Reeling from yesterday’s surprise visit , I pondered over the Prince’s comment “I always get what I want”, who says that anymore , a male chauvinist who thinks because he’s got a bit of money in his pocket the world should bow to his every request. He must be high, who does he think he is , and so I went on as I sat behind my desk in my office this morning.
Anyway my thoughts were jolted when my executive assistant (ES) came into to say my 11am had arrived. The meeting dragged on for a while as we had a lot of points on the agenda to go through , some investment issues , I won’t bore you with the details . After that I had a 2 pm out of the office , the meeting had been arranged a few weeks ago. We had a pending partnership agreement that needed to be signed but the last time we met their chairman was out of the country.
We got a call 2 weeks ago that he would be in town this week and today at 2pm was fixed .
So I went back to my office to freshen up and pick up the partnership docs and proceeded to my 2pm, my intention was to go see my friend after and then go home from her office.
I got to the office 10mins early, I was ushered into the chairman’s waiting room, I was told by a nice young man that the chairman would be ready for me in a few minutes. I picked up a daily and just flipped through the pages , nothing seemed to sink, I was thinking and trying to imagine what the chairman would be like, old, middle age etc , I didn’t get far with my thoughts when the nice young man came to usher me in to the chairman’s office.
As I walked in , the office was very large , had a five seater settee on one side , a 6 table board room table to the other side and a mighty big desk towards the far end , black and white wall to wall carpet , a 50 inch tv and a bang and Olsen music system played jazz music .
I stood in front of the desk and asked the man with his back to me pouring himself a drink, if I may sit down, he said yes please and turned, I froze, it was Prince, the guy we met yesterday in my friends office. He smiled and said please sit down Ma’am , I like to check out my partners before I jump into bed with them.
I must have had my mouth open for a few minutes , I quickly took hold of my self and said good afternoon Sir. And proceeded to sit down. All the while my mind was going up and down not thinking of anything in particular just so confused , where is my friend when I need her. I decided to snap out of my confusion . So I asked, Sir , if I may ask, why would you pretend you were someone else yesterday , i suddenly realised I had started to use the word Sir, a lot , it seemed like the right thing to do. This was a man I had been trying to see for a while, he sat on the board of a Fortune 500 company and was chairman to 3 other very successful companies , I was in shock, I just bloated out a few why’s then when I realised no answer was coming forth from him ,I kept quiet.
He was staring at me for about 2 mins before he said , do you want to do this over lunch, I said No Sir, so fast before I even thought about it. He smiled and said , well am famished , it’s 2.30 pm , why don’t we go to lunch and discuss the agreement . I said No , am not hungry , got up and said , maybe I should let you go to lunch I will come back tomorrow morning and we can discuss the agreement then , he said he was busy tomorrow morning , today was best for him, am not sure what I was thinking , I picked up the documents and said well Sir, I see you are very busy now, so maybe the day after tomorrow would be more convenient , if you would be so kind to let me know when you are less busy and I can come back , I paused , he just keep staring at me, with a smile on his face , I was visibly shaken! said my good bye and walked out of the office. Am not sure how I got into my car drove to my friend’s office and climbed up the stairs , all I knew is I was sitting in front of my friend, telling her what just happened and asking what was I thinking when I worked out on a very lucrative partnership deal.
After a while I noticed my phone was on silent , i had 7 missed calls 1 from my ES and 6 from an unknown no, I decided to call my ES back and ignore the other call until I got home. My friend and I talked for about an hour she advised me to send a text and apologise for my over reaction. Got home around 7 pm , didn’t feel like eating anything just got my self ready for bed , watched some telly until I eventually feel asleep.
My phone beep woke me up around 4 am, I had 2 text come in at once from a Dubai no, opened the text and read ” Am so sorry for my manners yesterday, I believe I got carried away, please forgive me , I will make it up to you.
2nd text” on the other hand I would like to sign the deal today, my driver could pick you up in 4 hours , you fly in to Dubai on our corporate jet, we sign the agreement and you be back by tomorrow . What do you say ? , because am off to Montreal from here and not back for 2 weeks ”
Now I knew this this man had ulterior motives , I waited until it was morning and sent him a text declining his offer to come over to Dubai . I decided to make an offer, to DHL the docs for him to sign and have a Skype conference to discuss the details.I didn’t get a reply to my text, so I assumed he was no longer interested, I made up my mind that this wasn’t meant to be.
On the Saturday my friends came over to the house , I then tabled my decision to them, after much talk for about an hour or so, they all agreed that my decision was the right one and although they discussed how lucrative the deal was they respected my decision not to continue with it.
A couple of weeks passed , I had moved on from the missed partnership saga, a courier brought a letter from the company asking me to meet with the board of directors for a meeting to discuss the way forward . As I read through the letter I realised it was signed by the managing director , a Lady ,I decided to give her a call to decline rather than ignore the letter . She urged me to come along and that the chairman had instructed the board to meet with me to go through the documents and sign the partnership agreement.
I was in a dilemma , I really didn’t want to do business with Prince but I was also aware that he was hardly in the country and he had no business running the day to day affairs of the company, I decided to meditate and pray about it for awhile before I gave my final answer . After three days , I knew what I needed to do. I called up my long term business partner Mr S , who was also a partner in my other company, I told him the whole story and we decided that he will go to the meeting and sign the documents on our behalf . This was a perfect plan .
On the day of the signing , Mr S, went to the meeting , Prince was not there , the Board members were given the excuse that I was unavailable but he as a director was representing the company, the agreement was discussed and the partner ship was finally signed. A lucrative deal for our company , I was thankful to God everything had gone well in the end , now all we had to do was make Mr S the face of this partnership and we were sure everything would go well.
I was later to find out that some people with a lot of money and influence begin to think they can do and get anything they want but I was determined to let them know that no matter how rich or powerful you are , you cannot do or get everything you want….