Dave Clark

I was in a meeting with Dave Clark from the City of Champaign.  Dave had just started making a presentation of several statistics about the performance of his section.  Across the table in a formal suit sat an auditor, who was Dave’s older brother.  He jumped in before Dave had gotten two sentences out and said, “Did you authorize these vacations?”  Dave said he had.  The auditor then said, with a smug look of defiance, “Policy requires 14 days notice on any vacation request.  Most of these appear to be granted without the 14 day notice.”

This stopped Dave cold.  I could see that he was completely flustered and it was also obvious that this wasn’t just about the vacation time, it went all the way back to childhood, and once again big brother, who has his act more together is putting down little brother.  After a long, awkward pause Dave tried to speak, but his voice cracked and tears were welling up in his eyes.  I wasn’t in charge of the meeting, so I debated what to do, and not seeing an appropriate role, I sat there and watched the painful situation play itself out.  I wanted to step in and say to the big brother that he was out of line, that he had a conflict of interest that should have kept him from performing the audit, that it was inappropriate for him to be there because of the relationship, and to top it off, that Dave had done the right thing in approving the vacations with short notice if it didn’t disrupt his crew’s ability to work, because that was the point of the 14 day notice rule, which everyone in the department knew and he would too if he’d been here.

I sat there and stared at a piece of blank graph paper on the table in front of me to avoid looking at either of the two brothers.  Strangely, when I swiveled the paper to the right, the squares on the page turned to trapezoids.  I swiveled it back straight and they turned back to squares.  I tried the left and they did the same thing, only opposite.