The Entire Bowl of Cherries
On the way out of the room, Jay had grabbed a pen and a legal pad. As he walked the deck, he looked for a relatively secluded lounge chair with enough light to allow him to make some notes. Finding just the right spot in the glow of a brilliant full moon, he sat down to assess his lot in life. As Eduardo had reinforced, Jay thought of himself as a survivor. He had almost partied himself out of State University his freshman year. It took him five years to earn his undergrad degree, but he finished with a respectable GPA. When he accepted the position at XL, it was his third job after college. To start, Jay was given one of the weakest XL territories in the country. After he had built it up, five years ago he was rewarded with what was considered one of the company’s “plum” territories.
Jay worked on both large and small accounts that, overall, generated an impressive record of annual revenue growth during his tenure, ranging from 9 to 19 percent, with an average growth rate in the midteens. The news of Cathy’s impending promotion felt like a slap in the face. He asked himself, “What else could I have done?” At this point, he had no answers. “How had I missed the warning signs that this was going to happen?” he wondered.
As Jay started to reflect on his current lot in life, he first tried to focus on avoiding a pity party. He and Laura had been college sweethearts. They married the summer both graduated from State U. Times were never especially easy, but they always supported one another. In recent months, he had at times questioned that point as Laura was devoting more and more time to the community theater and had recently partnered with her sister to open a women’s dress shop. With Jay’s travels of ten days a month or more, their relationship had evolved into one of voicemail, text messages, and sticky notes on the fridge. They used to schedule a “date night” at least once a month, but he was way behind on that pledge.
Jay was proud and thankful that he and Laura had two great kids. Their son, Trey, had just turned seventeen and was considered a solid, small-college baseball recruit, but probably not one who would be getting scholarship offers from any major universities. Their daughter, Ashley, was a story unto herself. She was now showing a strong interest in her social life, text messaging with abbreviations that would drive a court stenographer crazy, and buying designer handbags that created some major strain for the family credit cards. As he thought about the many negotiations in his life, he had to admit that his success rate was very low with his teenagers. To them “no” only meant “not yes yet” or a cue to simply change the parent they were negotiating with to an easier mark.
Jay was starting to realize the number and variety of negotiations he faced in his personal life. Just before the trip, his sister had expressed strong concern that their dad was starting to show some early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. He was forgetting lots of small things, such as where he had parked his car at the airport the last time he returned from a trip to St. Martin. Jay felt that after Dad had spent several days relaxing in the Caribbean, they should expect him to forget what state he lived in, much less the whereabouts of his car. Jay tried to pass his sister’s concerns off as a major overreaction, but she felt the symptoms were more serious and that they should be looking at medical specialists and assisted living options.