A Pie Plate Pilgrimage by William Loewen
Chapter 20 - Out with the Old
When she arrived at work on Monday, Lydia was hoping that she would be able to settle in at her desk and collect her thoughts for a moment before she had to deal with Gerald, Luke or the Board of Directors. She arrived in the parking lot at a quarter to nine, and unfortunately Gerald and Luke’s cars were already there. She got to her desk and put down her purse and laptop bag. Before she had even finished taking off her winter jacket Luke walked over to her desk.
“Gerald wants to see you as soon as you have time.”
“Thanks,” she said, and she quickly picked up everything she had prepared and scampered from her desk to Gerald’s makeshift office in the boardroom. As she took a seat, she wondered about the expression on Gerald’s face. She didn’t sense any annoyance at having to deal with her book project and she couldn’t sense lingering grief from his mother’s passing either. It was almost as though he was looking sympathetically at her, instead of it being the other way around.
Lydia slid her documents across the table and Gerald leafed through them.
“I was hoping you’d have made more progress by this point,” he said without looking up from the papers.
“So was I,” Lydia responded immediately. “I think I underestimated the complexity of writing a religious book with a development team made up of people from a variety of religious experiences and convictions. The process is designed to benefit from those differences of opinion, but this time they have slowed our progress, at least temporarily.”
Gerald nodded his head and slowly arranged the papers before sliding them back in front of Lydia. He then put his elbows on the table, put his hands together and rested his chin on his interlocking fingers. He stared off blankly in the corner of the room for a moment then turned his eyes toward Lydia.
“Miss Phillips, I’m afraid we are going to have to pull the plug on this project. I know you’ve invested a lot of time and energy into it, but from a business standpoint the costs and the benefits haven’t come as close to balancing as we hoped they would, and we have no reason to believe that they ever will.”
Lydia didn’t say anything, but the disappointment she was feeling was written on her face.
“I thought it would be better if I told you like this rather than forcing you to learn about it at a Board meeting,” Gerald said in an understanding tone. “You can take the rest of the day off if you want.”
“What happens to the work we’ve done so far?” Lydia asked carefully.
“Well, because we’ve paid for the work you’ve done, those documents are now the property of Westminster Printers. Mr. Mackenzie is forbidden to use them in any other form of paid writing. All of this is clearly laid out in the contract he signed.”
Lydia simply nodded and added, “I’d like to be the one to tell Zack and everyone else on the development team.”
“That’s fine, and you can let them know that they will all be reimbursed as though they had worked until the end of the month,” Gerald responded. “The other thing I wanted to talk to you about now is that we have been in conversation about speeding up the timeline for Soleil’s next book. There is a position waiting for you on that development team if you want it.”
“Is it okay if I take some time to think about it?”
“Of course, but we’re hoping to have a full roster of names by the middle of this week.”
“Okay, I’ll let you know by then.” Lydia was in no mood to spell out exactly in which circumstances she would or wouldn’t be comfortable to serve on that committee again.
“Alright, well then you’re free to go. And again, if you want to take the rest of the day off, go right ahead.”
Lydia went back to her desk and sat with her head in her hands, not crying but still feeling utterly defeated. Once she had composed herself, she decided it would be best to first tell the other people in the office, and that it would be easier to start with the ones that she wanted to talk to the least.
“Yeah, I already know,” Melvin said after she thought she was breaking the news. “Luke told me.”
“Okay, well thanks for all your contributions.”
“It was my pleasure,” he said, matching her level of sincerity.
Lydia had no desire to stick around for any more chitchat, so she headed over to Larry’s desk in the finance wing of the office.
“Well that will free me up to get caught up on my other work here,” he said. “Did Gerald say anything about the book’s finances?”
“Just that he didn’t think the costs and benefits would ever balance out.”
“Yeah, well that I already knew. Gotta cut the bleeding sometime, the earlier the better usually.”
“Oh, and he said that Zack and the other non-staff people would be paid until the end of the month.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessary, but it’s up to him.”
“Yes,” Lydia agreed. “I guess I’ll go over and tell Sheila then too.”
Unlike the others, Sheila was quite supportive. She invited Lydia to sit down and complimented her leadership throughout the process and told her how much she had enjoyed the work.
“So what happens to the writing that has come in so far?” Sheila asked.
“I guess that all belongs to the company now,” Lydia replied, unsure of the details, “something to do with copyright.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” Lydia agreed. “I think Zack put a lot of work into those chapters, and according to Gerald, he can’t use that writing for anything else now.”
“That is too bad, but I was talking about you. You did a lot of work too. This was your project. It hardly seems fair that they would just stop the whole thing overnight and not let you or anyone else have access to those documents ever again.”
“Must be their lawyers at work,” Lydia said, standing up again. “Thanks again for all your work on the development team. It was great being able to get to know you better too.”
