I’m so frustrated, Liz! I feel very badly used.

How so?

- It’s an employee problem. An employee I mentor here in the company - or I used to.

What do you mean? Does this person work for you?

- He works for me, on my team. He was an intern two summers ago. Then he finished his last year of college, and since June of last year he’s been on our team full time.

What is this fellow’s name?

- Christopher — everyone calls him Topher.

Okay. So what’s the story?

- Well, he’s a smart kid, and he was a great hire. We could see when he was still an intern that he had great potential. We actually made him an offer to join the firm full-time before he even started his senior year in college.

That’s common these days.

- He kept us waiting for the whole school year. He didn’t accept our offer until he was a week away from graduation. Normally we put an end date on the offer. We don’t like to be strung along.

No one does, I guess.

- But we made an exception for Topher, because he had been an excellent intern.

Okay. Then what happened?

- He finally accepted our offer like I said just a week before he graduated. He negotiated the offer with our HR liaison, Marilyn. He wanted to take a month off after graduation, before he started working, and we gave him that. So we made a pretty big concession.

I’m listening.

- You don’t agree?

I want to hear the whole story, then I’ll share my impressions.

- So Topher started in July last year and came up to speed relatively fast. I put him in our Forecasting group.

Did he do a good job for you there?

- A very good job. Some unconventional ideas, but hey, that’s why we hire new grads, to get those new ideas.

Okay, fantastic. So what’s the problem now?

- In December Topher asked for a transfer. He said he’s not a Forecasting guy. I told him to look around and tell me what he was interested in. He got back to me in January and said he’d like me to create a new position for him. He laid out his plan. It was a good plan, and I told him I’d do it, but he’d have to earn it. I can’t go around creating new positions for people just because they’re tired of what they’re doing.