The crew was six men he'd never worked with. He didn't know their habits. Didn't know who worked hard and who needed watching. Didn't know the internal dynamics, the resentments, the loyalties. New site, new crew, new supervisor.
It was the situation most likely to go wrong fast. He introduced himself to each man by name, shook every hand, asked two questions, and listened to the answers, not because the answers mattered particularly, but because the act of asking told the men something about who they were dealing with. By 10:00, he'd identified the two who would be problems if ignored, and the one who could be trusted with anything. By noon, he'd restructured the morning's work order in a way that solved a scheduling conflict the previous plan had built in. And the foreman, a quiet Puerto Rican man named Daario, who'd been on Gerald's sites for 8 years, came up to him during the lunch break and said, "You've been doing this long. " "Long enough," Marcus said.
Daario nodded. "Good. " and went back to his food. That was it. That was all Marcus needed. He called Olivia on his lunch break.
Standing away from the crew, eating his sandwich in the November cold. "How is it? " she said. "Good," he said. "Different, but good. Different how.
These men don't know me yet," he said. That first day, they're deciding whether you're somebody who knows what he's doing or somebody who's going to make their jobs harder. He paused. I've been on both ends sides of that decision. And where did today land?
I think okay, he said. Daario told me I'd been doing this long from what you've told me about Daario. That's a standing ovation. He laughed. Yeah, pretty much.
A comfortable silence. I'm making soup tonight, she said. I was going to bring some by for the girls if that's okay. He stopped chewing. You don't have to do that, he said.
I know I don't have to. She said the way she always said things when he was being unnecessarily humble about receiving something. Do you want me to or not? Yes, he said. I want you to.
Then I'll be there at 6:30. She was there at 6:20. The soup was the kind his grandmother used to make. The real kind where you could taste the time it took. The girls ate two bowls each, which was the highest possible endorsement.
Olivia sat at the table and they talked about her work. She was a hospital administrator. The kind of job that sounds dry until she explained what she actually did, which was manage the budget and the personnel of a department that kept people alive and was perpetually understaffed. And Marcus listened to her the way he'd learned to listen, with full attention, without interrupting. She was good at her job.