Chapter 23: Home and Work – Part 1

Making a Choice

“Good morning, Gail!”

Gail, the secretary for the IT staff, looked at me and my new outfit with amazement.

“Good morning, Mick. How was your vacation? You seem like a whole different guy.”

“I AM a whole new guy, Gail.” I smiled the biggest smile I could make. “If I have been an ass while we have worked together, I’m sorry. Some things happened in my past that really had my whole life screwed up. These past three weeks have unscrewed them. I’m living my life under some new rules, and rule number one is, ‘Don’t Be A Dick!’”

Gail laughed and covered her mouth with her hand.

“I’m sorry! Pardon my language.”

“No! It’s OK. This is the most alive I’ve ever seen you. What happened? Were you abducted by aliens?”

“No! He was abducted by me and Sasha and Tasha and Jos and Lissa!” Diana said as she entered my department.

“Hi, Diana!” I greeted my friend with a hug and a kiss.

“Hi, Mick. Hi, Gail. Did you have any trouble replacing this big ape for the past three weeks?”

“Replace? You mean he was gone?” Gail said with faux sincerity.

“Oh great! Here I come in with a whole new outlook on life and I get this. I am going to go back to be a hermit,” I said with an equally faux pout.

Things went on like this for a several more weeks. Gail picked on me and helped keep me going in the direction the ladies had me moving when I came back from vacation. I was dating Sasha and meeting after work on some days with Diana and Tasha. We had formed a bit of a family relationship. The only family I had cared about after my mom did what she did, was my dad. I would have done anything for my dad.

So, when I was walking towards the lunch room to meet with the ladies and saw my IT supervisor holding on to Sasha’s arm as she tried to pull away, I walked right up to him, on his left side, and tapped him in the nuts with the back of my right hand.

He reflexively bent over and released Sasha. I put myself between him and my girl when he stood with a look of anger on his face.

“Don’t even think about it,” my facial expression had been well used in combat. “Don’t ever touch Sasha again. Not a grab, not a pat on the back, nothing. Do you understand me? And pass that word on to the other dicks in this company.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” He asked sounding cocky.

“I think that I’m the guy that makes your IT and programming department work. And I think that I am Sasha’s boyfriend. And I’m the guy that wouldn’t mind taking over your position after you have that terrible accident.”

“What accident?” The IT asshole asked.

“The one you are going to have if I hear about you touching my girl again. And if you don’t like that let me know and I’ll quit and let you explain why your department has gone to shit. And you know that is what will happen.”

He looked at a defiant Sasha and walked away. I turned to Sasha and took her in my arms as she broke down in tears.

“Thank you, lover,” Sasha hugged me thankfully.

“That’s what boyfriends do.”

We sat down for lunch and when Sasha told the ladies what happened, and they all said that they had been accosted this week as well.

“It seems like all the supervisors have suddenly decided to replace their PA’s and are on the hunt,” Sasha explained.

“Maybe he’ll put out the word on Sasha. If not, I may have to back over him a few times with my car,” I suggested.

“Don’t do that Mick. He’s not worth getting into trouble,” my girlfriend said worried about me.

I calmly advised all of my ladies. “If anything like this happens again, ladies, I strongly suggest that you start kicking men in the nuts. Do it hard and do it again when they fall on the ground.”

They all nodded, and no one laughed about it. It was finally apparent to Sasha, Diana, Tasha and me that something needed to happen. The women could not go on like this and their hope that the company would change were gone. Shortly after the incident, the four of us began talking about Diana’s harebrained business idea. We finally decided to get all of my ladies together and have a meeting.

Diana made reservations for us on Saturday night in a private room at our favorite restaurant. We talked for almost three hours before we decided to pull the trigger. But first information needed to be gathered and we needed to fill more positions on our dream team.

The next Monday we all walked into work together, yes it was a statement. The ladies went to their departments and Diana and I went to have a little chat with my department secretary, Gail.

“Gail,” Diana began. “Mick, the ladies and I have been having some very serious talks. I need to ask you a very serious question and I would like a very honest answer.”

Gail could tell from our demeanor that something very serious was about to happen.

“OK, I guess.”

I quietly spoke and looked my secretary in the eyes. “Gail, are you fucking Mr. Ryan or any of the other supervisors, department heads, or board members?”

“WHAT!?” Gail was shooting anger out her ears.

“We know that many of the PA’s and a few of the secretaries are fucking their bosses. We know that we do the work and they take the credit and the bonuses. We know that all the married supervisors are cheating with either their PA’s or their secretaries. Are you a part of that?”

“NO! I would never do that to my husband, or to my kids, or to my self-respect. How the hell can you even think to ask me something like that?”

I looked at Diana and nodded, Diana returned the nod. I looked at Gail and spoke to calm her.

“Gail, we’re sorry, we had to be sure. Would you and your husband join us for dinner on this Wednesday? That gives you some time to get a babysitter for the kids. This is something that could be really important and life changing for you and your family. In a good way. A very good way. That’s why your husband should be there.”

