Coping with AIDS

Coping with AIDSHow my company endured the trauma of losing one of our mostvaluable employees

On a spring day in 1987, I found out my credit manager had AIDS. He sat in my office sobbing and said he had just been told that his test for the virus had come back positive -- contrary to a report he had received the day before. Someone had telephoned to say that the laboratory had made a mistake. It must have been quite a conversation: "Oops, remember that fatal disease we called you about yesterday? Looks as if you've got it after all. Sorry for the mix-up." I tried to console him. I also suggested he take the rest of the week off. He needed time to absorb the news and so, for that matter, did I.

I had plenty to think about, including more than 40 other employees, a partner, and dozens of customers and suppliers, not to mention myself and my family. Steven Fowler was not just any employee. He was one of the people I depended on most at a time when my company was almost doubling in size. Beyond that, he was a close friend. He'd been to my house and played with my children. We'd gone to the beach together. He was in Key West when I took my kids there on vacation, and he came over to visit us. What did I know about AIDS? What did any of us know back then? Maybe we'd all been exposed and were going to die. That really was my first reaction: fear.

Not that I was totally shocked. Steven and I had often talked about his risk of getting AIDS. I had known he was gay ever since his job interview, about five years earlier. He had ridden in on a motorcycle, wearing lizard-skin cowboy boots. In the course of the interview, he told me he was gay. I didn't care. At the time, I was working for another company and needed help booking and tracking orders. Steven was an outgoing guy with a lot of personality. He could take control of a conversation without offending anyone. I hired him on the spot. When I left, a couple of years later, to start my own business, he was the second or third person I brought on board.

He started out in sales, but he could do almost anything. I found that if I gave him a job, I didn't have to think about it again. When you're growing fast, people like that are invaluable because you never have enough help or enough time. So I just kept giving Steven more and more to do. He started handling credit in 1986. By early 1987 we were getting ready to move from 9,000 to 30,000 square feet of office space. Steven did all the floor plans and the office layouts for the new building. He coordinated the efforts of two designers. He worked with all the contractors. Meanwhile he was running the credit department so smoothly we hardly knew it was there.

I relied on him in so many ways. I often used him to vent my frustrations, and he never took it personally or got intimidated. He knew I needed an outlet. And he was always doing something to make us laugh. Once he entered, and won, a newspaper contest for having the most kissable bald head in the United States. Around the office he was everybody's friend. Whenever a new employee was hired, Steven would serve as the welcoming committee, taking the person out to lunch, offering tips on what to do and what not to do. He made a few people uncomfortable, but in general he was very well liked.

None of that counted for much, however, in the face of a disease like AIDS. When the word got out, people were panic-stricken. My partner wanted to fire Steven. "This will ruin our business," my partner said when I told him the news. After I settled him down, I did a little research. I talked to Steven's doctor, my own physician, and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, and they all assured me we weren't at risk. Nevertheless, my partner and I kept going back and forth for a week, discussing what we should do.

It was worse with the employees. People wouldn't drink out of the water fountain. They inspected the bathroom before using it. I was constantly trying to calm them down. I talked to each of them, one-on-one. I called their husbands or wives. I offered to pay for them to see their own physicians. I gave them pamphlets from the CDC. Sometimes I'd telephone the CDC with the employee in the room, and we'd get the answers right there. It all helped, but the fear didn't go away. Every time I managed to calm one person's fears, somebody else would show up with a new need.

I remember in particular one girl who worked in the same office as Steven. She came in to see me after she heard you could get AIDS by having infected blood splashed into an open wound. "I didn't get a wink of sleep last night," she said. "I kept thinking, What would happen if I were sitting there at my desk with a scratch on my hand, and Steven got cut and began bleeding profusely? I could get AIDS, couldn't I?"

I was speechless. I really didn't know how to respond. I thought to myself, Yes, honey, and what would happen if Steven were sitting there with a hard-on and you accidentally fell into his lap? Finally, I said, "Tell me something. In all the years you've worked here, how many times were people bleeding profusely while you sat nearby with an open crack in your skin? I mean, forget about AIDS. How often have you been exposed to the blood of other employees?" I guess that more or less satisfied her, because she didn't raise the matter again.

I suppose I should have been more tolerant, but I couldn't help feeling overwhelmed. By then the news had gotten down to the customers, and I was hearing from them as well. One of them would call up and start screaming, "Can it be communicated over the telephone? I'm not getting it through the phone, am I?" What exactly do you say to a hysterical customer who's afraid of getting AIDS over the phone? I was angry at people for overreacting, yet I couldn't get too angry, because I knew how they felt. It was such a new disease that you couldn't just tell them, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." You had to say, "Now, now, don't worry." You had to work it through. You had to try to talk them into doing reasonable things -- consulting a physician, say, or calling the CDC.

I suppose someone might ask, Why didn't I just send Steven home? Why didn't I pay him to get out of my hair? He would have been willing. His attitude was, I'll do whatever you want. The truth is, we needed him. He was really that important to the company. I didn't think we could afford not to have him there if he was well enough to work.

So Steven stayed, and I kept talking. I must have spent two months doing nothing but dealing with people's fears. After a while, things began to settle down. Then, toward the end of August, Steven started feeling very tired and having trouble with his breathing. We decided to set up a modem in his apartment, so he could work at home and rest whenever he wanted. He continued to do his job, but he was clearly quite sick. Finally, the doctors made their diagnosis: he had tuberculosis.