“The same goes for you.”
Lydia returned to her desk to call everyone else to notify them. This should be easier since she could hide behind the phone, but she wasn’t looking forward to telling Zack and Oscar. For entirely different reasons she wasn’t exactly excited about telling Gus either.
There was no answer when she tried calling Zack, so she left a message saying only that he should call her back. Then she called the next person on her list.
“Hello. Gus Leighton speaking.”
“Hi, Gus. This is Lydia Phillips from Westminster Printers. How are you doing today?”
“Just fine thank you. I thought you preferred to use email to communicate information about the development team.”
“You’re right, I normally do, but in this particular case I thought it would be more appropriate to deliver this news over the phone. The company has decided to cancel the project.”
“I see. This development isn’t entirely unexpected, but still I suppose you must be a little disappointed.”
“Yes,” Lydia answered, slightly annoyed. “I thought we were working toward something good, and a number of people invested quite a bit of time, effort and emotional energy into it.”
“The important thing is to learn from your mistakes, and who knows, in a few years you may just get another chance like this.”
Without asking what mistakes he thought she had made Lydia said, “Gerald assured me that you and everyone on the development team would be paid as though the project continued until the end of the month.”
“That’s nice of him. He’s also asked me if I’d be willing to sit on another team like yours, so you may see me around there again before too long.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you then. Alright, well I have a few more calls to make, so I should let you go.”
“Thank you for the call, Miss Phillips.”
Lydia didn’t know what she would say to Oscar. She was looking forward to talking with him, mostly because she thought that he, more
“Hi Oscar. It’s Lydia calling. I just heard today that Westminster Printers has cancelled the book project. All the work we’ve done is down the tubes. You’ll get your honorariums until the end of the month, but yeah, it’s done. I guess I could have just got you to call me back, but I wanted you to know right away. I realize that all the times we’ve hung out lately have been directly or indirectly connected to this book. It doesn’t have to stay that way. Anyway, they’re letting me go home early, so I’m leaving now, but if you want to call me on my cell when you get this, that’d be great.”
Making those phone calls, as awkward as some of them had been, had actually been a little therapeutic for Lydia. She figured that a nice drink from the nearby coffee shop and a brisk walk there and back might be enough for her to get her head back to doing work, but since Gerald had offered, she wasn’t going to refuse a day off. She shut her computer down and headed out the door.
Once at home though, she found herself almost wishing she was back at the office. The tedium of her job at least engaged her mind enough that she would have been able to almost forget what had happened. Now, walking around her empty apartment, she was left alone with her thoughts. What could she have done differently to make the project successful? Would any of the other candidates have fared better? Had she been sent home so that Luke, Melvin and others could conspire against her while she was away? Then, just in time to rescue her from this cycle of destructive thoughts, she got a call on her cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi Lydia, this is Zack returning your call.”
“Oh, thanks for calling me back. Zack, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m afraid our company has decided to cancel your book.”
There was a short pause before Zack said, “That’s too bad. Was it something about me or something that I wrote?”
“No,” Lydia answered immediately, almost happy to talk to someone else who was disappointed to hear the news. “What they told me was that we were working too slowly as a committee, to the point that they didn’t think the book could be profitable. Personally I think something else was at work here, but it definitely wasn’t because of you. Also, they promised to pay you as though you worked through to the end of the month.”
“I wasn’t in it for the money, trust me. Do you know what happens to the writing I’ve submitted to this point?”
“Yeah, I’m sorry to say that those documents belong to the company. Since they’ve been paying you, they legally own them. To prevent you from using them in another book for another company, they wrote those terms into the contract that you signed when you started.”
“Well, that’s inconvenient, but I can live with it,” he said. “I really don’t have a lot of time to talk now though Lydia, can I call you back in a few days when I’ve let this sink in a little more?”
“No problem. I understand. I’ll talk to you later.”
Talking to Zack was helpful for Lydia. It was great to talk to someone who also needed a little bit of consoling. The conversations at the office with Melvin and Larry and talking on the phone with Gus were the biggest reason she went home as early as she did. She hated being talked down to, and as much as she expected that to be the case throughout this process it still rubbed her the wrong way every time it happened. Since she hadn’t experienced it as much as she had expected from Zack and especially Oscar, it was even more unwelcomed when she witnessed it in other people at the office.
Lydia sat at her kitchen table and began to eat the lunch that she had brought with her to work. As she ate, she couldn’t stop thinking about work and the situation that had unfolded in front of her. She decided that she was going to get out of the house right after lunch to get her mind off her work.
As she was putting on her jacket to go, there was a knock at the door. When Lydia opened it, Oscar was standing there with a small bucket of ice cream. She let him in and closed the door. He took his boots off, but before he could hang up his coat, Lydia put her arms around him and buried her head in his chest and sobbed. He just held her without saying a word.