And the location mattered, the audience mattered, not because public accountability was a performance, but because private accountability, in this case, was insufficient. The people who had stood in that hanger and watched what happened had been carrying it. She owed them something that was real enough to be witnessed. She called Caleb on a Wednesday afternoon in late April. She had his number from the invoice.
She had not used it for anything personal, and she was aware, dialing, that this call was on a line between professional and something else, and she wasn't certain which side of it she was on. He picked up on the third ring. She could hear workshop sounds in the background, a compressor, something metallic. Sloan, he said, just her name, which meant he'd saved her number, which she registered without making anything of it. I want to ask you something, and I need you to hear the whole question before you answer, she said.
A brief pause. Okay. I want to call a companywide meeting in the main hanger, all shifts, all departments, whoever can be there. And I want to stand in the same place where I fired you and say what I should have said then. Not to fix the record, not for the board, not for press, just because it happened in front of those people and they deserve to see it addressed in front of those people.
She stopped. I want you there. That's the ask. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to participate in any way.
I just think you should be there if you want to be. The workshop sounds continued in the background. She waited. Why are you telling me first? He said, "Because it involves you and you should have the choice.
If you don't want it to happen, it doesn't happen. Another pause longer this time. It's your company, he said. You don't need my permission. No, she said, but I want it.
He was quiet for a moment that she couldn't read through a phone line. Then when? 2 weeks, a Friday morning before the first flight of the day. Okay, he said. Okay, you'll be there or okay, you understand?