Chapter 71

The lunch crowd was heavy so we elected to wait a few minutes to let it clear out. The wait allowed them to fill me in on the events of this morning and there had been several.

“I sent two pilots to Air Tractor this morning. Air Tractor has two ground support 802s that a foreign government had ordered. They only made the initial payments and haven’t made any more. Then they started the process of trying to negotiate a lower price and threatened to cancel the order. The aircraft are ready to be picked up.

“Air Tractor canceled the sale for them late yesterday and kept the initial payment based on the contract. They called me this morning telling me we could take possession immediately so I sent the pilots. The 802 has some bells and whistles that the ones we had ordered do not have,” Lorrie said.

“They will fly the 802s to Fort Dean on Tuesday after completing the training and fixing everything on the bug list,” Lorrie said.

“We found temporary office space in the old Narrows Mall; the one that has been closed up so long. It needs a lot to make it what we need but Bobs Construction can start in a few days. The downside is that it will take several months before it is all office worthy,” Lorrie said.

“There is no high-speed internet there; it was closed up before it got popular on the island. Robert wants fiber optic out there,” Marcy said.

“Shouldn’t be a problem, I will call the C’ville power company office and talk to the manager to get approval to attachment to their poles. One of the independents can install the cable after that,” I said.

We were going to Mexico City next Wednesday then stop back at Fort Dean on the return trip.

“Andy should have some deliveries today. I bought twenty pickups from the local dealer there for MAAR. I did the same thing with six John Deere Gators and six ATVs from the Kawasaki dealer. That should help him out a lot with everything that was missing,” Marcy said.

“Tomorrow the B&B accounting group is backing up all the servers and bringing it here. For time being it will be on a standalone system until we get all we need transferred to our systems.”

“That won’t take long because I am starting the accounting for that business as a new venture in our system with codes in SAP starting as of yesterday. “ Marcy said.

“Their Human Resources is doing the same thing; they are bringing all the HR files here - again standalone - and unfortunately it has to be manually entered into our system. They did not collect anywhere near as much info as we do. Plus they used an in-house developed system that is not compatible with anything.”

“Every one of our employees has company email - less than fifty percent of theirs do. That process will begin with the active employees. We have to verify all the direct deposit information and put it in our systems for payroll,” Jenny said.

Jamie called to say she was through with Charles and Milton. I sent one of my security men to pick them up and bring them here to join us for lunch.

There was a long conversation coming about the chain of command, supervisors, responsible persons and contact methods for the former Black Bear organization. We needed to work them into our operation as fast as possible while maintaining control of the men and active contracts.

All Black Bear’s employees had been notified on Thursday for the change in ownership and that their assignments were still active and their pay and pay schedule unchanged. On the down side they were also notified that all contracts were being upgraded and additional training and requirements may be placed in effect, along with second and third language requirements.

Charles, Milton and we talked in depth about the two thousand on-call employees. I was intending to use several hundred of them at Paris and that many or more in Mexico. The six thousand base employees of the former Black Bear were working on fixed contracts, the same as our security employees.

I learned from the two there were five supervisors who were responsible for the call up, special training, and deployment of those on -call employees.

The need to get the on-call employees checked out and in a format and position so we could use, trust them and depend on them answering the call was paramount.

Then there was Andy’s need for office space to set up his chain of command structure; all that forced us to do something we did not want to do.

We were going to convert the Horsey Hotel to immediate office space. Each room was set up with two beds and two small dressers. The mattresses and box springs were at least three years old - time for them to go to the dump anyhow. The dressers and bed frames could go into one of those rental storage units.

Each room could have two nice sized office cubicles and file cabinets with a small refrigerator, microwave, a sink and a private bathroom. I could see a pecking order to get an office over there.

Andy would have the first office in the door and his own clerk; if necessary, a wall would be knocked out putting two rooms together. By doing that Andy would be able to have a private office with a door and a meeting table. It would be the only real executive office in the building.

Baltimore office supply could supply and set up cubicles chairs and file cabinets in as many rooms as we needed.

All of us started making the necessary calls, with Marcy calling the office supply company. She used them all the time.

Lorrie called the dumpster company for dumpsters and the storage company for several large units. I called Robert about the necessary computer equipment and setting it up ASAP.

Robert called a company he dealt with and ordered all the computers, monitors and printers needed to make things work. All the rooms already had hard wired internet. Robert was going to add wireless to help with laptops.

Half of the men that had been in training were now already deployed, some to the Pact countries and the others to Fort Polo. The ones that were left were in limbo as of now, eventually ending up at the Pact countries. Their training was finished next week. If the trainers would sign off on them early, they would finish the week out helping on the office conversion by carrying the bed frames to storage.

Now with Mexico, France and Oklahoma City all coming together at one time, everything was going to be a rush.