Mike Dearfield is the Sales Manager of Canada for Arkland Kitchens, a large Canadian company that counts its sales in the hundreds of millions. Arkland specializes in sales to site builders, high-end contractors, interior designers, and homeowners. Dearfield has worked for the company for the past thirty years in different capacities starting at the age of 17 as a clerk in the work order department. Over time he has held many positions, each of them successfully. His current assignment as Sales Manager of Canada began 12 years ago. It is now 2004.Despite his executive position, Dearfield is a simple man who values family, friends, and serving his employer. He earns a mid six-figure income and lives a comfortable middleclass life. His wife Lena drives a new car every three years, his children attend private school and he belongs to the Madrigal Golf and Country Club where he plays with his regular foursome. He has a 4 handicap and takes frequent lessons to improve.Life has treated Mike Dearfield very well and he has shown his respect for life by ensuring that he saves 25% of his income for his retirement and for future possible downturns.Mike might be an upwardly mobile executive but he is also a bit of a pessimist and each year he wonders if the good life might come to an end. He is paid by salary and incentive bonus and every year for the past five he has won the company trip to some exotic locale all expenses paid.Mike’s pessimism is not without some merit. Arkland has been purchased by an American outfit called TEC. They make appliances. For over the past two years the company has been on a cost cutting initiative. A number of high earning employees with less tenure than Mike had been offered severance packages. The company had been quite persuasive and so they took them. Now they are considering people at Dearfield’s pay grade.