Chapter 3

It was early in June, three weeks later than originally scheduled, before the grand opening of the golf learning center finally occurred. The delays had been caused by some of the sub-contractors not meeting their deadlines, and by Mama not being satisfied with some of the work that had already been done. If Mama wasn't satisfied, she wasn't going to release the final large payments.

There were a lot of threats of legal proceedings against her, but she knew exactly what she wanted, and what had been promised. All the building or course construction contracts had been drawn up by Uncle Bunny, each containing clauses requiring that her satisfaction was needed before any release of a final payment became necessary. When the various contractors concluded they had no other choice than to do so, those things in dispute were finally done the way Mama had wanted them to be. The golf academy was ready for the first class of students. The first two week teaching session was filled to capacity with eager young students from all over the country.

At the dedication ceremony, Mama announced that the facility was going to be named the Bunny Chalmers Golf Academy. It took only two sessions that first summer, before everyone referred to it simply as: 'Bunny Chalmers'. A capacity session was made up of one hundred sixty students. There were forty junior instructors/live-in counselors, twelve resident teaching professionals, and a whole series of special golf instructors who were being brought in to teach half day seminars in their playing specialties. Mama had set room, board, and tuition at twenty five hundred dollars per student, per session. Her goal was to attract only those young people who were serious about improving their golf games. Mama had set aside forty places for possible scholarship students for those without the resources to otherwise attend.

From the beginning, Mama had wanted the Academy's emphasis to be on teaching young female golfing students. That was where she spent most of her advertising budget, trying to get the word out that there was a program that catered to girls from thirteen to eighteen years of age. In that first session, there were one hundred thirty two young girls, and twenty eight even younger boys. The first three days were taken up with conducting skill assessments, and included a very comprehensive professional equipment fitting for each student. Every aspect of each enrollee's game was looked at, assessed, and analyzed. Four of the major equipment manufacturers had sent large trailers, all fully staffed with swing analysis experts, and their most accomplished club fitters. They recognized an opportunity to look over the cream of the current crop of junior girl golfers, and to form relationships that could very well carry over and produce large returns in the future.

Mama had planned for six two week sessions as the main Academy offering, with a number of three day specialty sessions, open to the general public, to run concurrently. In addition, private lessons, with special instructors, were being offered throughout the rest of the playing year, from May to October. All of the Academy sessions were broken down into groups of four golfers. After the assessment period, students were regrouped, reassigned according to their abilities.

Mistakes were made during that first session, but each student was kept busy, and challenged, from early morning, until ten at night. There was a heavily structured training schedule for every participant to follow; one that was customized daily for them as the session progressed. The goal was to help each golfer improve those aspects of their game that most contributed to their being able to play better golf. Some of the golfers spent a lot of their time on the various practice ranges, perfecting their swings, or learning better ways to hit a particular type of shot. For others, there was mental training, learning how to handle some of the thinking aspects of their game.

At the end of the first session, after deducting all operating costs for the two weeks, Mama had an operating profit for the session. Whether she would be able to continue operating in the black was still to be determined. The second session, like the first, was booked to full operating capacity. By the end of the second session, Mama proudly informed us one night at dinner, that all six sessions had been fully subscribed. With all the additional revenues from equipment sales and the three day specialty sessions, Mama was anticipating a return on investment of just under three per cent for the Academy's first season of operations. While not in any way competitive with her normal investment expectations, Mama announced that she was personally satisfied with that level of return. She was doing something she had wanted to do, and it wasn't costing her any out of pocket money to do it. My Dad seemed satisfied as well.

The day after her school let out for her, Shirley became my assistant. I was pretty pleased with myself for arranging to have my own assistant. I was looking forward to doing some delegating of my own. The very first day, as we drove to Bolling in Dad's car, Shirley told me she was looking forward to meeting Ellen.

She didn't say Ellen though. Instead, she called her "that girl you let play with your dick." She said it just loud enough for my Dad to hear her. I had let that incident slip my mind completely.

"Did you hear that Clement Academy is taking day students next year? Boys and girls. I'm thinking about becoming a day student. You should talk to your parents about transferring out there with me. It's a great school. It's hard, but the teachers are really good."

