Integrity 7-22-12


At Classic Personal Trainer, it is no secret that we do not work out continuously for the entire hour. There is some down time between sets. During that downtime, I hear some of the most interesting things imaginable from my clients. Some of it is just venting of course, but some of it affects the way I see  the world outside of the studio. One such incident happened last week. I was working out with the retired CEO of a very, very large lingerie company. I will not name names at the present, but let us call the company Mark's Secret and the clients name "Clyde." One fine morning, the CFO that reported to Clyde was bursting at the seams. He had just purchased a home the previous day. At the closing, the CFO had devised a plan to save himself many thousands of dollars. Knowing that the seller of his new home intended to go from the closing directly to another in which he was to purchase his dream home, the CFO sprung his surprise. He loudly announced he would not pay the agreed upon price! He wanted to pay less...much less. The condition of the home had not changed. The appraisal came back fine. The CFO had merely decided that the seller was in a vulnerable spot and ripe to be taken advantage of. The CFO had intentionally finagled a very low deposit that could be left on the table if need be. The seller, desperate now and watching the minutes until the second closing tick away, caved. 
The gleeful CFO could not wait to share his triumph the next morning with Clyde. He recounted the major points of his coup. He waited until Clyde could absorb all of the cleverness of his manuever. But all Clyde could do was think about the bottle of mouthwash in his excutive washroom. The vile taste that the deal left in his mouth was rising. It was too late for Clyde to help the hapless victim of the previous day's home closing, but there was something he could do that morning. 
Clyde fired the CFO on the spot. No million dollar salary. No severance package, and to Clyde's way of thinking, no financial scandals down the road initiated by a morally-impaired CFO. I found myself wishing that we had more executives like Clyde before the banking and real estate world crashed down around us in a cloud of greed and we wound up bailing them all out with taxpayer money.