Chapter 8 - The Boardroom Battle
But even as relief flooded through the patio, Michael’s phone buzzed again.
His assistant, urgent this time. The board had gotten wind of the delayed layoff memo, and they were not happy. A fight was coming, one that would test whether Michael Carter truly meant what he just promised, or whether old habits, the cold spreadsheet version of himself, would win out when 200 jobs and millions of dollars were on the line.
By Monday morning, word had spread through Carter Hospitality Group like wildfire, and not everyone was happy about it.
The boardroom on the 40th floor of the company’s Manhattan headquarters was tense.
10 executives sat around a long glass table, laptops open, expressions guarded. Michael stood at the head of the table, having just informed them that the planned layoffs, 200 housekeeping, maintenance, and support staff positions across three properties were being reconsidered entirely.
Michael, with respect, said Gordon Hail, the company’s longtime CFO, a man who had helped build Carter Hospitality from a single hotel into an empire.
We modeled this for 6 months. Those cuts save us $14 million annually.
The Kyoto deal alone requires liquidity we don’t currently have without this restructuring.
I understand the numbers, Gordon, Michael said calmly. I approved them myself, remember?
But I spent this weekend learning something I should have known a long time ago. Every single number on that spreadsheet has a name attached to it.
Family kid with headaches. A grandmother selling her wedding ring.
Silence settled over the room.
I’m not saying we don’t restructure, Michael continued.
I’m saying we do it differently.
We find efficiencies elsewhere. Corporate overhead, executive travel, the private jet contract we barely use.
We freeze new build spending on Kyoto by 6 months if we have to.
But we do not balance this company’s books on the backs of people who make less in a year than some of us spend on a watch.
Another executive, Patricia Gwyn, head of operations, leaned forward.
Michael, I respect what’s clearly a personal moment for you, but this is a $200 million company.
We can’t run it on sentiment.
No, Michael agreed.
But apparently, for the last 2 years, I’ve been running my own household on sentiment.
I didn’t even recognize the sentiment of a woman who showed up every single day and never once asked me for anything while quietly falling apart trying to save her grandson’s life.
If I can’t see that in my own home, Patricia, how exactly am I supposed to trust myself to see it across 40 hotels and 6,000 employees?
He opened his laptop and turned the screen toward the table.
Here’s what I’m proposing instead.
A companywide employee family emergency fund. Every employee from the general managers down to the housekeeping staff has access to interestf free emergency loans and grants for medical crisis. Sudden loss of housing, family emergencies, real support, not just an EAP hotline nobody uses.
Funded initially with $8 million replenished annually from a percentage of net profits and no layoffs at the three properties. We find the savings elsewhere together starting today.
The room was quiet for a long moment. Gordon Hail rubbed his jaw, clearly still skeptical about the financial modeling, but it was Patricia who finally spoke. My mother cleaned hotel rooms for 23 years, she said softly, almost to herself.
Nobody ever asked her if she was okay either. She looked up at Michael.
I’ll help you find the number, Michael.
Let’s make this work.
May you like
One by one, the room shifted. Not because Michael had made some brilliant financial argument.
He hadn’t, not really, but because he’d reminded a room full of powerful people of something easy to forget behind glass towers and stock reports that businesses are made of people, and people deserve to be seen.
