IN THE MIDST OF ALL THE UNION ACTIVITY Puritan never stopped growing, and I kept moving people and departments around like checkers on a board. To get the lawyers out of my hair (while I still had some), I moved the legal department to a beautiful suite of offices at tony Wayland Square which was nearby. There one of the attorneys told me that his office was one foot shorter than GE standards, and that his neighbour’s was one foot bigger. When he insisted that I have the wall demolished and rebuilt, I looked at him blankly, then walked away laughing. Here I thought that MBAs got testy when a college drop-out outdid them … geez, lawyers!
GECC brought in a whiz kid from Richmond, Virginia, to serve as vice-president of the newly reconfigured Information Services, merging Computer Operations with Systems & Programming. First on his agenda was to bring my Word Processing Centre, my baby, into his fold. Not bloody likely. Before he knew what hit him, I moved his computer operations to an inarguably perfect site just over the city line in Pawtucket. Then I took over that vacated space, and expanded my operations into the entirety of the Doris Building’s ground floor. Perhaps that gave him an idea as to who was in control.
No hard feelings. One night his car was in the shop and I offered him a ride home. He invited me in for a drink. I had two, he had a few. Then that lecherous leprechaun tried to seduce me! I had been sitting on one end of the sofa, and when he pounced on me I sprung up so forcefully that he looked bewildered when he found himself on the floor. Two weeks later I moved him and his programmers to the other half of the Providence-Washington building downtown, adding the rest of the Doris Building’s first floor to my domain. (The last I heard of the horny hobbit, GE had shipped him off to an alcoholic rehab centre to dry out.)
THE ADDITION OF ALL THE SPACE AND STAFF HAD, naturally, precipitated the purchase of a plethora of new furniture, and I was also the Purchasing Agent. For reasons of uniformity, I had established very strict guidelines. The options for workstations, desk, chairs, file cabinets, accessories, etc., were limited. There were only two styles of desks allowed for executives, one style chair, and two colour options. Conference room furniture, the hottest item, was restricted to one style table, two sizes, and one style arm chair, two colours. My ears were deaf to all of the protests, the mumbling and grumbling. Then the day came when the brilliance of my program was revealed.
Preparations for the arrival of Stanger, the President of Puritan’s parent company GECC, were in the making, conference and meeting rooms at the Marriott had already been booked. When I got to work on the Monday morning after the weekend move of the programmers, the day before Stanger’s visit (his first to Puritan), Ralph was waiting in my office. Stanger was not willing to conduct his business off-site at a hotel; he decreed that he would be at the “heart” of Puritan … the Doris Building. Ralph then bestowed upon me the task of converting the space just vacated by Systems & Programming to a conference centre … I had twenty-four hours.
When I walked into that space my first inclination was to cut and run. There was an office in each of the four corners, and the open area that two days earlier had housed over one-hundred employees, was a sea of tangled wires and cables with an armada of “dog houses” (above floor electric outlet boxes) floating on top. Fortunately I had maintained a loyalty with the electrical contractor, and when I called the President of Chabot Electric, he graciously pulled technicians in from other jobs and sent them to Puritan.
While they worked on clearing the floor and installing flush brass outlet covers, Mike Miranda and his crew of two started painting. All inter-location shuttles were cancelled, seats were removed from the passenger vans, and the drivers, each with a helper, were sent out to commandeer all conference tables, chairs, and executive chairs. There is no greater sense of power than pulling the chair out from under a vice-president. That weeny weasel vice-president of Information Services was the first! Next Joe Cain (my recently hired maintenance man) and I went shopping, first to a discount textile outlet where I bought two bolts of fabric.
While everything else was going on, Joe and I worked on covering a wall with pleated panels of alternating off-white and light gold faux-velvet, creating a dramatic backdrop for the dais. Once the painting and electrical work was done, Mike Miranda and his crew moved on to cleaning and shampooing the carpets. The next morning the furniture was all set up, creating a stunning conference centre accommodating fifty, plus eight at the head tables (on matching executive chairs) as well as individual meeting rooms in each of the corner offices. All of the furniture matched, all of the colours coordinated. For the finishing touch, I personally placed a crystal water pitcher, with matching crystal glasses, on each of the tables, along with a crystal bud vase and red rose. Mission accomplished an hour before Stanger’s arrival … it only took me twenty-three hours. Now it was time for payback!
BY THIS TIME MY STAFF HAD TRIPLED, was still growing, and managing such a large operation with only two senior clerks was ridiculous, to say the least. In addition to everything else, the company fleet had increased to ten vehicles, and I was running three continuous shuttles between six different locations ten hours a day. Being that I controlled all of the material aspects of the company, each day was initiation by fire into the nasty politics and back stabbing of the corporate world. To add to the problem, I was scorned because I didn’t have an MBA. On top of that, I was a college drop-out and didn’t have any degree. On top of that, I was openly ‘gay’ and my ‘partner’ was working in the company as well. On top of that, I was an affable, easy-going, friendly, good-looking, nice guy whom everyone liked (well, not everyone!) … who could turn on a dime and be a ruthless son-of-a-bitch when circumstances merited. They were learning not to mess with me, but some were slow learners.
