I filed it away.
The third application I want to tell you about was to Pinnacle Logistics Solutions, which is where Owen Reed worked as a hiring manager. But that story doesn’t begin with my application. It begins, three weeks before I applied, with a phone call I wasn’t expecting.
The Client-Review Fallout
The Alder Home Supply Q4 quarterly review happened in late October.
I know this not because I was there — I wasn’t — but because Diane Keller called me on a Monday morning in early November. I was at my kitchen table with my second cup of coffee and a job listing I was reviewing, and the call came from a number I recognized before I saw the contact name. I had worked with Diane long enough that her direct line was stored in my personal phone.
I answered.
She asked if I had a few minutes. I said I did. She asked how I was doing. I said I was between things, which was accurate and general.
Then she said, “I want to ask you something professionally, because I want to be respectful about it, but I also want to be direct.”
I said I appreciated direct.
“You’re no longer at Morgan,” she said. It was not quite a question.
I confirmed this.
“That explains,” she said, and paused, “several things.”
What happened at the Alder Q4 review, as Diane described it — carefully, limiting herself to what she’d directly observed — was this: Luke had prepared a performance summary that covered the standard metrics but was missing the exception reconciliation for two delivery windows from Q3. Diane had asked about them, because they were items from a prior review that had been flagged for follow-up.