Margaret Peake’s Office, 10 Years Earlier

Margaret Peake is wearing a classic gray dress suit with a white blouse. Carl Ritchie is sporting a suit with an ultramodern cut and a black pullover but no tie, accentuating the obvious age difference between the pair.

Margaret PEAKE: I’m sorry, Mr. Ritchie, but you’re not within the price range that I had envisaged for this deal.

Carl RITCHIE (with irritation): And just how did you draw up that price range?

Margaret PEAKE (self-confidently): I applied a new customized business budgeting method that has been shown to work well at various Wall Street–listed corporations. I learned about it at a seminar for senior executives that I attended at Harvard Business School.

Carl RITCHIE (skeptically): Hmm. I’ve not got much faith in such seminars, you know. All those “top business schools” just slavishly follow the latest management theories, but their lecturers have no frontline experience. They’re often fusty old professors whose only experience in the business world was during their student placements.

Margaret PEAKE (smoothly, but with visible irritation): But Mr. Ritchie, if you know better than they how we should prepare our budgets, I can have a quick word with our chairman. I’m sure he’ll be very interested in what you have to say—maybe he’ll even offer you his job?

Carl RITCHIE: I could consider a price adjustment, but one based on our own methods of calculation, which are quite different from yours. We do not use the same approach.

Margaret PEAKE: It’s a pity you’re still using the same old methods.

Carl RITCHIE (in a sharper tone): I’m sure you’re quite right, Mrs. Peake, but until such time as we have evidence to the contrary, our price lists will be drawn up by our sales and marketing department and not by our customers, however brilliant and knowledgeable they may be.

Margaret PEAKE (inscrutably): If you have any further proposals, Mr. Ritchie, please let me have them by midday tomorrow. In the meantime, your brilliant and knowledgeable customer wishes you a good day.