Harper's Rules (21 page)

I told Marty I would mention to Wallace that we spoke, and he said Wallace wouldn't remember him.

“There were like twelve of us. I never introduced myself or said a word. You can tell him this, though. He gave us a ton of corporate documents for free, and I remember our lawyers saying his non-compete was a thing of art. Airtight . . . You okay, Casey? Did I say something wrong?”

“No, no, you just reminded me of something I need to get done before the interview with Wallace. Multi-tasking, sorry. You're very cool. Good luck on the speech.”

“You sure you can't fake being a CFO for me?”

I let him get about five paces, called out his name, and reached in my purse. I handed over the one business card I had.

“Harper Scott,” he said, looking at it. “I think he's called me.”

“He's the best, Marty. Really.”

“You're the worst, Harper Scott.”

“I'm sure I told you there was a non-compete.”

“You didn't, because I would have told you that I wouldn't sign one.”

“Why not?”

“Because they're inherently unfair. What if things don't work out?”

“Then you'll be unemployed. Oh wait, that's what you are now!”

“Harper, go to Wallace and tell him I need him to waive the non-compete or I'm not interviewing.”

“No. Casey, listen to me. That will kill this deal. You're putting a gun to Wallace's head.”

“Everyone knows non-competes don't hold up.”

“That's not true. Mark Porter tell you that when you mugged him this morning?”

That was Harper's way of telling me he knew I had acted out. After leaving Marty, I marched over to the TradeHarbor booth and told Mark I was being courted by Inter-Annex. Did he want to do our interview right here and now? He said he was game, and we spent the next hour telling each other lies. Porter was a pure sales guy; all instinct and street smarts. He would never have the acumen of a Wallace. But he had no non-compete. Or was that a lie too?

“I would think you'd be pleased,” I countered to Harper. “You sent me here to make things happen, and I have. He wants me to meet the CEO next week.”

“You can get that job, but you don't want it. You want the InterAnnex job. You decided to make Wallace jealous by getting attention from TradeHarbor. You're better than that, Casey.”

“Don't turn this into a tidy metaphor for your book. I am unemployed. I was told by someone
other
than my trusted headhunter that I will have to sign a non-compete, so I reacted by aggressively pursuing an alternative.”

“Casey, there are perfectly good reasons why companies have non-compete agreements.”

“Harper, I was married. I had the ultimate non-compete. You can't make someone stay when they want to leave. And you shouldn't be able to. You tell Wallace I said so.”

“No. I want you to think about it. I want you to go home and chill and let me talk you through this before we kill this deal and you regret it.”

“I gave Marty Rankin your name for a CFO search. You should call him.”

“I know. He already called me. We're meeting. Thank you.”

Of course Marty called Harper already. The most accomplished Type As are the quiet ones; while you are talking about what you're going to do, they're nearly done.

“I should have told you, Casey. I'm sorry.”

I don't know if I would have even noticed the sign if I wasn't mad at Harper about the eleventh-hour non-compete issue now standing between me and the InterAnnex job. I was on my way toward the elevator bank when I saw it. The sign was a reminder of the lunchtime raffle benefiting MACY, the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Youth. The sign instructed us to visit the MACY booth near the atrium.

I couldn't imagine Harper's wife would be at the booth, but if they paid enough for the show, it probably meant someone from MACY got to introduce a portion of the program, and this might be something Maggie would be asked to do. I headed toward the atrium to get a look. But wait—what am I going to say if she is there? “I am a candidate your husband has placed several times and has known for years.” Then again he has been to my house and, as Peter would attest, we are in contact nearly every day. I am also the chief muse of his ongoing attempt to write a book.

Maybe I would say all of this to Maggie and she would laugh, apologize, and then tell me that there were a dozen women like me in Harper's life at any given time.

I located a MACY volunteer and asked about Maggie.

“She isn't with MACY anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there something I can help you with, Miss . . .”

I had taken my badge off and put it in my purse.

“I thought she ran the whole thing? She's all over your Web page.”

“Is she still? Well, our IT budget is kind of limited.”

I told her I was a friend of the family and that I had heard there was some
incident
.

“You must not be a very close friend of the family. She has been on a leave of absence for a month. Whom should I tell her showed so much
genuine
concern?”

No dear, we won't play it that way. Now you'll have to tell Maggie that the girl who was asking about her was younger, and you'll have to concede polished and even attractive, and while you'll reassure her I was not as skinny as you're sure I'd like
to be, we both know she'll stop listening after the word
younger
. “Never mind,” I said brightly.

Is this what Harper wanted to talk about the night he rescued Starbucks? If Peter hadn't pulled up, would we have spent the whole night talking? Would we have had the courage to cross the line and not go back? Would we then always regret spoiling that rare thing: a friendship between a man and a woman where no holds were barred, nothing was held back, nothing stored and bargained with later? Truth without consequence?

The entire walk to the parking garage I was in a daze. Has Maggie left Harper? And why? And even if she had, why would she have to quit MACY? And where was Jesse living? And how long has this been going on? Wallace said Harper had “a rough time of it.” That implies months—years maybe. I felt angry. Here I was trusting Harper with my livelihood, with intimate knowledge of my relationship with Peter, and he trusted me with nothing. He took—he didn't give.

“Casey Matthews, right?!”

She was sitting on the bench in front of the attendant's booth, waiting for her car to be brought around. She still had on her badge from the show, but her name was covered by her coat lapel.

I got a moment's reprieve to remember who she was because the parking attendant asked for my ticket. She seemed to be about my age, but I couldn't tell. Her posture, her energy, her world-weary voice said older, but her skin was flawless and she had high, firm cheekbones. Who is her surgeon? I'm booking him now for when my time comes.

“I'm DiDi Cooper. We've met a few times, had lots of phone conversations.”

