Chapter 1

All good things come to an end, was the thought running through Tom Granger’s mind. That was because in a week and a half, he would be attending the graduation ceremony at the University of Texas at Austin, receiving an MBA degree. That degree would complement his undergraduate degree in computer science and supposedly make him ready as someone once said, “to go forth into the real world.” Having these degrees lead to him receiving two job offers. He was presently deciding which job offer he would accept.

The five years he spent at UT seem to have flown by. It was like yesterday when he first walked onto the campus. Because of the enjoyment, challenges, and good times here, he wished he could start college again. His main reason for wanting to do that, besides receiving a good education, was the enjoyment he had experienced with a few co-eds enrolled here. His fraternity brothers had it right when they said that the college campus was a target-rich environment when it came to meeting members of the opposite sex.

Tom would second that opinion because of his experiences with several co-eds. He was not a virgin. Tom had lost his virginity to Sheila Jensen after his high school Senior Prom. Sheila was not an overly beautiful girl, but she had a reputation that she was not resistant to having sex. Her reputation was the reason he asked her to the prom. It was in the back seat of his father’s SUV that Tom had what he called a home run.

Sheila’s dress was down to her waist, exposing her breasts, while the hem of her dress was up to her waist with her panties on the floor. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to engage in intercourse, but Tom could honestly say, “Mission accomplished,” before he took Sheila home. He was so excited that night that he stopped the car on an unlit street and had another make-out session with her that enabled him to hit another “Home Run.”

His experiences with members of the opposite sex on the UT campus started with his talking to Carol Freeman in his Economics 101 class. She was a freshman like him. Tom was not the only male on campus who noticed that Carol had a nice body. The clothes she was wearing, especially the tight blouses and sweaters, showed she was amply endowed. She was easy to talk to, and he asked her for a date.

The first date ended with some kissing, and the subsequent dates progressed with them engaging in petting. Carol had rules as to how far she would let Tom go in doing this petting. He could caress her breasts on the outside of her clothing, but there was no touching below her waist. She would relieve his frustration when they had these kissing sessions by giving him a hand job.

It did not take long for Tom to think he could do better than Carol, which caused him to look to date other young ladies.

His doing that resulted in ditching Carol and dating Megan Fitzpatrick. Megan had an engaging personality and had rules for what she would allow in their make-out sessions. She did allow him to touch her below her waist, but only with his fingers and nothing more. Megan was not against oral sex, as a date would frequently end with her giving him a blowjob. She was good and seemed to enjoy doing it.

Because of his high school prom experience with Sheila, Tom put aside further thoughts of dating Megan. He was looking for co-eds to date that would make him a long-ball hitter.

As it turned out, Tom did bring his home run-hitting average up in the time he was at the university. There was Mia Jordan, a sorority president, Pamela Corvan a pre-med student, and currently, he was dating Vanessa Norge a nursing student. Tom had enjoyable affairs with these ladies in his five years attending UT. These young ladies seemed to enjoy having sex as much as Tom did. He also felt that all three ladies were looking to have a permanent type of relationship with him. Tom enjoyed their companionship and the lovemaking, but there was a problem. The problem was that he did not love any of these ladies. His feeling that way was why he would end the relationship when they started hinting they were looking for a permanent relationship with him.

Tom received an email that said Lynn Dobner, a Professor for one of his courses, wanted to see him. Professor Dobner had taken a different approach to how she would give the final grade for her class to the students. Instead of requiring a written final exam, she asked the students to pick any company or industry that they thought a problem existed. They needed to write a report explaining the situation and what they would do to solve or mitigate the problem.

Tom had chosen the telecommunication industry, specifically those companies that provided internet, telephone, and television services to their customers.

He stated in his paper that one of the problems occurring in this business was that customers complained about the costs of these services, especially the television service. The gist of his solution was for the cable company to expand how they sell this television service by offering what Tom called a “Bite off what you can chew” option. He stated this was because the companies were presently offering groups of television channels to their customers. It started with a basic package and offered additional channels to the basic package in other packages at increased costs. That left it to the customers to choose which package they wanted.

He proposed a supplement to this package approach. That was to let the customer choose the specific channels they wanted to subscribe to. There will be a fixed cost for each non-premium channel selected and a one-time charge for providing this service.

Tom surveyed fifty random people and asked them what they would do if this option were available. He summarized their pro and con responses, starting with the con. The con of this option would be that some customers would downgrade their service as they only wanted to receive a few cable-type channels to supplement the channels they received over the air with a television antenna. The pros of offering this service would be twofold. The first one is that this option would attract more customers, with the second one being that the customers would see the value in the packages currently offered. Overall, making this option available should reduce customer complaints about the costs and increase the number of subscribers.

Tom enjoyed Professor Dobner’s course and talking to her. Even though she was probably thirty years older than him, she did not act like that. She dispensed with the formalities by insisting her students address her by using her first name.

Knocking on the door to her office, Tom heard, “Come in.”

Entering her office, he took a seat where she pointed and heard her thank him for coming. She asked how he was doing before she stated the reason she asked Tom to see her.

“I was impressed by the paper you submitted and gave you an A for the course. I thought your idea and analysis made sense and could solve or reduce complaints if that option was made available by companies offering that service. Because of my thoughts, I sent a copy of your paper to Colton Ackerman. Colton was a student here when I first started teaching. He was also an All- American football player and was by no means a “dumb jock.” Over the years, we have kept in touch. He is presently the CEO of Mid-Home, a telephone company headquartered in Boulder, CO. They are attempting to expand the television cable portion of their business. I thought he would be interested in reading your paper.”