directly involved in the decision to restructure – but you have to see where my issue is. Only two months ago I gave up a well-paid job for what I thought was a good opportunity with HDD. Now I'm unemployed. I've got a mortgage and a child to support. This has serious implications for me – I'm not just being difficult here!'

He had never mentioned his child before now and the unexpected insight into his personal life made it even harder for Niamh. She hated making people redundant, pulling their financial security from under their feet and destabilising their family life.

‘The company provides you with a retrenchment package that's as generous as we can be in these hard times,' she said, her tone as businesslike as she could muster.

‘How many weeks' pay do I get?'

‘You'll receive the equivalent of eight weeks.' She handed him the calculation sheet.

‘That's not good enough!' His voice was harsh; he didn't even look at the piece of paper. ‘It will take me months to find something comparable.'

‘I'm sorry, that's our standard package for somebody with your length of service. We'll also provide you with an outplacement counselling service.' She sounded lame even to her own ears.

‘Outplacement isn't going to pay my mortgage.' His eyes locked stubbornly with hers. ‘Eight weeks just isn't enough to compensate me in these circumstances.'

‘This is the best I can do. If you sign here I can give you the cheque today.' She knew he wasn't going to sign; she was just following the script.

‘I'm not signing anything!' He stood up and was looking down at her again. ‘I want to consider my legal position.'

‘Okay,' she had to tilt her head backwards to meet the intense blue eyes, ‘that's your prerogative.'

He left, shutting the door behind him with more force than necessary. She took another deep breath. That wasn't a good start and she still had nineteen more names on her list. Black Monday could only get worse.

Helen Barnes's face was devoid of expression and Don McAlister was acutely aware of his inexperience as he read through the script. Recently promoted, Don was usually an easygoing guy who liked to talk. But he was totally out of his comfort zone today and the right words were hard to find. Had Helen spoken, he would have felt more confident, more effective. But she remained stubbornly silent as she was told that her position was redundant and there were no alternative positions in the company. Her silence ran straight through the meeting, not even a muscle moved when Don explained the basis behind her termination-payment calculation. The exercise was a farce and he didn't blame her for not contributing. After five years of managing the Finance department, Helen knew these calculations better than anyone. There was also no doubt that she had been at the other side of the table many times in her career.