Melted: A MaxTul AU story

Seventy-three: A Friday Elephant Memory

Author's Note: If you read chapter 72 when it was first posted on anytime last week (the week of October 4, 2021), please go back and reread. When I reread this weekend, I found so many errors that I was positively embarassed. I made some changes as well. Not enought to substantionally change the tenor of the chapter but that would add clarity along with the corrections.

Also, of course the restaurant where they hold the retirement party is real. It looks lovely. The picture at the top of chapter is of the outside of the one in Bangkok. That is the original location in Bangkok. They also have locations in Phuket, Malta, and Copenhagen. I've never been to any of them, so if you have, please comment below and tell us all what it was like.

**

Tul had technically given everyone the afternoon off, so they could get ready for the retirement party, but there was still the debriefing that Ann had set up post launch to discuss any loose ends in preparing for the product release over the weekend.

The launch itself had been really successful. Many at the company left the official launch thinking that this was going to be one of the most successful new product launches that Shilapath had seen in years. Tul had been surprised at how many board members had shown up. They were always invited to such things, but most of them rarely came; it really wasn't something they were expected to do.

The media had been posting story updates all morning on social media with the expectation that there would be full stories on the evening news. Everyone present seemed to be interested not only in the products but the working model that the team represented. Pongpat had scoffed at that. "It isn't new," he had been heard telling a reporter. "Treating people like you would your own family isn't new. It's just rare."

During the actual launch presentation, the team had shown a video that included some scenes of the team working in the office and labs at Shilapath but also some new footage from their sojourn to the farm. They then revealed six of the ten new products. The plan was to introduce all six that weekend and then every four weeks for the next four months introduce a new product so that the entire product line would be completely out in distribution in five months.

Every invited guest got a full gift box with small packages containing each sample that was being introduced that weekend. Members of the press got gift bags. There were presentation tables for people to try the products with each team member stationed at one of the tables to describe the uses of the specific product and how it was made and to answer questions. Even Wanna lost her nervousness in her excitement about how everyone was so interested in the work. She was even fine when Tul introduced her and Sukrit to his father.

After he introduced and thanked his team, Tul had announced that Pongpat was retiring. This surprised some in the audience, but no one on the team was surprised; however, they were surprised when Channarong Pakorn himself spoke a bit about the long years that Pongpat had been at the company and gave him a gift that included bonus pay for the work that they did with Hongtai Farms. Tul's father also said that everyone on the team would be getting a bonus, too, but that Pongpat was getting his first as Channarong's way of helping his long-time employees celebrate his retirement.

Later, Phon asked Channarong about his  presentation of the gift. Channarong's speech (and monetary surprise) was the kind of thing that usually would be said at the retirement party itself. Channarong explained simply that he hadn't been invited. Tul had been very clear to him that no one but the Team2Crew and their families and close friends had been invited. He did not want this to turn into a company event. Channarong had understood even though it hurt to see how Tul didn't realize how he obviously didn't really see his own father as family. Metinee, ironically, had seethed, especially when she had heard who was actually on that guest list and where it was being held. She dod not see Tul as family; however, she did see that once again, she had been shut out of a place that she thought was rightfully hers and her husband's.