Voluntary 10 [9]
Business Dealings
Friday. Arthur looks at the bottom of the laptop’s screen, off to the right. Ten twenty-one in the morning. He was setting the device up on top of a rubber mat on one of the ends of a long, thin marbled table. He was assuming an awkward posture, the table being too low so he had to hunch his back somewhat to reach the laptop’s keyboard. Victor was looking at him, sitting with his legs crossed on a chair set off to the side, by a large glass window that seemed to encompass most of the outer-facing wall. Arthur moved the mouse around, made a few clicks, then turned from the table and faced a shelf that was fixed to the wall, set below an extremely large plasma screen. He opened one of the drawers and produced a sleek, glossy, thin remote control. With the push of a button the large plasma screen turned on and several stock market charts popped to life on it.
“You really shouldn’t have that up all the time. This is a workplace, not your personal casino,” Victor said as he shot an unapproving glance at Arthur. Arthur ignored him and fired up a digital slide presentation, immediately displaying the Griffentek logo, in all of its gray-colored glory on the gigantic plasma screen. Arthur looked at it through a blank stare.
“You never told me that Santana was the CEO,” Arthur protested. “Why should I want to do business with him?” he asked as he faced Victor and straightened his posture and crossed his arms in front of his chest.
“You should want to do business with him because you signed the Statement of Work and because this isn’t high school anymore. Grow the fuck up,” Victor retorted. Arthur seemed visibly shaken by the biting reply. Seizing the opportunity, Victor continued. “His name is on their website. Had you navigated to their About Us page, you would have seen a huge photo of him. Yes, I may have conveniently left his name out of the agreement, but him being the CEO is by no means a big secret. Maybe you should take your responsibilities more seriously and actually learn about our clients before heading head-first into these deals.” Arthur gritted his teeth. His hands were shaking and he felt the heat rising on his face. The phone in the middle of the conference room started to ring and both of them looked at it. Arthur, doing his best to retain his calm, walked towards the middle of the table, arched his back in a hunch, and pressed one of the phone’s function keys. “Yes?” he asked as soon as he answered. He could hear the receptionist’s voice:
“Mr. Griffen, it’s already ten-thirty. Can our AXIS guests head into the conference room?” she asked. Arthur lifted his hunched-over frame and looked towards the reception. The blinds had been turned, so he couldn’t see outside. He turned to look at Victor and could see him grinning from ear to ear. He took a deep breath and shook his head while looking straight at Victor’s eyes.
“Yes, I’ll open the door for them,” Arthur said. He put a smile on his face, though he could feel his cheeks trembling somewhat, and pressed a button on the phone, ending the call. He walked towards the door, turned the knob, and pulled it open. He faced the six members from the AXIS Group and motioned for them to go in. “Good morning everyone, come on in! We’re glad to have you,” he said. One by one, they approached him, shook hands, and went in. Robert Santana, the man who had talked to the receptionist, was the last one to approach. He stopped in front of Arthur, looked at him from head to toe, then smiled and hugged him.
“Long time no see!” Robert exclaimed. “Man, lady time has been kind to you!” he added, with a particularly high-pitched intonation on that last word. Arthur smiled and extended his hand to shake with his after the hug. Robert obliged and went into the room with a smile. Arthur looked at the receptionist, took a deep breath, and went into the conference room after closing the door behind him. Everyone was already sitting at the table, most of them with laptops deployed save for a woman that only carried a leather-bound notebook and a pen that looked quite a bit fancier than the one usually carried by Victor and Oscar. Was he the only one who didn’t carry a fancy pen, he asked himself in his thoughts, then turned to Victor. Immediately on cue, Victor rose from his seat and stood next to Arthur.
“Good morning everyone, and thank you for accepting this meeting on such short notice,” Victor said in a strong, friendly tone. “We welcome you to the offices of Griffentek and hope to be able to have a productive meeting in regards to this e-learning project that your company is about to embark upon with the use of our services.” Arthur clicked on a small device in his hand, and the slide moved over from the company’s logo to a slide with Victor’s and his name, with their titles below them.
