By late July I hardly spoke with Darth and my dislike for him and his practices
had grown to a hate. I was still having trouble with Jeff and Buzz in the lab and
just as he had done with Ravi and John, he ignored the problem. In addition, now
Darth was taking actions aimed at thwarting my every move in the laboratory.

“Rapid Set” was now at least equal to “Fast Set” in performance, yet Gamma was
having little success in the field. I surveyed the sales results and came to the conclusion that there was no well defined plan of attack to introduce the product into the market place. I drew up a memo outlining the problem and proposed a strategy for careful control and planning of all future “Rapid Set” tests. The memo went to Al Jordan, Vice President of Sales, Jay Wells, Carl Host and
Darth Korey. I received no verbal response from any of the recipients. Several
days later, I walked into the laboratory and there was a five gallon pail of “Rapic
Set” sitting on the lab bench.

“What this?” I asked Jeff

“Oh Darth is sending that to Caterpillar foundry for a test run.”

“Who is running the test and when is it going to be?” I asked.

Bill responded. “He's just sending it down there for them to test when they get
the chance. There's nothing definite.”

I was angry. Two days after I outlined a plan for conducting successful “Rapic
Set” tests, Darth was flaunting his disregard in my face. It seemed like a deliberate act to irritate me. In addition, I never was able to find out if the trial run had been carried out or what results were obtained. I never was able ascertain if the test run had been conducted and the results of such a test were deliberately withheld from me.

A second “Rapic Set” test was carried out a couple of weeks later without my
knowledge. I was sitting home one evening when I got a call from Jay Wells.
He said he was in Louisiana running a “Rapid Set” test that day and the results had
been terrible. I had not even been informed of the test and when I inquired about it, I found the test had been run under the worst possible conditions. I told Jay that the test shouldn't have been run and that under the conditions he used, it was bound to fail. I asked why he hadn't discussed the trial with me first. But all Jay kept saying was, “What am I going to tell them tomorrow? What am I going to say about why it didn't work?”

Suddenly the failure had become my problem. I gave him a few suggestions and
then hung up. I went to the family room and two scotches to try to calm down.
Jay had reported that he had run the trial unprepared, and now he was calling me
for an explanation for his poor results. My strategy to have successful “Rapid Set”
test trials had been designed to avoid exactly that situation.

In the confusion of everyday events, a very dramatic, yet almost unnoticeable
change had taken place in John Mason's behavior. John was now very quiet, reserved
and barely visible. When he was present, he no longer was the loud-mouth author-
itarian, but rather he was taciturn. His relationship with me became very distant and there were stretches of time when I barely saw him. Quietly and slowly, John had vanished as my antagonist and Buzz had grown to replace him. The dramatic
change in John's behavior baffled me and gave more credence to my belief that his
initial absurdly aggressive behavior had been planned and orchestrated.

In early August, Darth came in my office , sat down and started a dialog.

“Russ, I was planning to make some changes next January, but I decided to
move them up and make them now. I think it's time you get some stripes. Your
going to become the Technical Director. There will be some other changes too,
but they don't effect you. The changes will be made at the end of the month”. Darth continued on but I really didn't pay any attention.

After he left my office, I sat there debating what to do. If I accepted the “promotion" and the title, I would be lending credence to their story that they had treated me well and given me all that they had promised while at the same time if I rejected the promotion, they would have more reason to jump all over me and create more guilt and negative feelings. In fact, this was a classic "no-win" situation.