“Oh, right,” I said, recovering poorly. “Sorry, it's been a while. I recognized your voice but after seeing everyone at the show, I'm on networking overload.”

She burst out laughing. It wasn't a nasty laugh. She was amused at how haplessly I was handling this situation.

This
couldn't
be DiDi Cooper. She was, and I assume still is, Harper's biggest competitor, and she positioned herself as a crass contrast: in your face; not educated but street smart. Her stock-in-trade was the outrageous remark, the inappropriate reference. She was the girl at the wedding who was smoking cigars outside with the boys. But in a lot of circles, especially at the C and V level, she was considered too lowbrow, too old school to trust with the upper echelon searches. Harper admired her tenacity and loathed her style. “Don't get me wrong,” Harper would say to his clients, “she was great back in the day. A legend.”

“Now why are you here, sweetie?” she said. “Rumor has it you are going to InterAnnex.”

“It's not my first rodeo, DiDi. Until I have an offer in hand, I keep my options open, and that includes coming here.”

“Of course,” she said, impervious to implied insult, “goes without saying. Let me ask you this, if I had another opportunity that might be as appealing as InterAnnex, would you interview through me?”

God bless her. Relentless. If a neutron bomb was detonated in Manhattan right now, out of the wreckage would come DiDi, disheveled but not beaten, looking for survivors who might have business for her.

“I don't think so.”

“Still one of Harper's girls. I get it. I love that man. Lost deals to him a million times, and my heart still breaks for him with all he's dealing with.”

This was my chance. DiDi not only knew the whole story about Harper's personal life, but she would be only too glad to share it with me. But in the instant before I began to ask her to unravel the mystery, I remembered what Harper had said to me about going to the trade show.

“It will be a good test for you . . . you'll see.”

He knew we would have to deal with the non-compete issue and that my problem with non-competes was visceral. Trust can't be achieved by signing a document, whether it is a marriage license or an employment agreement. It has to be real, it has to be earned, and it has to survive tests.

Donald's breach had done a lot of damage; I saw that now. The test was at the heart of Harper's book—as true of jobs as it was of relationships.

Harper's Rule: We have to continue to trust after being hurt by those we trusted.

When Harper wants me to know, he will tell me. If that's never, then I will have to accept that.

“DiDi, I really don't feel comfortable talking about Harper's personal life, or mine, or yours, for that matter. Take care.”

“All right, honey. Listen, if things don't work out, I mean with Wallace, you tell our boy Harper you're going to give DiDi a shot. He's not afraid of a little competition, is he?”

In small doses, I could love DiDi Cooper. She is an unapologetic survivor. The longer I have been alone, the more I admire that. I don't know if she still has that gnawing, cold fear in the middle of the night that I have, telling me that I will be alone forever, that everything is passing me by, but if she does she has learned how to quell it and go back to sleep.

Several hours later, I was on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, sipping tea, and trying to convince myself to read the Alice Munro novel I had been nursing for over a month. I decided to check my Blackberry yet again before bed, and for a second I couldn't find my phone. I was about to tear the couch cushions off when I remembered I had stuck it in the back pocket of my jeans. I saw that while I was sitting on the phone, I had inadvertently dialed Jamie Post three times. Was this God's way of saying grow up and call the man back? But what was I going to say? That he was dodging a bullet by not getting involved with me? That yes, there was a spark, and I did feel some sort of connection on the train, but it wasn't real? It's real I don't do, at least not so much. Before I could decide how to handle Jamie, a red light signaling a new email flashed on my phone. Thank you, Harper. Distract me. I will call Jamie later. I promise.

HARPER'S RULE
Dealing with Non-Competes

There is a mythology about non-competes that I have to dispel for you. Like any myth, stories are passed on from one person to another, for years and generations, and everyone assumes it has now become truth, even though there is a conspicuous absence of evidence.

Let's start with the Big One, the one I hear all the time: “I can sign a non-compete because everyone knows they don't hold up.”

Untrue. Believe me, as a headhunter who has lost countless deals because an ideal candidate has signed a non-compete, I wish it were true. But when you do the due diligence of researching the case law, here is what you find:

• Much of the time the company wins some relief or judgment.
  
• If you willingly signed the non-compete, you will be sued personally, and your new company will be sued as well (often resulting in them firing you rather than risking a lawsuit).
  
• You and your company will incur legal costs to defend yourselves. Depending on the case, this could range from 10–75k.
  
• It will take time and energy to defend, will cause resentment from your new employer, and will increase performance expectations.
  
• If you lose completely, you can't work for the new company, and you have to fight the old one. You'd better have money put away.
  
• Reference-wise you will be branded as someone who breaches contracts. Word gets around. You haven't just burned a bridge—you blew your bridge up.
  

But wait a minute! I remember a dozen times when someone went to work for a competitor after leaving a company known to have non-compete agreements. Ah, sorry Harper, should have kept reading . . .

The myth remains because sometimes a company chooses not to pursue because they don't think the candidate is a threat. Sometimes a small company doesn't have the resources or the legal budget to go to war. And sometimes they “plea bargain” and cut a deal.

But most of the time, when a non-compete is not pursued, it is far more human. We can all tell horrific stories of what happens when someone finds out a spouse has “broken the non-compete” and found another. But once in a while the pain is far greater. So they opt for dignity and grace. They say “go” and they ask for nothing. Their friends call them fools, but what they are really saying is, “If you don't want me anymore, then I will let go, because that's what someone who loves someone does.” Clients with ironclad non-competes sometimes choose not to enforce them because they have broken hearts.

Was Harper speaking only from his experience as a headhunter? Or was this analogy about Maggie? Had she broken their non-compete? I told myself to snap out of it. I had a business judgment to make with Wallace Avery.