“I’m Victor Ramos, the Chief Revenue Officer as the slide says, and next to me is Arthur Griffen. From his name, I think it’s easy to surmise who he is,” Victor said with a smile. A few of the guests let out a chuckle. Arthur shook his head and clicked on the gadget, moving on to the next slide. It had several colorful logos arranged in a pleasing grid.
“Those are some of our partners,” Arthur chimed in. “We realize that the Statement of Work has already been signed, but we still like to make new clients feel like they’re in good hands for choosing us, so we like to bring them up,” he added, then he lowered his voice. “Even if those new clients are unwanted,” he whispered as he turned his head. Victor looked at him through razor-thin eye slits. Robert Santana stood up, noticing Arthur’s discontent, and smiled at him, then he turned towards the rest of the group.
“Please, allow me,” Robert said. Arthur looked at him in disbelief and assumed a cautious stance. Victor moved next to him and pulled him a few steps away from Robert.
“Trust in the process,” Robert whispered at Arthur. Arthur, feeling exasperated, let out a sigh but immediately relaxed the muscles in his face and forced a smile.
“We have a strong challenge ahead of us,” Robert said. “We need to offer remote training to new staff members that will spend most of the day on the road, setting up new payment terminals as we deploy EMV-capable devices to keep up with the demands of the modern marketplace,” Robert added. “We lack the time and resources to be sending our Operations team, in other words, you, to meet up with these new staff members and get them up to speed. That is why we have chosen to look into computer-lead learning solutions, which is how we found Griffentek. That their CEO is an old high-school friend of mine is a bonus,” he said and then laughed. Arthur, with an unusually blank face, nodded at Robert and looked around the room.
“Thank you,” he said, and then paused. “Old friend,” he added. “Any questions before proceeding?” He saw the woman with the pen raise her hand. The large pen seemed to be transparent but had a glittering silver swirl going through the whole body, which had a black cap at the end opposite the black section. The hexagonal cap with a fancy, arched clip was resting on the table. Arthur looked at her and nodded. “Yes, the lady with the fancy pen. What’s your name please?” Robert immediately interrupted once more.
“I am so sorry,” Robert said. “I forgot to introduce my team. She’s our Head of Operations, Leslie Fletcher. She’s flanked by our VP of process, Héctor Quintanilla, and our CTO, Vicky Lacerna. The other two are Garret Rodríguez, a Team Leader for our installations team, and Nelson Errasti, one of his team members,” Robert added.
“Thank you for introducing us,” Leslie said. “Going back to your presentation, Mr. Griffen, what sort of security will your e-learning system employ?”
“That’s an excellent question,” Arthur replied. “And one that I had no idea that we’d be discussing so soon.” He suddenly felt many heavy gazes fall upon him. “Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an answer!” he exclaimed. “We’ll be using an industry-standard Learning Management System used by banks and pharmaceutical companies. It has full end-to-end encryption support and we can also set up a custom tunnel between your network and ours to help out. Our business relationships allow us to basically operate away from prying eyes and ears, should your company decide to explore those options.”
“What is this Learning Management System?” Leslie asked.
“We actually have our own,” Griffen replied with a smile. “It’s a custom tool called AccuTrain that we developed in-house. That’s why I know that it can support all those security options. We’ve already deployed them and can easily add anything new that comes up in the future if necessary. We offer remote deployments as well as a locally installable image if you’d prefer to run it from your own servers. We do offer enhanced security suites if you’d prefer a cloud-based approach though.” He noticed that she nodded and took some notes as he was talking. “Any other questions?” he asked. She shook her head.
“That was a really productive starting exchange,” Robert said. “I really feel that we’ve made a good choice in entrusting this to your capable team,” he added. Héctor raised his hand and Arthur nodded at him.
“Hi,” he said. “As our CEO said, I’m AXIS Group’s Vice President of Process, and I’d like to know if there’s a chance that we could establish the first contact with your Development Team. Maybe a Business Analyst or a Senior Developer in charge of coding the application,” Héctor said.
“Please remember that this is just a Project Kickoff Meeting,” Victor said as he interjected. “We’re already looking at extremely specific details and that won’t be productive right now. Let’s get to know more about each other and overall expectations. You will all receive further contact information so you can get in touch with the people best served to collaborate with you all,” he added. Arthur nodded at him.
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