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Another example of Ravi's open hostility concerned the budget. Since I was suppose to “build the laboratory”, I needed to know what kind of resources the company was committing to accomplish that job and where current funds were going. Ralph Simpson, the office manager and accountant, came into my office one day and gave me a copy of laboratory expenses and the laboratory costs as a percent of sales. Three things immediately caught my eye. First, Ravi was very well paid and the cost of his company car was being charged to the laboratory. Second, the workers in the laboratory were not well paid when one considers the benefits the company had, and third, and most important to me was that the laboratory expenses as a percent of sales was 1.8%. I was to learn that the goal was to reduce that figure to 1.2%. Some large corporations spend 2-4% of gross sales and the nation as a whole spends 2-3% of GNP on R&D; the low figure bothered me.

I did not know what small companies spent as an average on R&D, but I thought Gamma's attempt to reduce the figure to 1.2% of gross sales was the wrong direction to go and was not in line with my objective. My concerns about the expenses quickly vanished several days later when Ralph Simson told me I would not be getting any more monthly budget reports because Ravi had ordered a stop to it. At this point I had had enough, and I requested that Darth. Ravi and I get together for a discussion.

That evening I reviewed my written offer of employment and compared it to my
situation at Gamma Supplies. About the only place the offer agreed with the my actual situation was in the salary. I wanted an explanation as to the discrepancies and I wanted to know what was going to be done to correct the situation.

The next morning Ravi and I met with Darth in his office. Darth sat behind his desk with Ravi to his immediate left, and I sat across the room confronting them. Suddenly, they were management, and I was put in the position of dissident worker. The meeting did never did address the problems between Ravi and me. Instead, I pointed out that they were not living up to their agreement with me. Darth tried to sell me on the fact that indeed my present assignment did not meet their promises, but he didn't see any problem. I was angry.

“I managed projects worth over $250,000 before I came here, and supervised four people. I didn't come here to be a bench chemist! The projects I managed were more than the entire laboratory budget here.”

Darth acted anxious and replied, “Gamma Supplies has a good future and we expect you to grow with the company.” He paused, “I have to catch a plane in a half-an-hour so Ravi , tell Russell about the good future here.”

With that statement, Darth got up and left the office! Ravi sat there dumbfounded and then mumbled something about the growth potential of Gamma Supplies and the good future with the company. I wanted changes made to give me the responsibility I had been verbally promised and had been lead to believe I would have in my offer of employment. Nothing was resolved in the meeting, and I left believing more and more that I had been hired solely to provide a technical base for Gamma Supplies' legal battle with Better Supplies. I considered the possibility of leaving Gamma Supplies, but the economic repercussions would be enormous.

After that meeting things simmered down in the laboratory, and I was able to work without hindrance from John Mason. But now I was curious as to how others viewed Darth and his reliability in doing what he promised. I decided to inquire about Darth's integrity from the head of the Quality Control laboratory, George Landry. George was an elderly man with an easy going nature and appeared to be a person who felt secure in his world as the man responsible for checking the products before they were shipped to the customer. One day I engaged George in a light conversation, and Darth came up as a topic of conversation.

“I guess if Darth promises you something you can rely on it,” I said.

“Oh yes,” George replied. “He keeps his word.”

At that point I started living on promises and not on the reality of the present condition. This was to become a standard practice of keeping me going with promises and delivering nothing in practice.

In addition to being told that Darth's word was good, the shock of his bizarre exit during the meeting was rationalized in a conversation with Ralph Simpson. We were chatting about the business one day when I brought up Darth's behavior. Ralph quickly assured me that his actions were typical for Darth, and that he had walked out of a sales meeting in Pittsburgh in a similar manner. He went on to tell me how incompetent Darth was and what a poor manager he was. This caused me a problem too, because I was aware Darth had an MBA from the University of Chicago, which is one of the top business schools in the country. He couldn't be that incompetent but he sure looked that way.

Other concessions were made after that meeting with Ravi and Darth. The second
change to occur, was that I was told that Jeff would now work for me as a technician. I immediately ceased upon the situation by assigning to Jeff the objective of carrying out the phenolic resin work which I had outlined while I explored other potential products. This arrangement quickly changed a week later when Ravi told me Jeff had to work on some other things, and since the phenolic resin had top priority, I was to do that work. What the whole scenario did was it reduced my immediate frustration and then quickly reverted back to the same situation.