"Are you trying to change the subject, Kenny? If you are, it isn't going to work."

"I'm not changing the subject. I'm sure you'll meet all the employees before the summer is over. Aren't you worried that it might make me uncomfortable, especially if you went out of your way to meet Ellen, or were to ask her questions about that time? That was something that just kind of happened, and it hasn't happened since that one incident."

"No, why should I care if it makes you uncomfortable? I just want to meet her anyway. I probably won't talk to her about that."

"Really?"

"No. Of course I'm going to talk with her about that. You need to be realistic, Kenny. You never did tell me how it all happened, and I want to find out from her, now that I've got the chance. I don't think most girls would just grab a guy there, not for no reason. You must have done something to make her think it was all right."

My Dad laughed out loud at that, mostly at me. I gave him a dirty look, but he was driving and didn't notice it. Why was it that girls could spoil something with just a single sentence? I'd really been counting the days and looking forward to Shirley finishing with her school year so that the two of us could work together.

I had been hoping that we could have a great summer, and get good things accomplished for the business. I had been thinking of how great it was going to be having her right there with me every day. Now, I felt like I'd been told I had to walk through a mine field wearing a blindfold. My dad decided to give me a break by passing me back the list of things he wanted me to handle for him that day.

I didn't have an office, or any fixed place to work from. I did tell the three Johns in maintenance, that my father had let me hire my girlfriend as an assistant for the summer. When we got into work that Monday morning, Myra, my Dad's secretary, told me that John from maintenance needed to see me as soon as I arrived.

I left Shirley with Myra to give her a chance to fill out her employment information, while I went down to the maintenance area to see what they wanted.

What they wanted was to show me the offices they had set up for Shirley and me over near where Miss Walters offices were located. There were four rooms set up, two offices, with phones, desks and chairs. There was also a third room, one which was accessible only from off of my office. Inside was a bedroom, complete, with its own connecting bathroom. There was a nice shower in the bathroom.

The bedroom had a king size bed, a wall mounted television set, a small refrigerator, and a maroon Naugahyde covered sofa. The bedroom had its own deadbolt lock from the inside. There was another locked door inside the bathroom that opened out into a seldom used back stairwell going down to the employee break room off of the loading dock. John told me that I had the only set of keys to open both those doors. I was very pleased that they had taken the trouble to set this up for Shirley and me. I gave John a hundred dollars for the maintenance department's entertainment fund, with a promise of more to come in the very near future.

I sat at my new desk, trying to figure out a way to let Shirley meet Ellen without having a big scene in front of any of the other people. I didn't want to have anything bad happen in front of people that I needed to work with. Maybe I could arrange for a first meeting away from the plant. It was another hour before I left my office and headed back up to my Dad's office. I still hadn't figured out how I was going to manage that meeting.

When I got to my Dad's office, Myra told me that Shirley had finished up her paperwork and had decided to take a self guided tour of the plant. I turned right around and headed straight for the phone room, hoping to get there in time to minimize the damage of Shirley's first meeting with Ellen.

When I got there it was too late. Ellen and Shirley were sitting on bean bag chairs in the lounge portion of the phone room. Ellen was speaking, and Shirley, was rolling around on her bean bag, laughing so hard that she was holding her sides. Ellen's mom, Edith, was standing by the coffee machine, listening to Ellen, a big grin on her face as well.

"Kenny!" As soon as she saw me, Ellen shouted out her greeting. Shirley tried to swivel around on her bean bag chair with little effect. She finally had to roll all the way over on her other side in order to get me in her view.

"Are we going to get some work done today, Shirley, or are you just going to walk around getting familiar with everything?" I don't know why I was acting so worried, but just the thought of those two sitting around, discussing me, had me on the verge of a panic. I really cared for Shirley, and I didn't want her to start thinking of me in a bad light. I was afraid that Ellen might tell her something that would make that one incident seem worse than it had been. Worse in terms of my having been more of a contributor to what happened in the car with Ellen than I had told her I was. I thought I'd been honest, but those things are open to individual interpretation. Suppose Ellen started exaggerating to make the incident seem funnier? I could think of a thousand reasons to keep those two people apart. Shirley stood up.

