It was a pretty frosty day when I arrived home on Friday, and not all the frost was outside. Without going into all our conversation pertaining to Helen's refusal to move to Detroit; I'll just say that she finally came around. I gave her all the details about the move, and told her that we didn't have to live in Detroit; we could look for a home in the suburbs.
We put the house up for sale in Hartford and hoped that it would sell quickly. I didn't have a firm date for the move, as I had commitments to finish the sales budgets for the Eastern Region. We had put the house on the market that first week of January, and Asjes said that I should take over Detroit by mid February, giving me time to sell the house. Also, Ken Becker, the current Detroit manager had to sell his house. Hopefully, all this would come together. Unfortunately, except for some weekends, I still had several weeks of travel ahead of me. To cap it all, my temporary boss Silton was in the hospital, which required me to take over some of his responsibilities.
By the end of January the house was sold; we had to be out by February 15th, when the new owners wanted to take over occupancy of the house. I was able to get a few days at home to help out with the packing up and attending the house closing. During the first two weeks of February, I had meetings with Fritz Kielman and Luke Asjes on various subjects pertaining to both Hartford and Detroit. Asjes had a map of the USA on his office wall; attached to the map were pictures of each District Manager in the area they were responsible for. This could be a little intimidating.
Just before leaving the Eastern Region, I had an experience that I regretted greatly. Asjes asked me to go to Pittsburgh, do a thorough investigation of that office, and report back to him on the results. I called Gus Mize and told him I wanted to spend a couple of days with him to go over his top accounts. I had spent time with Gus several times and always found him to be a reliable manager. As I wrote previously, Gus was well liked by his travel agents and commercial accounts. He could be very funny and friendly to everyone. Not exactly a sharp dresser, with a physique that did not make it easy to look like a fashion model. But, really, is that so important? After all, he was working for the airlines, not for GQ magazine. On this particular visit, Gus invited me to his home for dinner. He had a lovely wife and daughter, and I enjoyed a nice dinner. I found everything in order and reported this to Asjes upon my return.
A week or so later, I encountered Gus coming out of Asjes office. I stuck out my hand in greeting, but before I could get a word out, he called me a S.O.B. and accused me of putting a knife in his back. I was flabbergasted. Gus turned his back to me, got into the elevator, and was gone. I later found out that Asjes had asked Gus to come into New York for a meeting. When Gus met with Asjes, Asjes fired him. He told him that he couldn't stand the way he looked and that he was not the kind of man that he wanted representing KLM. Apparently, Asjes had hoped that I would find some good reason to fire Gus. When I reported that Gus was doing a good job, he just called him in and fired him anyway. Since I had just been with Gus, Gus thought that I had caused his dismissal. I tried to call him several times, but he wouldn't talk to me.
He certainly didn't deserve the treatment he got. He did his job well, and that's the way I judged him. By the way, I understand that he found a job with L.O.T. the Polish airline.
February 15th rolled around and we vacated the house. I had a moving company enroute to Detroit and our furniture was to go into storage until we found a house. Now the whole family, Helen, Kathy, Karen and Kirby were heading to a new adventure in Michigan, although I'm not sure Helen shared my enthusiasm. Now the first thing we had to do was find a place to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment