Chapter 7 - The Shift of Power
Richard Vance stared from thirty feet away, his mouth hanging open like a landed fish. His face, which had been flushed red with managerial rage, instantly drained of all color, turning a pasty, sickly gray.
He knew that face. Every employee in the conglomerate knew that face. Her portrait hung in the executive boardroom at corporate headquarters in Manhattan.
"M-Mrs... Mrs. Vance?" Vance stammered, his knees visibly shaking inside his trousers as he took three hesitant, terrified steps backward toward the bench. "I... I had no idea... We were not notified that executive management was conducting a surprise inspection of Terminal 4—"
Eleanor did not even turn her head to look at him. She stood up from the metal bench with fluid, elegant grace, pulling herself up to her full height. Though she was barely five feet four inches tall, her presence seemed to dwarf the towering architecture of the terminal around her.
She stepped closer to Emily, extending her hand.
"My name is Eleanor Vance, my dear," she said, her expression softening into a warm, deeply genuine smile that crinkled the corners of her sharp blue eyes. "And you must be Emily."
Emily swallowed hard, her mind racing as she awkwardly shook the older woman’s hand. "Yes... ma'am. I... I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you..."
"You weren't supposed to," Eleanor said softly, releasing Emily's hand. "For three months, I have sat in boardrooms listening to consultants tell me that our customer satisfaction scores are falling because we need faster automated kiosks and fewer human employees. They told me that efficiency is the only metric that matters in modern aviation."
Eleanor turned her head slowly, her cold blue gaze finally locking onto Richard Vance, who stood trembling three feet away, clutching Emily’s confiscated badge in his sweaty palm.
"So I decided to test their theory," Eleanor continued, her voice turning into a quiet edge of tempered steel. "I spent the last four hours sitting on benches in three different terminals, dressed in an old coat, pretending to be sick and cold. Do you know how many of my thirty thousand employees stopped to offer me a glass of water, Richard?"
May you like
Vance could not speak. Sweat was pouring down his forehead, dripping off his chin onto his gold-barred suit.
"One," Eleanor said, pointing a single, manicured finger at Emily. "Exactly one."
