Page 63 of Extradition (Mobsters + Billionaires 1)
He gestures dismissively at the notion, daring me to make my point.
Fine.
“This market correction that Wolfe Athletics is going through right now? It’s painful. But the bigger loss will be the people and their institutional memory. The people who’ve already left took with them terabytes worth of knowledge that resides only in their memories. It wasn’t saved anywhere, and now it’s gone. And some of that knowledge is more valuable than what you lost in stocks. So you are welcome to ignore every fucking idea I have, but there is no solution to your hemorrhaging value that doesn’t include better treatment of your employees.”
“In what world do you understand profitability better than I do?”
“This is emerging data based on interviewing the people who left. I found out where they were going and identified trends.”
“Mr. Portelli, conversations with your friends does not a data set make.”
“I agree, Mr. Wolfe. Which is why I avoided my closest associates. These are early numbers, but they match the trending I’ve been seeing for months now.”
Rand speaks up. “It’s true, Father. Joe’s been watching our competitors, and he knows how they operate.”
Wolfe Sr. pins me with an incredulous look. “Oh, please. Tell me how my rivals operate.”
“Gladly,” I say, sneering at this self-righteous prick, half-tempted to tell him to meet me out back. “They’re circling this company, waiting to take every scrap of value from it as you crumble in on yourself. So somebody in this room needs to help the rest of you pull your fucking heads out of your fucking asses or suffer the consequences. I don’t give a shit either way.”
Rand clears his throat and raises a brow in my direction. I take a step back and a deep breath. I know these people don’t care about anything except that goddamn profit margin. Wrangling my frustration and shoving it into a lockbox, I refocus on dispassionate facts.
Approaching the table, I aim for a better headspace. “Three years ago, Elite Athletics started offering high-dollar customizations for their shoes.”
The dumbest guy in the room cuts me off. “Those customizations are entirely ridiculous. They render the shoes practically useless in an actual athletic environment.”
I ignore him. “They made twenty million from those ridiculous additions last year, the same year they started paying for their employees’ deductibles. The deductibles cost them fifteen million, leaving them with a five-million-dollar profit on the solution they used to pay for everything.”
I shuffle the papers till I find the stat I’m looking for. “If you turn to page twenty-five, you can see we lost seventeen employees to Elite Athletics specifically. They weren’t even offered that much more in salary, often taking jobs directly correlated to the ones they had here.”
“Who are these people?” Wolfe Sr. asks, looking down his nose at the handout he’s ignored this entire time. “We had everyone sign a non-compete clause as part of their employment here.”
I hold my tongue. There’s a loophole in the clause that Wolfe’s competitors have been taking advantage of for years. They can hire someone for the mailroom and then, on day one, promote them to essentially the same job they had at Wolfe Athletics. I’ll let them spend their own money trying to figure that out.
The idiot can’t open his trap soon enough. “That’s cheap economics, Mr. Portelli. We would never stoop to such depths. Perhaps your online classes didn’t prepare you sufficiently for the realities of elite business environments.”
I shrug. “You might be right. But according to CNN, you lost almost a billion dollars in the first twenty-four hours after that video went viral. Proportionately, it’s one of the worst stock meltdowns anyone’s ever seen. What’s funny is that if you were to hire sufficient people to do the job and pay everyone here a wage that’s workable for living in or near the island of Manhattan, it would’ve cost you maybe ten percent of that.”
They shift in their seats and look to their beleaguered Chief Financial Officer. He nods.
“Thanks for that confirmation, Dan. I know I seem like a guy who just managed to stumble his way from the docks into a boardroom, but I do know a thing or two. For instance, this is the beginning of a sea change. People leaving their jobs for greener pastures is becoming the norm. The people in this room support and vote for politicians who oppose universal healthcare and paid family leave. You’re thinking only about the bottom line, forgetting entirely about the lost opportunities.”
“What lost opportunities?” asks Wolfe Sr., though I doubt he cares for the answer. I’m going to give it to him anyway. Maybe it’ll help someone else on this board figure shit out.
“The opportunity to work with people who are fully engaged. To work with people who aren’t having to choose between medication and keeping the lights on.”
If Wolfe Sr.’s expression is anything to go on, he could give a cold shit about whether or not people like their jobs. I get the distinct feeling that he’s upset about working with actual people who have actual needs.
It’s frustrating, but when I look around the table, the others are reviewing the provided data and paying attention. Fine. I decide to talk to them.
“Every Wolfe Athletics employee is overworked because you won’t hire enough people, and underpaid because, well, that’s just the Wolfe Athletics way. The fact that you lost a billion dollars means nothing to me. That’s an amount of money so high over my head I can’t even begin to imagine it. But I do know what it means for someone to worry about feeding their family. And if you continue to treat your employees unfairly, you’ll deserve everything you get.”
