EPISODE 13

Les Bernstein was not an unlucky man.  The fact of the matter was that nothing bad ever happened to him.  But for some reason, the people around Les always seemed to be visited by disaster.  Everyone in the company knew this.  One famous Les story had involved Bosco.  Bosco had borrowed Les’ car and not only did it break down on the FDR Drive, but when a passing police cruiser stopped to help, the cops found a half an ounce of marijuana in the glove compartment when he opened it to show them the registration.  Bosco was booked on possession of Les’ weed and spent the night in jail until Leah was able to bail him out the following morning.

It was therefore with a certain amount of dread that I turned around upon hearing Les call out my name in the hallway on my floor one morning.  I looked up as he trotted towards me.  He was smiling broadly.

“Mike!  Jeez, I’m glad to see you.”

“’Morning, Les.  What can I do for you?”

Les paused a second before he launched into his pitch.  This was when I should have made like the Roadrunner from the old Warner Brothers cartoons and disappeared at supersonic speed, leaving Les in a cloud of dust.  Not that that would have helped me any.  As sure as I was standing there, waiting for Les’ next words, an anvil would have landed on my head before I’d gotten two steps away from him.  You can learn a lot about life from Saturday morning cartoons.

“I need a favor, Mike.”

Scariest words on the planet and yet I didn’t make a break for it.  I suppose that I was a very cool character back then.  That, or one of the biggest fools alive.  Bosco had proved it was impudent to accept help from Les, so why would it be much different to offer it to him?  Still, I nodded and Les began to speak very quickly.

“You know Lou Krasner, don’t you?  He owns Universal Hair over on West 57^th Street.  Anyway, he needs a carload of stuff at his place, like yesterday!  This is a big deal for me, Mike.  Huge!  He’s one of our best accounts.  He says jump, I gotta ask him how high.  You know what I mean?”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked warily.

“Look, I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important.  But do you think you could deliver his order to him today?  It would really get me out of a bind.  I’d do it myself, but I’ve got meetings all afternoon.”

“Les, why don’t you just reschedule one of the meetings?”

“I can’t!  Shit, I’ve got so many meetings today and tomorrow, I don’t have time to talk to my clients.  You gotta do this for me.  Please.”

There’s something sort of comical about a salesman who’s too busy to make sales calls, but that said a lot about Les.  He was in the office every morning before eight and made a point of staying past seven, if only just so he could say that he worked longer hours than anyone else.  What was remarkable though was that he still seemed to get caught in situations like this all the time.  Les had once roped Allan into packing a van with product and samples early one morning so that Les could drive it all to a trade show he was attending in Pittsburgh.  It would have been a great idea had Les asked Allan to do this before the show had already started.  Les arrived in Pittsburgh with his van filled with promotional items just as the first day of the conference ended.  He’d called the office in a panic at around 5:30 that afternoon, looking for someone who could fly out there to unload the van, set up for the second day and then man the booth while he attended to a few meetings with clients.

“What’ve you got?” I asked.

“Great!” Les cried, even though I hadn’t agreed to actually do anything.  As far as he was concerned, just by asking, I’d implied that I was on board.  “There’s a box with 30 units, a box of brochures, and two cases of liquids.  You can get a hand truck up on the sixth floor.  They should have the order picked by now.”

“Les,” I began, but I was too late.  He was already backing away from my, grinning broadly.

“Thanks, Mike!  You’re saving my life.”

He turned around and hurried off, leaving me wondering just how in the hell it had all happened.  I checked my watch.  It was a little before eleven.  Actually, it wasn’t that bad a deal, I realized as I headed to the elevator.  I’d be able to skip out of the office for a little while and the traffic wasn’t likely to be so bad at that point in the day.  If I played it right, I wouldn’t have come back to the office until tomorrow.  I pressed the elevator button and listened as the alarms from a couple floors above woke up George and the elevator began its descent.

George picked me up on the second floor and fell asleep between the third and fourth as we headed for the sixth.  I snagged a hand truck and went to find what the warehouse pickers had left for me.  The box of hairpieces was present, but I would have to go to the seventh floor to get the rest.  I took the box and the hand truck and rang for the elevator.  George and I chatted as we made the short trip up to the floor above.  I gave him a wave as I exited the elevator, but he was already slumped over, his breathing deep and slow.

It took me almost a half hour to track down the other boxes as Les had neglected to actually notify anyone on the seventh floor that he needed anything.  So, I waited as he wrote up a pick order to be emailed from his office to the upper warehouse.  Finally though, I had everything and I headed down to the ground floor to select a vehicle.

