She asked her operations director to pull his company file. Parker Technical Services, six years in business based out of a rented workshop in SoMa, two full-time employees besides himself, three part-time contractors. The file noted he had been responsive, technically thorough, and had turned down a previous offer to be added to Oralene's preferred vendor list without explanation. She found the explanation when she read the contract terms that had been attached to that offer. An exclusivity clause.
If he'd signed it, Parker Technical Services would have been dependent on Oralene for the majority of its operating revenue. She had not written that clause, but she understood immediately why he had refused it. On the third day, she called her director of operations. Draw up a new maintenance contract for Parker Technical Services, she said. Multi-propy scope, remove the exclusivity clause, and make the rate generous.
The offer was delivered by Courier the following morning. It was refused by noon. Ethan called the operations director directly to decline, which she appreciated. He hadn't left it to an email. The director relayed the message to Natalie verbatim.
The scope was too broad for his current staffing, and taking on that volume of work from a single client would put him in effectively the same position as the exclusivity clause he'd declined before, just without the contractual language to make it obvious. Natalie read the message twice. Then she went down to the loading dock where, according to the schedule, he was finishing a final walkthrough before signing off on Bayview Grand's technical handover. He saw her coming and did not appear surprised. He was holding a tablet reviewing something on the screen and he did not put it down when she stopped a few feet away.
You turned down the contract, she said. I did. That contract could have stabilized your company for the next 3 years. It could have. He agreed.
It also would have meant that if Oralene ever decided to renegotiate or cut costs or bring maintenance in house. My company lives or dies based on your decision. That's not stability. That's dependency with better paperwork. Natalie looked at him for a moment.
Most contractors would call that a good problem to have. Most contractors aren't running a sixperson operation where one bad quarter means people don't get paid. He set the tablet down against the wall. I'm not turning down the work because I don't need it. I'm turning it down because I'm not willing to let one client decide whether my company survives.
She had heard people talk about independence before. Usually, it sounded like pride. When Ethan said it, it sounded like arithmetic. "What if the terms were renegotiated?" she asked. "I'd read the new terms," he said.