And she hadn't realized just how fast Dot could address them.

Most of them didn't require a complete address because they were going to be placed in boxes where the drivers and others would be picking them up.

As Dot got done with the drivers, warehouse people, and vendors, she picked up another stack of checks and began...

And that's when she saw it.

Her brother-in-law Ron's second check.

This made the total amount of money paid to Ron equal to essentially twice the amount that everyone as a group had agreed it was worth to get him to come back to work there.

Oddly, the check was from a personal account from Joe and Bobbie.

Dot didn't say anything. She just got up, left the room, made a photocopy of the check, and went back to her task.

It's important to know that the amount of the money didn't bother her. After all, Ron had saved the company.

And it wasn't like she and her husband would have gotten the money. It was her mother- and father-in-law's money, and they could do whatever they wanted to.

Eunice of course showed it to Peggy, who then showed it to Bill and Tom. Then literally, all hell broke loose.

They all felt that it had been a conspiracy. It proved that their mom and dad did love Ron more. They were all asking the question - what about all the years that they put in?

This is a company and family whose culture was built on trust. Their business philosophy was, "My word is my bond."

In hindsight, no one could have imagined anything that could have been worse than this.

That weekend, Bobbie called me, and I flew out there the following week. At my suggestion, she enforced a vow of silence on everyone. Joe was still in the dark, wondering what everyone else was so mad about.

Note: A vow of silence is important so that everyone else didn't get involved. In a situation like this, people begin to take sides. Drivers, mechanics, and vendors - everyone begins to take sides.

The more they take sides, the more invested the more invested family members become in their positions, and the more little armies of support build for each one of them.

The more entrenched things get, the more difficult it is to ever move away from that position to a place where mediation, negotiation and finally, consensus might occur.

Joe had seemed to have a tremendous amount of trouble staying awake during my talk. I thought the room was too hot or maybe I was boring, but I guess he just didn't see the problem.

We drove to a local restaurant, where everybody was waiting except for Ron and Becky.

They all knew that I had met Ron and Becky at the same meeting where I had met their mom and dad, so they all grilled me for an hour or so to make sure that I wasn't on Ron and Becky's side in all of this.

And then we went to the office.

The Boiling Point Concludes >>>