Chapter 5

I went in to work with my Dad on Wednesday. I sat up front, and talked to him about this latest development with Shirley. I didn't say anything about Ellen's suicide attempt, just that she was upset about some personal things, and that Shirley wanted me to take her out on a few dates to try and cheer her up. I tried explaining how it really bothered me about Shirley being willing to lend me to Ellen like that.

"Kenny, women think differently than men do. You shouldn't make assumptions that you know what they mean when they say or do things. To Shirley, this might seem perfectly reasonable. All she is thinking about is helping her friend."

"I'm her friend too, and it wouldn't help me. I would never loan her to a friend of mine." My father was trying his best, but I really wished that Uncle Bunny was still around to listen to my side of things, and then tell me what some of my options were. I had relied on him for things like this. I finally stopped talking about my problem and sat quietly, reading over the list that Dad had handed me earlier. Item number one surprised me.

It was all printed in capital letters: FIND A REPLACEMENT FOR SHIRLEY, SOMEONE TO BE YOUR NEW ASSISTANT. I looked over at my father. "You want me to hire someone else to work with me?"

"Kenny, if you learning to delegate was the real primary reason for hiring Shirley, then, yes, it makes sense to replace her with another assistant. If you simply wanted to have your girlfriend close to you for the summer, then, no, you don't really need a new assistant."

"I'll find someone today. There's this girl over in accounting that just started there. Maybe I'll ask her if she'd like to transfer over to be my assistant. It will only be for a couple of months, then she can go back to accounting."

"Don't step on anyone's toes. Go to her supervisor first, and ask her if it would be okay. Tell her it would only be for the summer. I don't want anything disrupted for this. We can go outside and hire someone temporarily, if necessary.

I was up in my office by eight o'clock. I called down to Edith to let her know that I was heading down to the loading docks for awhile, just in case anyone needed to get in touch with me.

Cee Cee was already making changes in how order tickets were being pulled. Instead of having each ticket pulled by a single picker, she had broken the ticket down into three or four smaller parts. Once the order was pulled and assembled, two of the pickers went over it to make sure everything was correct. Cee Cee was making her own specialists for the bulk of the order pulling.

My first thought was it would be slower and less efficient this way, but then I saw how quickly the different parts of the ticket were being picked and brought over to be assembled as an order. There was less wasted motion, and I could see that having two people checking that the order was correct would help to cut down on mistakes. Cee Cee took me over to where she had started assembling finished orders for later loading. Someone had painted numbers in ten foot by ten foot squares. The numbers corresponded to the delivery truck numbers, and all the loaders had to do was find out which truck was in the loading bay and then go over and take the pulled orders from the assembly point. The loaders then handled the loading, while each order being loaded was being rechecked by one of the two people who had worked on the order ticket at the original picker assembly point. I asked Cee Cee why she had made some people only loaders, and others only pickers. Before, everyone had been a picker/loader.

"Some people are good workers, like that Steve boy you fired, but they can't be good pickers, 'cause they aren't careful. Some of the pickers are good at picking, but they aren't very good at loading. The ones I use for checking and loading, they are good at both. It didn't make sense to me to not put people to work doing what they do best. In a couple weeks, after we weed out the ones that can't do nothing good, this department will be running a lot better. Right now, I'm seeing more ways to cut down on mistakes. I have my people signing off on the picking ticket and the loading ticket now. We'll be able to tell pretty quick if mistakes are being made."

"What about that trouble you said might happen?"

"I haven't let anybody go yet, but I'm fixing to fire two people right now. I was waiting for you to get here before I did it. See those two sitting in the break room there? They been in there for half an hour already. I can't get any work out of them anyway, so I don't see where firing them is going to slow my line down at all. I want to let them go, and call in two people I know I can use right away."

"Its your call Cee Cee. You didn't need to wait for me to be here to do what you think is best."

"One of the people I'm replacing these two with is my son. I know he can do the job, and he sure needs to get some work too. I promise you that he'll be one of the best workers we have down here."

"How about the other one?"

"Don't know him that good, but he has a lot of good experience operating a forklift. We got two forklifts that nobody's using now, and about five hundred pallets sitting out in the back, going to waste. I want to start moving orders from the staging area over there, to the trucks by using forklifts and pallets. Now, we keep everything on the picking carts. When the loading starts, we always run out of picking carts, and have people standing around waiting for carts to get free so they can get back to pulling new order tickets. It really slows up the picking when we had to do it like that. I'm going to have pickers take the carts to the staging area, then use the loaders pull the orders off the carts and onto the pallets. Loaders don't have much to do early now, not until the delivery vans get back and need to be loaded. This would keep them busy, and make sure we don't run out of picking carts."

"I don't see how that speeds things up, but you know more about it than I ever will. You want to fire them right now?"

"I wanted to fire them the minute you told me I was the new supervisor. You want to watch me do it?"

"Have you ever fired someone before?"

"My two husbands. Fired both of them." Cee Cee laughed. Her laugh was a deep rumble inside her throat. I could see that she was looking forward to firing those two men. I smiled at her and watched as she made her way over to the break room. She didn't pause or hesitate in any way. I stayed about three strides behind her. She went right in and stood by the table the two men were sitting at. Both were drinking Cokes and smoking cigarettes. The looked at her when she stood by them, but then they went right back to their conversation, ignoring her.

