Chapter 8 - I CHANGED THE ELEVATOR BEFORE I DECIDED MY MARRIAGE
The company mattered too.
Not because work was more important than marriage.
Because eighteen thousand employees did not deserve to wait while the CEO processed betrayal.
We removed the executive-elevator restriction.
Immediately.
Not because all hierarchy is evil.
Security still existed.
Restricted floors still existed.
But access followed security needs, not job prestige.
If your badge opened the floor, you could use the elevator.
No stairs as punishment for rank.
Then HR reviewed Jang-era personnel decisions.
Nora Lim’s promotion case was reopened.
She earned promotion after independent evaluation.
Not as compensation.
Because the record supported it.
Two other employees received adjustments.
One former employee declined reinstatement.
Good for her.
Procurement terminated TCT Executive Services after conflict review and rebid the work competitively.
Some services were retained under new vendors.
The cousin was not arrested.
No fake-vendor fantasy.
The main issue was conflict and pricing.
Then we changed executive-assistant structures.
No assistant could:
Control promotion pipelines.
Approve employee discipline.
Authorize vendors.
Manage executive discretionary benefits without secondary approval.
More importantly, complaints involving powerful offices bypassed those offices.
Chairman Hsu called the reforms:
“Things we should have done ten years ago.”
Correct.
Then I made a mistake.
In a leadership town hall, someone asked about the elevator incident.
I almost turned it into a victory story.
CEO humiliated as intern.
CEO fixes system.
Nice.
But I looked at Nora sitting in the third row.
She had climbed those stairs for years.
I had done it once.
So I said:
“The problem was not that someone mistook the CEO for an intern.”
Silence.
“The problem was that people thought interns deserved that treatment.”
That became the line employees repeated.
Good.
Because titles were not the moral.
Then I addressed another uncomfortable point.
“How did leadership miss this?”
I could have blamed Jang.
Easy.
Instead:
“We created too much informal power around senior executives.”
“We treated proximity as authority.”
“We made employees responsible for guessing which unwritten rules mattered.”
“And our president failed to set appropriate boundaries around his own office.”
Shiaoza was sitting onstage.
He did not flinch.
Good.
Then he took the microphone.
“I did.”
The room went still.
He continued:
“I confused trust with exemption from oversight.”
“I allowed someone I valued professionally and personally to operate beyond her formal authority.”
“And when concerns were raised, I responded defensively instead of independently.”
No excuses.
That helped the company.
Did it help our marriage?
Maybe.
Not enough.
May you like
Yet.
---
