Near closing time, she placed the appointment confirmation and a two-page summary on Derek's desk. "I've been to Hayes Transportation," she said. "They have a serious inquiry for fourteen passenger vans. Gloria Hayes will be here Thursday morning to review the proposal, and I've entered the appointment with the vehicle specifications." Derek stared at the page and then at her face.
"You mean the woman with the yellow bus?" "Yes," Anna said. "The woman with the yellow bus." He gave a mocking laugh. "You're telling me she can buy fourteen brand-new vans?"
Anna held his gaze. "I saw the operation. It's a real business with real contracts and real routes. More importantly, the appointment is confirmed, and I expect it to be honored."
Kelsey leaned across the reception counter. "Maybe she was just showing you around to feel important." Anna did not turn toward her. "I won't promise a sale.
I will promise that I did the work a customer asked me to do. Please don't interfere with the appointment." Derek smiled without warmth. "Relax, Anna. We're only having a little fun."
Anna collected her folder and walked away. At her desk, she saved copies of the specifications, sent an email to the service director asking for final confirmation, and entered a second note in the customer system documenting the agreed meeting time. She did not add a complaint about Derek's behavior to the fleet proposal, because she believed a customer's purchasing record should remain about the customer's requirements. Instead, in a separate written report to the human resources channel, she described the first showroom visit as accurately as she could remember it, including the catalog, the contact with Gloria's hand, and the barrier around the display van.
She submitted the report before leaving. There was no dramatic feeling of triumph, and no reassuring message came back from the computer. She knew the branch's sales hierarchy well enough to understand that Derek might hear about it. But on the drive home, she thought of her father standing beside a disabled delivery truck while a dispatcher complained about a late shipment, and she understood why keeping quiet had felt worse than the risk of speaking.
Thursday morning arrived clear and bright after two days of unsettled weather. Sunlight poured through the enormous showroom windows, illuminating the rows of polished vehicles and casting clean geometric shadows across the tile. The sales team had gathered for its usual briefing at eight thirty, where Derek stood beside a display board and reminded everyone that quarterly numbers mattered more than excuses. He praised a colleague for selling a premium SUV the previous afternoon and criticized another for spending too much time answering questions from a couple who eventually left without buying.
"We qualify people before we invest an hour in them," Derek told the room. "I'm not running a tourist attraction. If somebody is serious, they come prepared. If they aren't, we don't owe them a guided tour." Anna stood near the back with her folder, listening to a philosophy she had heard in different forms since starting the job. She wondered how many prospective customers had walked away because nobody had bothered to find out whether they were serious.