The next installment will be posted on December 2.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 12

When Richard Glick had invited us to his office on the Tuesday after the New Orleans conference, he was polite, direct, and concise on his insisting that we both be there promptly at 11 that morning.  Of course, we didn’t make it on time.  But Richard greeted us good-naturedly.

“I see that you guys are still on Bourbon Street time,” he said with a smile as we walked in, about 15 minutes late.  “It doesn’t matter.  I only have a couple of items to go over with the two of you.  Just pull up a chair and let’s get started.”

He was seated at his desk and was looking over several neatly stacked piles of papers.  He picked up one of the piles and began to leaf through it.

“I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing your expense sheets from New Orleans,” he said quietly, never taking his eyes off the papers.

I don’t know.  I just didn’t expect this to be the preamble to a conversation that I was going to enjoy very much.  Richard flipped through the pages of paper and continued in a crisp, matter-of-fact manner.

“$2150 for additional Internet connections.  $73 for room service.”

“It wasn’t technically ‘room service,’” Allan offered.

“No?”

“Absolutely not.  The sandwiches and drinks were delivered to us in the main ballroom.”

“A nice distinction.  I’ll make note of it.  But I also notice a fairly pricey dinner for two and a couple of healthy cocktail bills from some nightclubs on Bourbon Street.”

“Those would be mine,” I said.

“I assumed so.  Michael, you are aware that SlipNot does not reimburse you for entertainment and alcohol.”

“Even if the guy I’m schmoozing is Frank Rotella?”

“You were out with Frank?’

“Absolutely.”

“Did you get any business?”

“He closed Frank on the micro camera and the new TV ad program” Allan interjected.

“Still,” Richard said, with a slight quaver in his voice, “This is not the way we do business.”

“We don’t take clients out?” I asked.

“Of course we do.  It’s just that we like to keep expenses on a short leash.  Michael, an expense account is not a license to wine and dine your favorite clients at your favorite bistros.”

This surprised me somewhat as I had actually held the opinion that this was precisely what expense accounts were for.  If not, then what the hell was the point?  With great self-control, I managed to keep this thought to myself.

“Still,” Richard continued, “Frank is a very important client of SlipNot’s and the fact that you were able to close him on those programs is good.  I’m not happy about how much of the company’s money you spent, but I’ll find some way of making it work.”

“Thanks, Richard” I replied.  I had to admit I was a little pissed off.  I’d invested a few hundred bucks in Frank’s night on the town and bought tens of thousands in good will, which would translate into huge sales down the line, not even to mention what we’d taken in on the ad programs.  But that was part of Richard’s job.  He had to watch all the nickels and dimes.

“You’re welcome,” he shot back.

Richard put down the pile of papers in his hand and picked up another from his desk.  He extracted two pages and handed one to Allan and the other to me.

“This is a new policy paper that I want you both to insert into your employee manuals.”

I knew this was going to be tough for Allan as he’d thrown his in the trash a day or two after it had been first issued to him.  Mine was at my apartment, but I honestly had no idea where.  I vaguely remembered tearing one or two pages out of it to use as scrap paper for a proposal I had been fiddling with at the time.  That was the last I’d seen of it. 

“This policy paper will probably be of some interest to you guys in Marketing.  Essentially, it details the procedures necessary for establishing new policies.”

“This is a policy paper on creating policies?” I asked with a smile.  Allan rolled his eyes and looked down at the floor, suddenly engrossed with the pattern of the carpeting in Richard’s office.

“That’s right!” Richard said proudly.  “Say that you or Allan want to institute a new policy on lunchtimes, or memo protocol, or whatever…all you have to do is fill out this form and give it to your manager.  Your manager will review it and then send it to the management team for consideration.  Once the team okays it, it comes to me and I take a look at it before deciding if it becomes policy or not.”

Somehow, I just had the feeling that this wasn’t going to be one of those little rights and privileges that either Allan or I were going to be availing ourselves of in the near or even the distant future.  Still, I smiled at Richard and patted the sheet of paper as though it was now a treasured new possession.  He smiled back, certain that he’d done his best to reach out to his two wayward charges and with that, the meeting was adjourned.

********** 

 

The next installment will be posted on November 18.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 11

Allan and I worked in Marketing and we were housed with about a dozen or so other employees on the 2^nd floor.  We always had the option of taking the short walk up one flight of stairs from the ground level to reach our offices and so we were rarely inconvenienced by all of the other activity.  I think there were days when quite literally people would forget we were even in the building, as they didn’t see us riding the elevator all that often.  This left us pretty much on our own to pursue our tasks undisturbed.  An ambitious young graphics designer the company hired just after we came on the scene used to complain that we were being ignored, that our physical location on the 2^nd floor left us cut off from where the decisions were being made, on the 3^rd and 5^th floors.  He made repeated efforts to get his office transferred upstairs, anywhere upstairs so that he might be closer to the action.

