Johannes van den Bosch Receives a Reply:

A little more than an hour later, with his own patience again wearing thin, Johannes van de Bosch watched with relief as Pablo Menendez's name popped into his Inbox messages. His smile quickly turned to disbelief, and then horror, as he read the response from Mexico City. Not only was the client's need still unmet, but now he had another problem! Stung by the apparent anger from Menendez, and totally puzzled as to the cause, he reread the email to make sure he had not misunderstood the message.

-------Original Message---------

From: Menendez, Pablo (Mexico City)
Sent: Wednesday December 10, 23:11
To: van den Bosch, Johannes (Rotterdam)
Subject: Re: IAS financial statements
Importance: High

Dear Johannes,

I am not surprised of the outcome of your meeting with Mr. Smythe-Jones (CFO). However, I cannot answer your request until I heard from local management. As it was agreed on the last meeting, we were precluded from doing any work without first getting approval from management at the headquarters and we were instructed by local management from not doing anything until they finalized what was required from us. It appears to me to be a Catch 22 game! I believe we (your Firm and ours) should not fall in the game of passing the ball to someone else before getting a clear understanding of what is going on. We have had several meetings with local management where the issue has been raised and were responded that other priorities were established by the headquarters (on my end I thought they tell you everything they have been instructed of locally, unfortunately it doe snot seem to be the case). In my opinion it looks very easy that you accept from management at the headquarters to hold us accountable from understanding the pressure you are receiving from your end. However, we are not the enemy. I am not sending copy of this message to our client because I believe that internal issues have to be primarily dealt with internally without involving our clients in the internal polities. The last is what myself truly believe.

Could you tell me how can you accept a deadline from our Firm without first having involved local management? Don't you think they are the first to be involved on this? I may be wrong but if we are in an international Firm I think we should understand the other side and not just blame someone else of our client's problems.

I really do not want to be rude, but you do not let me have any option.

Despite the differences we have had, it has been a pleasure working with you.

Best regards and seasons greeting.

Pablo Menendez.

---------End of Message-------------

Worried that he has somehow offended Menendez, van den Bosch printed off a copy of the email which he had sent the day before, and asked the two partners on either side of his office for their reaction to the message. The audit and tax specialists, one Dutch and the other Belgian, had nearly identical replies. "It seems to me that you got the point across clearly, Johannes," they said. "You laid out the facts and proposed actions to solve the problem. Why do you ask?" they queried. When he showed them the letter, they too were puzzled. "Smythe-Jones will no doubt be the next person to send me a message!" he thought. As a frown reflected his increasingly grim mood, van den Bosch wondered what he should do now.