In-House Counsel

Budget Time For The 'Hand On The Doorknob' Question

Always account for the question you never saw coming -- but should have.

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It’s 12:58 p.m. and my hour-long meeting with Dom is winding down. Or so I think. Chief among Dom’s lengthy list of character flaws, which include never letting me finish a single sentence and rooting for the NY Giants (c’mon, man), is Dom’s cavalier attitude toward double booking my lunch break.

Now, a smart business person would see the half hour blocked off daily from 12:30-1 in an otherwise packed day and afford that unfortunate individual the courtesy of eating. In fact, any business partner who knows me, really knows me, never comes near me during this time if he or she can help it. I have a well-deserved reputation for head-chewing off when hangry. Smart business partners who prefer to find me in an amenable, collaborative mood avoid this time block like the plague.

But Dom’s never been one for subtlety or social cues and despite the time being blocked off on my calendar, he double books it in Outlook and shows up in my office even though I never accept the invitation.

Without preamble, he slaps a deal sheet on someone else’s paper down in front of me and begins to yammer at me that this is the deal that’s going to save this quarter and I need to make this a priority. (Side bar: Last I checked with my frenemy over in Finance, the Sales’ quarter numbers were just fine. So who are we kidding, Dom? We are talking about your personal numbers here.) Moreover, he has a tee time at 3:30, so he’s going to need it before then because it’s too late to cancel it.

Instead of responding, I reach for my stash of exotic beef jerky that I keep on hand for situations like this and I take several fortifying bites of dried meat before I fire back that this is horse shit. See? I didn’t decapitate Dom on the spot, so that means my legendary hanger is well and truly under control. Sorta.

I give the deal sheet a cursory once over and decide I can swing this today. I tell him as much, but make it clear that it may not be until later in the day. Much later in the day, and when he starts to protest about his tee time, I treat him to my finely honed stink-eye.

Instead of backing out of my office, never taking his eyes off me, like you should proceed with a hungry predator in your midst, Dom goes right on talking about this potential customer. Stuff I don’t need to know and stuff I don’t care about. Honestly, I’m hard to impress on my lunch break. Unless you’ve sold a billion dollars’ worth of donuts or something equally delicious last year or your CEO has made such a social media gaffe that Twitter has shut him down, I’m probably not going to give you much of a response other than a warning grunt to hurry it up.

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As Dom continues to word vomit, never pausing to take a breath, I finally realize what’s going on. Dom’s not here because of the deal sheet. Not really. He also doesn’t care that I have an intimate knowledge of how this vendor does business. As the minutes wind down until my next meeting, Dom is working his way up to the “hand on the doorknob” question.

A phenomenon frequently observed by hard-working, insurance-harried, and tightly scheduled doctors, the “hand on the doorknob” question is the one the patient waits to ask until he or she is about to leave the appointment. It’s often the most important question, the true reason the patient is there to see the doctor, and frankly, it’s the one the patient should have led with. Instead, it’s going to eff up an already tight schedule while the doctor attempts to resolve it.

Now, while I’m pretty sure that Dom’s question doesn’t have to do with an embarrassing itch or suspect rash in his nether regions, I’m still going to hate this question because it’s going to make me late for my 1:00 with some considerate soul who scheduled around my lunch break instead of during it.

I hold up a hand. “Out with it,” I say, cutting Dom off (and wow, that look on his face does wonders for my mood. Maybe even more so than the jerky). “Why are you really here?”

Dom takes a deep breath and blurts out, “I may have accidentally signed a purchase order two weeks ago that binds us to their terms and conditions for the first six months of orders. Are we stuck?”

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Ah, there it is. The real reason Dom is in my office. And, if we distill it down to its basic components, Dom doesn’t care about the finer points of a battle of terms or anything like that. He wants to know how bad he’s fouled things up and what it will take to fix them. It’s just taken him 28 minutes to work up to it.

With a sigh, I make him wait to see if I can bump my 1:00. Thankfully, I can and before we start working through the world’s tiniest fine print ever to grace a purchase order, I point out (in a more or less gentle manner) that he should have just told me this up front.

“But I knew you would be annoyed,” he protests.

I mean, he has me there. I am super annoyed and if it wasn’t such a waste of meat, I’d consider pelting him with beef jerky. Let him go complain to HR about that one. It would be worth it. Instead, I point out that yes, I’m annoyed that two weeks ago he signed us up for (likely binding) terms for the next six months, which may make this emergency session of deal sheet review potentially moot, but I’m going to find out anyway when this gets bounced back to me from Finance. And the sooner we can confront an issue head on, the better.

I never get to eat anything better than the jerky that day and Dom ends up missing his tee time, which I can’t say I lose any sleep over. But we’re able to cobble together some sort of resolution, less than ideal as it is. As Dom leaves, his hand on the doorknob, I remind him to come find me the next time shit hits the fan instead of sitting on it.

And it’s a good reminder for me too. When Dom began to prattle on about Stuff That Didn’t Matter, I should have known that something more ominous was up. I failed to diagnose the symptoms when Dom began flailing. As attorneys, it’s always on us to quickly identify the issues and cut to the heart of them before the business partner reaches for that doorknob.

Kay Thrace (not her real name) is a harried in-house counsel at a well-known company that everyone loves to hate. When not scuffing dirt on the sacrosanct line between business and the law, Kay enjoys pub trivia domination and eradicating incorrect usage of the Oxford comma. You can contact her by email at KayThraceATL@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter @KayThrace.

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