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Episode 40
As far as corporate executives went, Warren Hardman Fesperman was as demanding and disliked as they came.
Associates and employees tensed whenever they were in his presence, always fearful of falling short of his exacting standards.
Warren was a replica of his stern, no-nonsense, detached father who was left to raise his only child after his wife died in childbirth.
Bert Fesperman, intent to jettison his unwanted, teenaged son, sent Warren to a military prep school.
Warren had no choice in where he attended college. He followed his father’s footsteps to Charleston, South Carolina to The Citadel.
There, Warren embraced the structure and fellowship he had never before experienced.
The constant instruction by platoon leaders, even when harsh, was welcomed by Warren because for the first time in his life he felt seen, not ignored, not invisible.
The Citadel became his family, his community, his haven of refuge.
Graduating from Citadel, Warren left home, never to return, moving to Chicago to begin a career as a junior market analyst for Lane and Space, a prestigious brokerage firm.
Warren also made time to get a master’s degree in economics from Northwestern as he rose through the ranks of his brokerage firm.
A confirmed bachelor, with no appetite for marriage or family, Warren’s career was all consuming.
A modern Ebenzer Scrooge, Warren Hardman Fesperman was singularly focused on his work, with no regard for anyone who did not approach work with his myopic zeal.
Handpicked by discerning senior partners, Warren’s ascension to managing partner was unparalleled in the firm’s long, storied history.
Warren did not disappoint his board or stockholders.
Under his iron fist, the firm was managed skillfully, registering record profits year after year.
Internally, Lane and Space was a personnel time bomb waiting to explode, chiefly due to its leader’s demoralizing leadership style.
The employee turnover ratio, was twice the industry’s national norm.
The executive break room turned from light banter to stone-cold silence whenever Warren Hardman Fesperman entered the room.
Employees would brace themselves when their CEO had one of his not infrequent, volcanic eruptions.
It was not uncommon for chain-smoking Warren to slam his fist on the conference table, blow a cloud of smoke before bellowing, “Get this done pronto - or heads will roll!”
The firm’s grapevine dubbed their CEO, Warren “Heads Will Roll”
Fesperman.
And roll they did. HR handed out pink slips like a vendor dispensing cotton candy at a state fair.
Workers devised a code phrase, “Bad Karma”, to give warning whenever Warren emerged from his executive suite to roam the halls.
After a particularly tumultuous month, the employees of Lane and Space let out a collective sigh of relief when their volatile leader traveled to San Francisco to be the keynote speaker at an annual investment conference.
Satisfied his keynote address was well received by his peers, Warren decided to walk back to his hotel room to take in the night air as well the sights and sounds of the City by the Bay while getting in a last smoke for the day.
A streetcar, filled with people leaving the financial district, blew a front tire, lurched sideways, snapping one of the overhead power wires.
The wire sliced through the air like an electrified bullwhip.
Coiling, then releasing, the errant wire violently struck a lone man walking down the sidewalk smoking a cigarette.
The man instinctively reacted by standing erect, like a military cadet,
then collapsed in bright pool of a blood. His severed head rolled down California Street, leaving a behind a trail of red.
Due to the nature of his death, Warren Hardman Fesperman’s remains were cremated, spread over the hallowed grounds of The Citadel by a mournful, old man who was also a Citadel graduate.
Leaving Warren’s memorial service, one former associate remarked, “What an ironic twist of fate.”
A co-worker replied, sardonically, “Yep, from head honcho to headless heap in the blink of an eye - that’s what I call ‘Bad Karma’.”