Greg Wilson flicked his card against the exterior reader that opened the office doors prior to business hours, and scurried down the entrance hall, past empty cubicles, to his own corner immediately outside the office of his managing Veep, K.T. Richards.  K.T. was the first woman officer the company had ever hired.  She was demanding and driven and Greg knew he had made her very angry the night before.

Oft-repeated wisdom from his grandfather kept echoing in Greg’s mind:  “When you’ve dug yourself into a hole, boy, the first thing you do is stop digging.”  Not so different than his wife’s comment the night before.  “What the hell did you do, Greg?  Well, whatever you do in the morning, don’t make it any worse.”  If Greg could have weaseled out by staying home, he would have done so.  If he could now make himself invisible, he would.  But all that was left to him was to face K.T. and hope that he still had a job.

Greg reviewed his blunder.  He was frustrated in his role of marketing support for the company’s sales team. The men he served were incompetent dolts while he boasted an MBA earned summa cum laude.  He resented K.T.’s favoritism of the salesmen and how much she cast the support team as. . .well. . . support.  Secondary.  He took grave umbrage and told her so in a lengthy, heated email Monday night.  Momentarily he heard her high heels clicking down the tiled hall and he knew Tuesday’s reckoning was here.

As Greg followed K.T.’s invitation into her office, he easily recalled that she had fired three employees in her first quarter with the company.  He started mentally inventorying the personal items he would need to remove from his desk before his own exit.  K.T. murmured a perfunctory “good morning” and then squared her gaze toward Greg.

“Greg, I received your email from yesterday.  I finally got around to reading it at 7:30 last night, after I had met all of my critical deadlines.  While you were sitting at home with your lovely family, having completed a delicious dinner prepared by your wife, feet up, watching TV. . . I was still here digging through my desk, eating a cold tub of yogurt and answering email.  I am sure you can understand how tired I was by then.”

Greg squirmed in his seat but tried hard not to look away.  K.T. continued:  “I could tell from your email that you were highly frustrated.  Unfortunately I was not in a mood to empathize.  And I wanted to, Greg.  That’s part of my job.  To try to understand your complaints.  But there was not any way I could be responsive to an impersonal, angry email read in a state of exhaustion at 7:30 p.m..  I am human, too, Greg.” 

K.T. leaned in and Greg tensed his hold on the chair arm.  “So I have discarded the email, and if you will get onto my calendar for Friday morning, we will talk about your issues.  By then I promise I will be able to listen— and I ask a promise of you.  That you never send me an email like that one, ever again.  We owe each other more than that.”

As Greg settled back into his desk, three office mates peered around the divider with quizzical looks.  “Get back to your desks, you bums” Greg growled with mock anger, gingerly unloading his briefcase for the day.  “And don’t let me hear any of you ever again use the “B” word regarding K.T.  That. . . woman. . . .is a class act.”