…your old business rival, Gordon Pike.”
I drove to the country club in my house slippers.
Twenty-five years ago, I started a small bakery in my kitchen called Diane’s Table. It grew into a chain of eleven stores across the state. Two years ago, I handed the day-to-day running of the company to my daughter, Megan, while I stayed on as majority owner. I trusted her.
When I walked into the ballroom, Megan was at the microphone, wearing a sparkly crown, announcing to a room full of investors that she was “proud to be selling Diane’s Table to Pike Foods” for six million dollars.
Gordon Pike had tried to buy my company three times. Each time, I’d said no. He wanted to replace every recipe with factory mixes and close the small stores.
I walked to the front of the room. Two hundred people went quiet. My best friend, Ruth, who’d organized the party, handed me the microphone.
“I’m sorry to interrupt my own birthday,” I said. “But my daughter can’t sell this company. She doesn’t own it. I do.”
Megan went red. She’d convinced herself that since she ran the business, she could sign the sale and “explain it to me later.” She’d even drafted papers for my signature. Gordon Pike looked at the contract in his hands, then at me, and quietly put it back in his briefcase.
It turned out the party had been Ruth’s genuine gift to me. Megan had taken it over and invited the buyers, hoping a crowded room and my absence would make the deal impossible to stop.
I didn’t fire my daughter. But I took back day-to-day control of the company, and we went to family counseling. Megan apologized in front of the whole staff.
Then I cut my own birthday cake. Ruth put the crown on my head. It was a little crooked, but it fit.
