In Alcoa's Pittsburgh office Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld has a cube with a sliding glass door.
Tailoring a dress for a dog "is a pain, " said Ronnie Rothstein, a co-owner of Kleinfeld.
Mr Kleinfeld's main problem was his lack of allies in Germany's chummy corporate elite.
The 49-year-old Mr Kleinfeld will have no difficulty finding a new high-profile job in America.
Now that Austrian-born Peter Loescher is filling Kleinfeld's shoes, the firm has a fresh new public face.
Kleinfeld predicts that demand will increase to 12% this year, following a 13% growth rate in 2010.
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Mr Kleinfeld promises he will sort out his company's weak units in the next 18 months or two years.
The group is in much better shape today than it was in January 2005 when Mr Kleinfeld took over.
Hedda Schachter (ne Kleinfeld) and her husband, Jacob, started selling wedding gowns some 30 years ago, until their 1992 retirement.
The month of April also saw Heinrich von Pierer, chairman of Siemens' supervisory board, and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld leave the firm.
Wal-Mart, in which Kleinfeld also mounted a vigorous and ultimately futile dissent.
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"Siemens has zero tolerance for irregular or illegal conduct, and we are further strengthening our compliance department, " said then-CEO Klaus Kleinfeld at the time.
Mr Kleinfeld got the top job because of his reputation as a tough cost-cutter who pulled the company's American subsidiary out of the red.
One of the 11 is Klaus Kleinfeld, a former chief executive, who is now the boss of Alcoa, the world's leading producer of aluminium.
At that point, Vera Skenderis, the Greek-born alterations manager at Kleinfeld, brought out the human version of the dress Piper will be wearing so everyone could take a gander.
Alcoa CE, Klaus Kleinfeld acknowledged that substantial headwinds, like rising energy costs and volatile currency markets, had an impact, but were offset by higher prices driven by strength in end markets.
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Kleinfeld understands that, too, is an active decision.
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Faced with persistent speculation about his future as boss of Siemens, Mr Kleinfeld told the 20-strong board before their gathering that he would leave the company if they did not make a firm commitment to renew his contract.
This struck Kleinfeld as ridiculous.
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