Gail looked at the two of us and saw the continued seriousness of our faces and body language.

“OK. Let me call Ben and see if he is available. If he is, I will get one of the neighborhood high school girls to babysit my kids. I’ll call you.”

“No,” I said quietly. “If things are good, please go to one of the ladies, you know our friends, and tell one of them face to face. You should be able to see any one of them without it looking out of place.”

“This is a little cloak and dagger isn’t it?”

“It is, Gail, but it’s for a very good reason, and Wednesday dinner is on me,” I said.

She nodded, and Diana and I went to our departments and went back to work. The ladies and I all sat together at lunch and were chatting like normal when Jos said something that made me smile.

“Gail stopped by my cubicle today and all she said was, ‘Tell Mick, yes’. Does that mean anything to anybody?”

“It does indeed. We can’t talk about it here. If any of you see her today, tell her ‘7PM at The Shedd’, OK?” I answered.

“OK. I’ll see her right after lunch. I’ll tell her so no one else has to duplicate the message.”

“Great! Thanks Jos. OK, everybody, Wednesday night 7PM at The Shedd. Bring everything we’ve talked about. I think we are a go!”

A little before 7PM, everyone arrived at The Shedd. There was James, my programming partner, and Gail, apparently the only department secretary in the company not fucking her boss, and her husband, Ben. My ladies and I were there, as well as a guy that was only known to me.

The Shedd was our favorite watering hole and eatery. We got a couple of tables together off to the side of the restaurant and after ordering drinks, without alcohol, we started off with the generic chat that starts off all meetings. When the chat died down and everyone began to look around, Diana called us all to order.

“Gang, Mick and I have been talking about this since we were driving back from our camping trip. As many of you know, while we were at camp, Mick was amazed to find out the sort of crap that the women in our company have to put up with. He was especially pissed when I told him about the attack on me last year.”

“He kept asking me the same question over and over. Why do we put up with this? In the end the answer that our group of five women came up with was we all needed the job and we had a feeling that this could be a great company if the supervisors could be gotten rid of. In this job market it is just too risky to bail out and find something as good without having to go through years and years to gain seniority again.”

I spoke next.

“A few days ago, after my boss accosted Sasha, Diana came to the conclusion that the company wasn’t going to change. At that point I asked Diana the next question. The question that is the reason we are here tonight is, how bad a shape would the company be in if the people at this table quit? I began to do some looking around the company and spoke, one on one, with other employees and most of the people here at this table. All of us,” I motioned around the table with my arm. “WE have the skills and talents ... to start our own company and almost immediately compete with our current company.”

“Mick! How is that possible?” Gail asked.

“I asked each of you ladies to look into something for me. I did that to separate the information so that if a supervisor found out they wouldn’t be able to connect the dots. Each of the ladies has been checking some things in their own area and tonight we are going to talk about it.

“Gail, look at the people at these tables. Sasha is in HR. Jos and Lissa are in Sales. Tasha is in Advertising and Promotions. Diana and you are in Administration. And James and I are in software programming and development. We are the key staff that hold our departments together. In every case our direct supervisors have been turning in our work as their own. The supervisors are fucking their PA’s and according to Sasha, those PA’s are making a shitload more in salary than those of us who have been doing the work.”

“The joke among my friends in HR,” Sasha added, “is that they get extra pay for back-time. Only it is not a joke. Gail did you know that Mr. Ryan’s PA is making over $100,000 a year?”

“WHAT? Sasha that can’t be right. Is it really?” Gail was amazed.

“Yup. And the other PA’s are in the same area. They are making, on average, more than twice what PA’s at other companies in the area are making. It gets even crazier when you realize that each of you have a better handle on your supervisors’ jobs and schedules than their PA’s. Gail, you are the only department secretary in the company that is on the normal pay scale. That is because you won’t fuck your supervisor,” Sasha explained.

Gail’s husband, Ben, looked at her and it was easy to read the anger on his face.

“Hon, is that really going on? Has he been after you?” He asked, trying to contain his anger.

“Yes, dear, but I have been able to handle it. There isn’t any temptation for me because the bastard is a fucking pig. Pardon my language dear,” Gail said to her husband and kissing him on the cheek.

“Jos and Lissa have pulled their bosses ass out of bad deals so many times in the past year it’s a serious issue,” I picked up the discourse. “And they’ve found out that Mr. Simon’s PA is being offered to some of our customers for sex to seal deals.”

Gail spoke up, now with a fire in her voice. “I know that Mr. Simpleson has been trying to get into my panties for a long time. The other PA’s and department secretaries don’t talk to me. They are a very closed group.”

“Gail,” Jos joined in. “They all got together a few months ago at a sales convention and had an orgy that resulted in contracts from eight new customers. Since that time, sales and software have had to deal with the new customers getting pissed because the features of the products they were sold don’t exist. But they got laid by all of the PA’s and that sealed the deals.”