Allan and I both thought he was insane. 

We both had small, but adequate offices next to each other.  Each of us had a window that allowed us to gaze out onto 44^th Street, where we were able to watch as the New York police ticketed all of the cars whose owners had chosen to park in the diplomatic zone across from the building.  Every once in a while, they’d come by with tow trucks and just clear the slate, so to speak.  There was a good kosher deli a few doors down from the front door of the building and even Allan had to admit that the food was awfully good.  Sometimes we were able to sneak away, a little further afield and grab lunch at Franchia, a remarkable Korean vegetarian restaurant and teahouse on 34^th Street.  We didn’t do it often though as we were often gone for two hours or more when that happened.

Bosco’s office was on the 5^th floor, something he’d insisted on when he sold his company.  If nothing else, he was a mover and a shaker and he demanded to be in on everything.  Bosco’s knowledge of the industry was enormous and he commanded great respect.  He was a leader in a company that craved leadership and this gave him great latitude.  He could call meetings at any time he pleased and no one, not even the COO or the owner could refuse his request.  But the first meeting that Allan and I were called to upon returning from New Orleans wasn’t with Bosco.  Richard Glick, the Chief Operations Officer summoned us to his office on the Wednesday after we got back. 

Richard was probably the most intelligent person I worked with at SlipNot.  He was extremely organized, able to keep an extraordinary array of projects going at the same time and yet he always seemed to delight in apparently minute details as well.  I remember him once sending a memo to Allan when he and I were first hired, regarding the mandatory urine test.  All SlipNot employees had to submit to drug testing, once a year.  When I was notified of my “spot check”, I’d gone to the clinic and given an admirable sample of narcotic free pee. 

Allan had not been so lucky, having fallen off his self imposed wagon of abstinence about a week earlier while attending a concert by Grateful Dead bass player, Phil Lesh and his band.  He begged off the test, claiming some kind of bizarre malady that had been caused by ingesting the wrong kind of food at the wrong time of year.  This request had gone through several layers of SlipNot decision makers for their input before Richard had been ultimately called upon to render judgment.  He’d read through all of the memos generated by the various people who’d considered this case before it had been brought to him and like an appellant judge, he’d handed down his decision in writing, about a week later.  The intervening time had given the illicit substances in Allan’s bloodstream plenty of time to dissipate and so there was much less danger that the drug screen would prove to be a problem for him.

Still, Allan’s troubles weren’t quite over.  He’d arrived at the clinic at the appointed hour, after having swilled down an enormous amount of a product he’d found on the Web called the Fast THC Marijuana Detox Kit.  For $51.99, plus shipping, it boasted a 200% money back guarantee if you should fail your drug test and lose your job.  The only real problem was that the package recommended that the user urinate as often as possible before going to take the test.  Allan drank the kits two-component liquids and then downed an astounding quantity of tap water, heading to the bathroom at frequent intervals.  He arrived at the clinic devoid of toxins and with his bladder as empty as a politician’s promise.  He spent several awkward minutes with his sample cup in the bathroom before returning with what the clinic nurse derisively called an “inadequate effort.”  He sat in the clinic lounge, drinking tea for close to an hour before he felt he was ready to try again.  However, for whatever reason (maybe the detox kit had dried him out, or perhaps he was just experiencing a bad case of the jitters), the result was once again determined to be inadequate.

The nurse had looked at Allan with frank amazement and told him that she’d have to write up his inability to provide a sample.  A memo was sent from department to department at SlipNot, noting Allan’s fluid retention issue and a piece of paper with this information found its way to Richard’s desk a few days later.  Allan was excused from the annual drug test and he was given a list of urologists who were approved by the company’s HMO for him to consult.  

********** 

 

The next installment will be posted on November 18.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.

EPISODE 10

SlipNot’s original offices were in Long Island City where the company had a lease that finally ran out in 1994.  It had grown rapidly from a 4 million dollar a year company with 16 employees when they first leased space at the old place in 1984 to one that grossed over 12 million in 1993 with around 30 employees.  They leased warehouse space in Long Island City too, but they were ready for a big jump by ‘94 and so they bought a seven floor commercial building in Manhattan, on 44^th Street, between 1^st and 2^nd Avenues.  This put SlipNot just a few blocks away from one of the busiest spots in the city, if not the entire country, Grand Central Station.  By the time I started work there, they had almost 100 employees and were grossing over 45 million a year.

