Suggestions and stress!

Once the criticalness of the free formaldehyde in the phenolic resin had been established in the performance of the “Rapid Set”, Darth decided that no one outside of the laboratory should know about it. It was a technical secret that was to stay known only to a select few.

Several days later I had a scheduled meeting with George Hammond who was Vice President of Sales. The meeting was scheduled for nine o'clock in his office. As I walked down the hall toward George's office, I could hear John's voice. I paused and listened. John was talking to George and Paul Johnson and telling them all about the importance of free formaldehyde! I walked into the office, John looked at me, completed what he was saying and then left. I was furious. I went upstairs and stormed into Darth's office.

“What the hell is going on here? We agreed not to tell anyone about the effect of free formaldehyde and I walk into George's office and there is John blabbing all about it.”

Darth remained very aloof, and then said something about including John more in our plans to keep John from doing such things. I failed to mention that it was Darth's job to do that since John never listened to anything I wanted.

Since my appointment with Georng had been arranged for nine A.M., so John's presence and blunder seemed almost deliberate. But WHY? It was not until several months later that I realized these little arranged incidents were designed to generate a strong emotional response. This incident with John was one of many that were arranged to get my emotions running out of control. But at the time, it just seemed like another bizarre event at Gamma Supplies.

At that point I had enough of Gamma Supplies. John had worked for Mobile and knew better than divulge critical information. The information he was relaying had been obtained by, at best, questionable means as far as I was concerned. And, it was considered to be a critical trade secret. Yet Darth was condoning John's conduct by saying we had handled incorrectly. I was going to find another job.

I wanted to find a position immediately because I didn't want to get involved any deeper in Gamma's legal battle with Better Supplies. I called an acquaintance from a previous job and explained my situation to him. He had approached me with an offer prior to my joining Gamma. He said that he would be in Chicago in December for the Plastics Show, and maybe I could meet with him there to discuss the situation in more detail. I said I didn't know how I was going to get to the show, but if I could, I would contact him. Since I didn't have many alternatives, I decided I would try to manage a trip to the Chicago show.

I was very unhappy with Gamma Supplies, and I no longer believed anything Darth told me. Even if Kash was fired, I had been treated so badly that I wouldn't want to stay with Gamma, but I still wanted to leave under conditions which were best for me. Apparently my unhappiness was noted because I was given constant reminders that Ravi would be fired. One day Darth walked into my office and handed me a stack of papers concerning Gamma Supplies technology and suggested I look through them. All the papers were technical in nature except one which was one of Darth's business scenarios titled “The Paul White Young Co.”. That story was about a young manager who had been hire to replace an older, unpopular man. The new man is given an office adjacent to the unpopular manager. Eventually the older manager is fired , and the newly hire man takes his position. The analogy of situation with Ravi could not have been missed.

Later when I saw Darth, he asked if I had looked through the papers he had given me. I said, “yes”. The he said with a wink, “did you find anything interesting?” He smiled as only Darth could.

The absurd suggestions continued. One day when I was in the outer business office copying some papers, G. T. Cline walked up to me. I was about to say hello, when he smiled and stuck out his hand. I shook his hand and he turned and walked away.

That evening I told Anita what had happened and I exclaimed, “Now what the hell did that mean?”

“I don't know.” She replied.

The second week of November, I kept my appointment with Dr. Agayoff. Dr. Agayoff quickly asked me what was wrong and then gave me a quick once over. He then asked me a series of questions concerning the use of stimulants, such as coffee, to which I answered negative in all cases. Then he asked me if I had been under a lot of stress at work. I explained my situation at Gamma Supplies and with Ravi. He concluded that my problem was due to externally generated stress.

I was curious what someone else might do if they were in my situation. When I asked him his opinion, his solution was to hang on until Ravi was fired and to hope that things would improve. Even he seemed uneasy with that solution, but it was the best he could offer. He answer was not encouraging, but it made me feel as though I was doing the most practical thing by staying on the job. An EKG was taken and it proved to be normal. The appointment confirmed what I had believed all
along; I was under a tremendous amount of stress at work.