Chapter 180

Wednesday started off strange enough. I cooked an early breakfast for my mates, not that that was unusual but the conversation was hilarious. I had slept with Lorrie on Monday and I spent Tuesday night with Vicky - which was always fun - and Lorrie slept with Jenny.

At breakfast there was a lover's spat about Jenny giggling during the night waking Lorrie up several times. Jenny asked why Lorrie kept tickling her stomach. With Marcy in Altoona, Ching Lee had slept with Jenny on Monday night.

Ching Lee piped into the conversation, "I thought I was dreaming with someone laughing in the room Monday night."

After laughing with the others I said, "It's my fault; I rub her stomach in the middle of the night when I'm with her so her stomach does not growl, she always giggles when I do that," as I watched Jenny go back for her third helping of bacon and scrambled eggs. She still had a slice of buttered toast covered with grape jelly on her plate.

Jenny had the day off; there were no trials scheduled on Wednesday. With her new position she could work from home, if need be, unless she had a meeting.

We made our way to the office and started the day with meetings. One of the first things we did was the reorganization of clerks and personal for the security division.

Cindy Shaw was promoted to Security Administrator. The college work load and responsibilities would be divided between her and Mark. Mary Ann Johnson was reassigned from the clerk pool to the security division as clerk. I was going to select another full time accountant for the security division along with a pool clerk but Marcy wanted to hold off on the accountant.

Jean Simmons had been my first choice but Marcy shot that idea down. Jean and Mark were getting to be too close after hours. The golden rule in business is "Do not have lovers or spouses reporting to one another." Marcy recommended Mary Ann and so it was.

If I had known Jean and Mark were an item, there would not have been any play the other night in Warrington, I thought to myself.

Jason and Roseanne were busy writing up the help wanted ads for each college using the Frost Borough ones as the template. They would be posted online and in the local area papers. Then would come the hard work with all the checks and testing, interviews and physicals. The change up this time was that all of it would have to be done somewhere near each college.

Marcy, Mark, Cindy and I spent two hours with Bob and his chief engineer from Bob's Construction. He had a bunch of different blueprints of guard shacks and a few more of small rectangular office buildings.

Bob said, "As for your conversation yesterday. Yes, both could be pre-fabricated, delivered and assembled there. I can get the licenses and permits to do that."

"However, one of my former foreman's parents lives near there. Their health is not good. He left three years ago to go back home to help them. He has a small construction business there. My engineers still draw up plans for him in their free time when he needs something special, and he takes me deer hunting on the state game grounds every year."

"I took the liberty of calling him this morning to answer some of my questions. To help both of us out, he will construct anything we draw up for you. He can use the work and he is telling me that there is a huge temporary labor pool up there with qualified workers when I explained the time frame that it had to be done in. He told me that he would be competitive with my price. His name is Bill Lamar; he is a very good builder."

Marcy, Mark, Cindy I spent another hour with Bob and the maps we had used at our presentation. Bob and his engineer drew out rough prints to carry back with them of where we wanted the fence, guard houses, and office built. On Monday they would fly to Altoona with my group - minus me - and meet with the grounds people and Bill Lamar to finalize the construction. Marcy would carry a contract with a firm completion date for the job.

Cindy, Mark and Mary Ann spent the rest of the afternoon working up prices for a standardized turnkey security office. One of Marcy's accountants that had been assigned the security department expenses helped with the numbers. By the time they had finished a push of a key would print out everything, right down to the key code for the door lock along with the suppliers for every piece.

The week moved on; Wednesday quickly became Thursday and we were boarding the jet again - one of the bigger ones this time – bound for Chemung, NY. A much larger group was going: Cindy, Mark, Mary Ann, Ching Lee, Vicky and I. The plan was to do more cross-training to keep everyone in the loop. We split up into two groups for the tour, met back at the administration building, and combined notes.

We met with their board and sold another security contract. Elmira State College was close to the size of KCC, a nice size, where 25 full-time people and another 20 part-time would do the job. Their present security office would suffice with changes. A meeting with their building manager and a conference call to East Coast put the dates in stone for when our team would be on site.