When I first decided to take the job at SlipNot, I got on the phone to every living soul I knew who lived in or near the city, asking for advice on how to find an apartment there.  As it turned out, a couple I knew very well was moving to Paris for a year and wanted someone to sublet their apartment on 79^th Street, just off 3^rd Avenue.  Jimmy was an old college buddy of mine and he made his living jumping from company to company, doing some kind of obscure database management.  He’d already worked for Mitsubishi, Porsche, and Heineken over the previous 5 years.  His new project was with Renault and he didn’t want to lose the option on his rent controlled, two-bedroom unit – so I came along at just the right time.  Everything seemed to come together perfectly, at least for the short term.

I used to take the Lexington Avenue subway to Grand Central each morning, unless the weather was nice out, in which case I walked.  I preferred the walk, even in the heat of summer.  I really enjoyed the energy of all of the people moving along the sidewalks, going to and returning from their various tasks.  SlipNot’s building had a huge open garage bay at ground level that led all of the trucks carrying its product into and out of New York from the Shipping and Receiving area just inside.  There was an old-style freight elevator that was operated by an employee that SlipNot inherited from the seller as part of the purchase deal.  The elevator operator, George, had been a middleweight prizefighter until he took a shot to the side of his head in a bout that had left him in a coma for 8 weeks.  When he woke up, his speech was slurred and he had trouble focusing on even the smallest of tasks.  The Chief Operations Officer of the film production company that had sold SlipNot the building was a big fight fan.  He’d seen George in the ring a few times and the two men had become friends.  The diagnosis was that George had narcolepsy.  The COO convinced his bosses, the partners that owned the film company to take George on as the elevator operator.  True, he would fall dead asleep while running the elevator, so they installed a system of alarms that would wake him every time he got to the floor he was heading for or if someone needed him to take the elevator someplace else.

SlipNot had agreed to the caveat and George became loyal employee of the firm once the closing on the building was affected.  He took to his new employers and his fellow workers well, although he did occasionally ask where the old people he’d worked with had gone.  He was really a very gentle man and he could be a lot of fun to talk to and joke with.  Until he nodded off, which always eventually happened.

What was puzzling to me though was that while SlipNot made perfect use of the ground floor and its open spaces to take and send shipments, the decision had been made early on for all of the inventory to be stored on the 6^th and 7^th floors.  The 6^th floor had originally been used as a sound stage.  The production firm had shot a long-running soap opera there for close to 25 years.  It was the cancellation of that TV show that forced the partners to consider putting the building up for sale.  It proved to be a terrific move for them.  SlipNot gave them a very competitive price for the building and the production company had flourished after their move to their new offices in South Carolina.

But back to the 6^th floor.  There was an enormous amount of open space there and SlipNot busily filled every inch of it with adhesives, stock hair pieces, solvents, shampoos, dyes, and a myriad of other devices and products dedicated to the restoration of men’s and women’s hairlines.  It didn’t take long before the inventory began to overrun the place and so it was decided to expand warehousing to the 7^th floor as well.  One issue though was that samples of products and the inventory of advertising media were also stored on 7.  Tapes and discs of TV ads, magazine and newspaper ad slicks, sample photographs, DVDs, CDs, and reams of ad copy competed with shelf space with all of the other inventory, as well as samples of shampoos, volumnizers, conditioners, and other hair treatments products.

By now, you can visualize why this setup was less than ideal.  While products were indeed very efficiently received at the ground level, all of it had to be taken up George’s elevator to either the top or the second from the top floor for storage.  If a salesperson (located on the 3^rd floor) wrote an order for 50 hairpieces (located either on floors 6 or 7) and a TV ad program (found somewhere else on 7), it had to be picked by two separate warehouse crews (located on each floor), then sent down on George’s elevator to shipping where the two separate batches would (hopefully) be packaged together at ground level for shipping to its final destination.  To say that orders got screwed up from time to time would be an understatement.

The reception area at SlipNot was on the 4^th floor and it also housed the offices for Human Resources and Bookkeeping.  This wasn’t the best of plans either as most people who actually came to visit SlipNot had little or no reason to communicate with either of these departments.  More often than not, visitors were clients from out of town and they had either come to consult with their sales rep (one floor below) or with upper level management (one floor up).  This resulted in the visitor spending a great deal of time on the freight elevator (which was the only means of traveling from one floor to the next without using the stairs) and with the usually snoring countenance of its lord and master, George.

********** 

 

The next installment will be posted on November 11.

If you'd like to read the entire book today, GO HERE.