"Did either of you plan on doing any work today, or are you going to stay on break until you clock out for the day?" One of the men looked up at her and spoke.

"We just now sat down here. We'll get back to work when our break is over."

"Thats a lie. You two been in here for more than forty minutes. I've been watching you the whole time."

"Prove it!" This was from the other man. He was a sandy haired picker that I had spoken with several times, usually when he was in talking to Roy in the supervisor's office. His name was Danny.

"Don't have to prove nothing. Both of you are fired. You need to clock out and bring me your time cards." Cee Cee still didn't appear like any of this was fazing her in the slightest.

"Who says we're fired? I don't see no supervisor here. I told you we just got started on our break. Leave us alone until we're back on the clock again." This was from the first man who'd spoken. He was younger than Danny was, perhaps twenty one or two years old. From the tone of his voice, he didn't respect Cee Cee at all, or recognize her authority over him. Cee Cee smiled then and walked back out of the break room and went over to the time clock. I saw her searching through the time cards, finally reaching in to remove their two cards from their filing area. I watched her as she carefully placed them in the clock, stamping the time of check out on them. She came over and handed both cards to me.

"I'm going to go over and call my son and that other man. You can run these up to wherever they need to go so that they close the books on those two. I'll have both their asses out of here by the time you get back."

"Cee Cee, get a couple of the loaders to stand by just in case those two give you some trouble."

"Shit! Those boys in there aren't going to give Cee Cee no trouble. When I fired my husbands, I dragged their asses out of my house and told them they better not come back. They didn't neither. Those boys start something with me, they'll wish they never was born. You go do what I told you, boy. You let Cee Cee worry about getting those two out of here. I'm looking forward to it."

I did what she told me, not without a lot of doubts and worry, but when I got back from personnel, the two men were nowhere to be seen, and Cee Cee was over talking to a group of about five order pickers. She didn't look concerned or upset, and she didn't look like she'd been having any trouble at all. I left the loading area, going back up to my office.

When I got there, I looked through the connecting door, which was open, and saw that Ellen was sitting at Shirley's desk. She looked very nervous when I first saw her. I went over to the open doorway.

"Hello, Ellen. How are you feeling?"

"Are you going to say anything about what Shirley told you happened over at her house? To my mom I mean."

"No. It isn't something that I need to get involved in. It didn't happen here at work. I hope you're feeling better. That was not the smartest thing you ever did. I hate to think of how your mom would have taken it if you had succeeded."

"I know. I've thought of that too. I don't think she could take it if I did it, not after Bernice and all. I did it mostly on impulse, because of what that damn Earl pulled. You know the funny part? She didn't get that upset when he dumped her. She told me she liked the attention he was paying her, but that she already knew that Earl wasn't someone that would end up being special to her. I didn't come here to talk about me or my mom though. Why are you being so mean to Shirley? Just because she missed a couple days of work? Now she's all upset and crying worse than I was. She really loves you, Kenny, and you haven't treated her very nice."

I didn't know what Shirley had told Ellen, so I wasn't really sure how to respond.

"What did your mom say about you missing two days of work?"

"Just that I won't get paid, and that she was disappointed in me. What else could she say? She's not really my boss, you are."

"She better be your boss, Ellen. If I was your direct supervisor, I might have been a lot stronger in what I told you than she apparently was. You have a big future with this company, but not if you continue doing stupid things, or if you can't be relied on. You need to come to work when you're supposed to. I think this time we can say these were two sick days though. Is there anything else?"

"Who are you going to get to replace Shirley, as your assistant?"

"I think I'll use this new girl in accounting, why?"

"I wanted you to give Shirley's job to me. She said I should ask you. I could go back to the order desk when you go back to school, and mom says she doesn't really need me right now, if you want me to work with you."

I don't think that would be a good idea. I don't want to leave the order desk short handed. In spite of what your mom told you, she really does need you down there. I wonder why Shirley seems so determined to throw the two of us together, Ellen. Have you two talked about that?" I saw Ellen blushing. I had been pretty sure that Shirley had to have discussed her idea with Ellen before she proposed it to me. "I didn't like some of the things that Shirley wanted me to do. That's why we're fighting. I love her, Ellen, and I don't have any desire to risk what we have by dating someone else."

"She told me what you said. She told me that if we worked together, it was almost like what she had asked you to do, but without the kissing, or any of the other stuff."

"You're asking me to go against my own beliefs, to do something I'm not comfortable doing. I want you to be happy, and to feel better about your life, Ellen, but not by having me be your pretend boyfriend. Shirley was only thinking about you, and what might make you feel better. She never thought about how this might change what she and I had together. Just telling me what she wanted ended up hurting our relationship. She put your friendship ahead of what I thought we had together. That hurt me."

"I told her you wouldn't go for it, but I don't see why I can't take over Shirley's job. She told me to tell you that she wanted you to hire me for it, and to tell you that she thought I'd do a better job than she could. I would do a good job too. You know how good I am on the phones, Kenny. Let me try her job for a week, and you can send me back to the order desk if I don't do a really good job here."