The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [190]
33
The Unwinding
Omaha • 1969
In the outer office on Kiewit Plaza’s eighth floor, Gladys Kaiser sat guarding Warren Buffett’s doorway. Rail-thin, perfectly made up, chain-smoke drifting through her platinum hair, Gladys dispatched paperwork, phone calls, bills, and nonsense with brisk efficiency.1 She kept Buffett off limits to everyone—including his family at times. It made Susie seethe, but with Gladys guarding the door there was nothing she could do.
Susie blamed Gladys. And, of course, Warren would never give Gladys an actual order to keep Susie out. But everyone at his office knew how to interpret what he wanted from his subtle way of saying something without directly stating it. Nobody would so much as cough if they thought he would disapprove. People had to follow hints and signals as if they were stated rules simply to work at the Buffett Partnership. Beetled brows and “hmmmf” meant “Don’t even consider it.” “Really?” meant “I disagree but won’t say so directly.” An averted head, crinkled eyes, and backpedaling meant “Help me, I can’t.” Gladys brooked no nonsense in following these unarticulated requests and orders, and sometimes people’s feelings got hurt. But her job was to protect her boss, and that meant doing things he couldn’t bring himself to do. She had to be tough enough to take the blame.
On the dingy walls above her head hung some framed newspaper clippings, reminders of the 1929 Crash. Dented metal furniture, along with an old ticker machine, furnished the offices. Down the short linoleum hallway beyond Gladys sat the other people who knew how to interpret Buffett’s signals and signs. To the left was Bill Scott’s little office, where he barked “Hurry up, I’m busy!” at the brokers to execute Buffett’s trades. Down the hallway to the right, in a workroom packed with files and the small refrigerator Gladys kept filled with Pepsi bottles, part-time bookkeeper Donna Walters plied her trade, meticulously keeping the partnership’s records and preparing its tax returns.2 Just past Walters sat John Harding, managing the partners’ and the partnership’s affairs. Straight ahead behind Gladys was Buffett’s own realm, furnished with a couple of reclining armchairs, a desk, and a litter of newspapers and magazines. Its most prominent feature was the large portrait of Howard Buffett on the wall across from his desk.
Warren arrived every morning, hung up his hat, and disappeared into his sanctuary to read the papers. After a while he emerged and told Gladys, “Get me Charlie.” Then he shut the door, got on the phone, and spent the rest of the day swiveling between the phone and his reading, spelunking for companies and stocks to buy. Once in a while he would reappear and tell Bill Scott about a trade.
With the stock market high, Scott was less busy these days. Buffett, his pockets full of the money that National Indemnity produced, was delving for entire businesses, since their prices were less subject to the whim of investors. He had discovered the Illinois National Bank & Trust, one of the most profitable banks he had ever seen, run by seventy-one-year-old Eugene Abegg in Rockford, Illinois. Buffett wanted the crusty Abegg as part of the deal. Abegg resembled Ben Rosner, who had counted sheets of toilet paper. Buffett talked to Abegg about a few things he wanted to change in the business, then said, “I’ve dropped all the shoes. I’m not a centipede. If you want to go ahead, fine, and if not, then we’re still friends.”
“Gene had already made a deal to sell the bank to somebody else. But the buyer had started criticizing it, or they wanted an audit and he’d never been audited and he wanted out. He was pretty dominant, and everything he did was unbelievably conservative.
“He carried around thousands of dollars of cash in his pocket, and he cashed checks for people on the weekends. He carried a list of the numbers of unrented