10
Power
It was late in the afternoon, and the office lunch crowd had long since cleared out. The restaurant was nearly empty. John and Shin sat silently at their usual table, two bowls of short rib soup between them.
“The risk team told her that the numbers on her Australia report made no sense,” Shin said, straightening his necktie, though it looked fine.
In the past month, John had warned the senior men on the team that she wasn’t allowed to ask for their help. They must not do her work for her.
“I didn’t tell her about the mines in Queensland, which affected the overall coking numbers,” John said.
Shin looked relieved. “Can you do it today? She’s already upset, and these things are best done quickly.”
John put down his metal spoon. He didn’t feel like finishing.
“She now has a few weak performance reviews, but I thought maybe I could get her to redo the report and submit it to risk again. Still get it wrong. Establish her incompetence. Have another department’s support.”
John felt sick, unable to believe that he was doing this to the poor young woman. He had reasoned that the worse she performed in front of others, the more justified it would be to terminate her. He needed more evidence to build his case.
“No, no,” Shin said. “Now is the best time. After you fire her, I’ll get her something else. I can take care of this. I have a friend in Busan who has already agreed to hire her. I will see her, just far less often.” Shin didn’t plan to go cold turkey; he would taper off.
“You think she’ll go to Busan?”
“If she’s fired, then the new position in Busan would mean no gaps in her employment.
It’s a slight promotion, actually, and she knows she can’t get a promotion this year.
She can take a week off before starting there.
This weekend I’m taking her to Hakone. She loves onsen.
Should cheer her up.” Shin seemed confident that the mess he’d created could be tidied.
John wanted this to end. He didn’t want to keep giving Danbi increasingly difficult tasks and, worse, making her doubt herself. No matter the circumstances, a firing was never easy.
“Couldn’t you tell her to quit? That she can work in Busan without getting fired? Just get her to switch jobs.”
Shin smiled uneasily. He had already tried.
Danbi would not budge. She wouldn’t leave him and a prestigious job.
She had come from a quiet farming village, and to her, everything but Seoul was a backwater.
If not the capital, she wanted to live in New York or Los Angeles.
More than once, she had asked him to take her to the United States, preferring the West Coast since his wife and children were in New Jersey. She had a wealthy cousin in California.
“Today,” Shin said. “Please.”
John arranged for Danbi Jung to meet him in the glass-walled conference room by the bank of elevators.
He got there ahead of her and waited, reading her thick file.
This was the usual room where employees received their reviews, promotions, and terminations.
As usual, the Venetian blinds were half lowered for privacy, but the slats were not fully closed.
The smoky glass door was polished and open.
Seated at a conference table that could accommodate a dozen people, he felt very alone.
John believed he was a reasonably honest man.
Over the course of his life, he had witnessed many unfair things, which had troubled him.
When necessary, he had turned a blind eye.
When he had a duty to report, he had done so, but not always.
In school, you weren’t supposed to snitch.
In the military, you protected your fellow soldiers.
In the office, you took care of your people, trying to discern what had to be done for the greater good versus what a company needed to do to survive.
It would have been preferable if one didn’t have to do this sort of ethics calculus, but being an adult was never easy, and being wise required some sacrifices, if only to simplify the moral equation.
As his career progressed, and he’d come to understand what was required to get ahead, John had given up a measure of professional ambition and sacrificed opportunities.
He had done his best to forgo any ill-gotten gains.
He loved his wife and children, and protecting them had become his primary goal.
Over the years, clients had offered him money to get discounts from the company.
Suppliers had offered him kickbacks to be selected for lucrative deals.
John never accepted money he hadn’t earned, and what seemed difficult for most people was easy for him.
The act of refusal had to be done carefully, so as not to insult the one who had made the offer.
Each time he did it, that muscle of refusal grew stronger.
By now, those with shady intentions knew better than to approach him for preferential treatment, and went to his colleagues or superiors instead.
John Koh’s squeaky-cleanness might have been one of the many reasons he was sent abroad and kept there even as a young man.
Controlling greed protected a company from catastrophe.
Employees who took a packet of cash and turned the other way while favored suppliers or clients did shoddy business created dangerous situations for the manufacturer, distributor, supplier, trading partner, and end user.
Both John and his boss Shin believed that financial greed was a market inefficiency.
Shin’s only vice was women, and he admired that John had a professional conscience and did his work well.
A colleague could drink too much, gamble, or have secrets that made him vulnerable.
Weaknesses caused problems, but they also created bonds.
Shin expected John to lie for him about the mistresses.
Every Sunday, John Koh went to church with his family, and he paid careful attention to the sermons.
He believed that a wise man must regularly cultivate his morality and faith, no differently from reading the news to be informed, learning more about his profession, and exercising regularly.
A preacher in Sydney had once shared a German theologian’s definition of wisdom: competence with regard to the complex realities of life.
John wanted to be wise like that. It was one thing to refuse sin for oneself, but he wanted to be competent even when facing the sins of others.
Ministers preached against sin. There were many kinds.
However, he noticed that ministers rarely dwelled on avoiding bad business practices.
In college, he had attended a Bible study group at SNU, where a young woman who studied economics noted that the Bible instructed merchants to use standardized measurements and avoid cheating.
A faithful person was supposed to be honest in trade, she had insisted, quoting chapters and verses to prove her point.
Of all the sermons John had sat through, not a single pastor had ever talked about the evils of lying in business.
In reality, for John, the big sins had been easy enough to avoid.
He and Shin had only worked for large companies, which often had the power to control prices and markets.
Coking coal, iron ore, steel, and fuel were always needed, and powerful traders could find trading relationships and keep the business going.
Mostly they had been able to keep their hands clean.
Unlike goods, people were harder to control, because human beings were irrational.
There was a phone in the center of the conference table. John felt a sudden urge to pick up the receiver and call his wife. Helen would know what to do. She would tell him not to do this.
If John did not fire Danbi, Shin would not fire him.
However, Shin would view the failure as insubordination and a kind of betrayal.
John knew that Shin was embarrassed to have asked for this favor.
John was letting his morals, or perhaps cowardice, get in the way.
Loyalty had always been the strongest bond between the two men.
If Danbi stayed at HRI, John realized that it was Shin who would lose his job.
If Shin was gone, John would not get automatically promoted.
He would become another mark—an easy target for the tougher men in the company.
With Shin gone, if John was pushed out, he didn’t know where to go. He was too senior to make a lateral move, yet not senior enough to insulate himself from internal politics.
John had never done anything like this before.
No one had ever asked him, and if anyone but Shin had, he would have refused.
He felt like quitting, but that seemed impetuous.
There would be no job for a man his age in a company as good as HRI.
John could visualize the risks like they were bars of a graph, and the highest bar of risk to his career would be disobedience to his boss.
Danbi knocked on the door, entered, and sat opposite him.
John tried to smile, but she stared frostily across the table.
“Your coking ore numbers were wrong,” John said. “You missed the mines in the northeastern region.”
“I didn’t know about them. No one told me to include that.”
“I did tell you,” John said, immediately regretting his words.
“No, no.” She shook her head, exasperated. “You didn’t.”
“You should have asked for more clarification,” he said, knowing this was unfair.
“I took careful notes when you gave me the assignment. That’s like asking me to ask you if there were more factors, when you were the one providing all the factors.
How can you—?” Danbi stopped herself. “I have been trying to understand the project, but the scope is enormous. There are variables that are virtually incalculable and unknowable. These projects you give me remind me of theoretical math problems from university. In fact, those were easier.”