I rejoined the conversation. “Our software products cascade from simple operations to some of the most complex on the market. My programming partner, James and I, have written all of those programs and yet Mr. Phillips name is on all of the final products. He can barely write code anymore.

“The same situation exists in each of your areas of responsibility. So, on the drive back from camp, after we all had our reconciliation, Diana and I had a bit of time to do some wild ass speculation. Sasha found out in the HR files that because we are all on the lower end of our supervisors’ levels of concern or awareness, none of us have had to sign non-compete agreements with the company. The supervisors all have them because they have their names on everything and it is assumed by the Board that they are the most important people in the company.”

My ladies, Gail and the others at the table all began to see where this was going.

“Diana seems to think that we could all walk away tomorrow, begin our own company and in a matter of weeks we could obtain deals with almost every one of the company’s main customers,” I said firmly.

“Mick’s right,” Diana picked up. “I’ve been talking with Jos and Lissa, and several customers are in the process of looking to replace our company’s products with a competitor. The big positive is that Mick and James are so far ahead of the curve in writing the software that no one is going to catch up anytime soon.”

“However, there is the small problem of contracts,” I took over again. “But I think that the contracts will fall into breach if we leave, and the company can’t meet its agreements. In the meantime, we will be contacting all those companies. We have to find out if the Boards of those companies know that their buyers are trading contracts for sex. I would propose to you, as a base principle, that we don’t do business with any company where the Boards of the companies knew that their buyers were fucking the PA’s as a part of their deals.”

“Mick is right, again,” Diana said with a nod. “I know that Lissa has met with a few companies who want to drop us because they don’t agree with the trading sex thing, but they can’t readily replace our software. We could pick them up right away.”

“And Jos and I can sell an honest and moral company to those customers and more,” Lissa added. “We sat down last night and figured that in the first two months, we could acquire at least 45% of this company’s business and lock it up long term. Without James and Mick doing the programming, it will take the company more time than that just to find people who understand the programming they’ve been doing.”

“Mick, what about the company’s intellectual property? Doesn’t everything you two have created belong to the company?” Gail’s husband, Ben, asked.

“Nope,” I said with a big smile, looking over at the guy no one but I knew. “This is Roy L. Fuchs. Roy and I were deployed together. He is now a member of the legal profession, specializing in business law and company start-ups. Roy, take over.”

The almost elegant man stood and spoke with quiet authority, a completely different man than he was when we served.

“A recent court ruling determined that when no specific agreement exists between creators and their employers, the creations, belong to the creator and not the creator’s employers. Neither does it belong to the people who bought the creation, unless a specific agreement exists between the creator and the company to the contrary. Everything that Mick and James have written since they were hired, belongs to them. When Mick heard about the court ruling several weeks ago, he and I set up a company. That LLC owns all of the company’s, or rather Mick and James, software and programs.”

“Are you sure?” Tasha asked.

“Tasha, I am as sure of it as I am of your love,” I said.

Tasha blushed, Roy shook my hand and sat back down. I looked at Sasha to see her smiling at her friend.

“And before you ask James, you, my friend, are my partner in that company,” I saluted James.

Jos asked the most obvious question. “OK, aside from having the balls to take the first step, what do we need to do?”

I happily answered that question. “Jos, we will need to see how much money we can put together. I can access funds through my GI Bill and its links to the Small Business Administration. Each of you will need to get with Sasha and Diana and see what you have in your retirement accounts and how you can access it.”

“Won’t that set off alarms?” Gail asked.

“Yes, and those alarms will pass right under the HR and Administration supervisor’s noses and go straight to the people in the departments doing the work,” I answered.

“Sasha and Diana,” Jos said.

“Bingo! Sasha and Diana,” I repeated her answer. “Once you have that info, we can take the next steps. We won’t need much in office space to start with. And with the way that we can link through the internet, we should be able to get through the first three or four weeks working from our homes. By then we should have over 45% of the company’s clients locked up and word should be getting out about how good we are and how reliable. That word of mouth inside the industry will be golden and that will be the job of sales and advertising to take care of.”

“So, is there anyone here who would not want to take these steps?” Diana asked.

My programming partner, James, was always good at seeing the problems in anything we dealt with and he spoke up first, “I have a question.”

“James, I should have known it,” I turned to the others. “James is the best debugger I know. He can think of problems before they happen and program around them. What’s the question, partner?” I asked.

“If we pull out our retirement funds, what are we going to do when we need those funds down the road?” James asked the big question my ladies and I had already considered.

“I asked Diana and Jos to sit down and put together some figures. Ladies,” I called on two of my ladies to drop the big bomb.

“James, we figure that over the next five years we will make back those funds,” Diana began. “We figured that all of us should clear $15,000 in bonuses above our salaries in the first year and it goes up from there.”

Jos jumped in, almost bouncing with excitement.

“The company will clear $200,000 in profit the first year and if we keep putting that money back into the company in the form of staff, equipment upgrades and so on ... the worst-case scenario says that we each come out of this as a multi-millionaire in less than ten years.”