At the end of the year, Jim gets a nice bonus and the president personally hands him a gift of options in Emerald stock. I like the way don't BS me, yet keep your mouth shut. I like the way you think, reminds me of me. Stick around and I'll make you wealthy. Don't screw up.
Jim is invited to tour the China operations with the president and a couple of VPs. Finally get to meet the Chinese employees that he has been talking to on the phone and by email, and entertaining when they come to Oregon.
First flight on the corporate jet. The interior is all leather and wood, there's a bedroom for the president.
The president has a little ritual: a double scotch, straight up, shared with the team, the good stuff of course, bottoms up before the flight. Then he closes his eyes, reclines in the leather seat, and takes a nap until the plane reaches cruising altitude.
The little jet fire up, rolls down the wet runway smooth like ice on a Midwest lake, and pulls up hard toward the low cloud cover of the Oregon winter.
As the plane banks right, Jim sees the outline of a little farm below. Darker greens at the creek, and stands of fir and alder, and a little farm house that is heating with wood. The light green of fields of barley planted for winter - and, the farm is swallowed up in fog as the little jet punches through the thick cloud cover and lofts them over a stunning Pacific sunset, pink, purple, blue. The chairman wakes up and starts a meeting about our goals and strategies for this China trip.
After five years, Jim has earned the confidence of the president and other senior executives. He is offered the position of VP, Strategic Planning. The position means a lot more hours and travel, and a lot more money and prestige, managing a staff of seven.
He thinks about something he read about a corporate chairman, the guy was the head of a huge industrial conglomerate, rich, successful powerful. The guy was writing his memoirs in a tree house he had built on the coast of Florida, enjoying the attention of being back in the limelight after leaving the corporation. The man was rich, powerful - and he was complaining about how his kids had grown up not knowing him, how his children now despise him.
Jim rebuffs the president's offer. When you are on the fast track in a corporation, you don't turn down more responsibility. Since he is leaving the company, he is required to cash in, a "same day" sale. After withholding estimated taxes, which is paid directly to the government, the money is deposited into the money market of his brokerage account. The amount - nine hundred seventy four thousand fifty five dollars and eighteen cents.
He has been friends with the chairman, has spent thousands of hours traveling and meeting and golfing and drinking with the guy, and he knows the code: never again will he be welcomed to the inner offices or golf course at Emerald Footwear. You walk, you leave behind the lifestyle, the glamour, even some of your friends. Three days later, Jim celebrates his thirty fifth birthday with his wife at the hospital; she gives birth to a beautiful baby girl.
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