"I thought I'd spend some time with Ellen today. She told me she could show me around for awhile, and then we thought we'd all go to lunch this afternoon, you, me and Ellen." I really had no choice, so I smiled and told them both I'd meet them in the order room at noon. I turned around and left right after saying that.

The first thing on my father's list was for me to go down to the order pulling supervisor to tell him to fire two of the workers. He had written down their names, and next to each name, he'd listed several reasons for letting them go. They were both relatively new hires, brought in when we changed over from the old way we loaded the delivery vans. I wondered why Dad was having me do it, especially since all he had to do was lift up his phone and tell the supervisor himself.

Roy Falson was the supervisor of the order pickers. He'd been picked because he had seniority, and because he was well liked by the drivers too. He was about fifty years old, tall, with a large belly, thinning brown hair that was sprinkled with lots of gray. I had spoken with him often, and he seemed very easy going and friendly.

I knew one of the guys on the list, Terry Klennert. He was always talking big about himself whenever I'd been around him. He seemed to think that he was destined to take over the whole loading operation imminently, and was always telling other people how they should be doing things. He was in his mid twenties, with dark hair, on the short side, although he made up for that by having a husky build. My father had written that Terry had been late or absent from work, seven times in the past three weeks.

I didn't recognize the other man's name, Steve Lusby, but I didn't know too many of the order pickers by their full names. My father had written that Steve was constantly making mistakes with the order filling. Mistakes like that always cost the company, both in sales, and in our customer goodwill. Additionally, these mistakes made our drivers look bad, and kept them from soliciting new business. When mistakes occurred, they had to spend their time trying to sooth the customers who were adversely affected by the screw ups in their orders.

It was my opinion that Roy should have been out on the loading docks, making certain that the orders pulled were being loaded on the correct trucks, and that what was pulled was what had been ordered. My father hadn't said anything about that part of it, but I made a mental note to ask him about that on the drive home.

"Hi, Roy. My Dad wanted me to come down to tell you about two guys we need to let go." Roy was sitting on his desk in the little open cubbyhole that looked out on the loading dock. He had some papers in his hand that he'd been shuffling through as I approached.

"You mean fired?" He asked me in a tone of voice that told me he wasn't happy. I assumed he just wasn't used to having to fire people. I'd never fired anyone either, but it was my father's decision. All Roy had to do was carry it out.

"Steve Lusby and Terry Klennert. Steve keeps screwing up the delivery orders, and Terry is a chronic absentee and is late all the time when he does manage to come to work."

"Steve has a wife and two kids, and his wife's pregnant again. I can't just go out there and tell him he doesn't have a job anymore. I don't want to get involved in any lay-offs or firings. I have to work with all these guys. If I turn into a hatchet man, they'll resent me." I listened to what he said, but I couldn't believe he'd said it. What did he think a supervisor was supposed to do?

"You can't be a supervisor and not fire people, Roy. That's just part of the job. If you don't tell them, I will, but you can't be a supervisor if I have to do it."

"You gonna fire me too, then?"

"No. You can take one of their jobs as an order puller if you want. It will mean less money for you, but I don't see any other way. If you don't want to do that, I guess you can quit." I liked Roy well enough as a person, and I kind of felt bad for him. Whoever had decided he should be made the supervisor had made a huge mistake. I hoped he would think about his options, and then decide to go back to pulling orders.

"I'm going to file a protest. I didn't do nothing to be fired for. I wasn't absent or late, and I didn't screw up any orders."

"Roy, you're the supervisor. Its your responsibility to see that your people come to work on time, and that they pull orders and load the trucks correctly. You weren't up to the task. You should go back to a job you can handle."

"We'll just see. You might be the boss's son, but that don't mean I have to take my marching orders from you. I'll check with personnel." He walked past me, jumping up off his desk and leaving before I found out which of the order people was Steve Lusby. I went out on the loading dock and asked one of the loaders to point Lusby out to me. He pointed to a guy I knew by sight, someone I had talked with before. He seemed like a nice guy too when we talked, and I started feeling bad about what I needed to do.