At times it seemed as though sabotaging Lance was the cause celebre. The MBAs believed that the pen was mightier than the sword, and I was forever receiving two and three page memos with copies to 20 or 30 people, most of the time for some egregious malfunction of one of my departments, like a piece of mail being erroneously delivered to Harry, rather than Sally at the next desk. Well, my dear, I am no stranger to the poison pen. I had been at it for years, and was a much better writer than most of those simpering MBAs … Mommy’s Boy Assholes (I just made that up). At first I would respond sarcastically, pointing out that considering the volume of mail we handled, this reprehensible glitch represented somewhere in the vicinity of a 0.000000000000012% error rate.
It didn’t take me long, however, to develop a different approach. I became a master at responding to these lengthy, multi-page diatribes rather succinctly, and in less than three sentences I could completely discredit their complaint, and make them look foolish in the process. Always adding a “PS” advising them that paper, word processing, mail service, etc., were all expenses in my budget, and requesting that they keep their memos to an appropriate length, and only CC those to whom the issue actually pertained, or maybe just pick up the phone. In order to add insult to injury, I’d have that duplicated four times on each piece of paper, then cut, so that the memo actually delivered to the author and the copy recipients, was not thirty or more sheets of 8½” by 11” paper, but thirty 8½” by 2¾” strips of paper!
IT WAS ALL GOOD FUN, for me anyhow, but in truth changes did need to be made in General Services, because what was expected of me and my staff was beyond the pale. So when budget time rolled around, while helping Billy’s brother Bobby shingle the roof of his house, mentally I redesigned General Services, and presented my proposal for the complete overhaul that was needed. It’s bad management to give a person a job, but not the tools needed to get the job done. So I had simply made a list of the “tools” I needed. When I presented this to my boss, namby-pamby Ralph Swenson, he almost had a stroke. He red lined almost everything, and cropped my proposal back to just about where things were beforehand.
This was not a surprise. Ralph was a sweet man, maybe in his late fifties, who had been a vice-president for donkey years, way back to when the company was first started by Connecticut Mutual. He was the only VP who actually survived the GECC takeover, and he was nothing if not tenacious. He was on autopilot, and there was nothing that was going to prevent him from staying put until he was eligible for his pension. NOTHING!!! Least of all a young whippersnapper like myself. Don’t get me wrong, Ralph thought the world of me, but he wasn’t about to make any waves, or to let me do so. He was coasting to retirement and I was blindsided … or maybe not.
The line managers and the operations managers (AKA Junior Vice-Presidents) may have been threatened by me, and behaved accordingly, but most of the vice-presidents liked me, particularly the VP of Finance. It’s not like we were going to be friends, go out after work and kick back a couple of brews, but he respected my intelligence, my integrity, and my ability to get things done. Most likely he was uncomfortable about my ‘orientation’ but I believe that he respected the fact that I was open and honest. This is an interesting point. Of the people at Puritan who were uncomfortable with my ‘orientation’ so to speak, it was not so much that they had a problem with me being ‘gay’ but that I was so open and honest about it. For them, someone being ‘gay’ was not an issue, as long as you kept it to yourself, hid in the closet, and acted ashamed. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Bullshit!
The Vice-President of Finance, Ed Harrington, was a GE man through and through, and the most powerful man in the company. More powerful than the president, who was another coaster like Ralph. Ed called me to his office a few days before my budget meeting (which would be with Ralph, him, and the president) saying he just wanted to get an idea of my plans and projections in advance, so bring my stuff. Mind you, I knew I was not an MBA, and I knew that I was just flying by the seat of my pants, but in a way building an organization was not a lot different from building a house … it’s just putting a bunch of boxes together in a sensible order. I could build a house.
We went over Ralph’s revision of my plan, and Ed started asking hard questions. How are you going to handle this with no supervisors? To whom do those people report? How can you run an organization with more than sixty direct reports? Don’t you need supervisors? Don’t you need managers? He kept at me and at me until I got real pissed, then I sprang like a cougar. There was no turning back. Ed just sat back and grinned while I walked him through my proposal … with a bit of a surly attitude. When I finished he said, Okay, see you at the meeting. I looked confused. He said, Go ahead and present what Ralph approved, I’ll take care of the rest.
AT THAT MEETING WE WENT THROUGH THE SAME RIGMAROLE, and I kept waiting for Ed to give me some support. Instead, he started asking the hard questions. I took the badgering for a little longer than I had in his office—I was loath to circumvent Ralph—but ultimately I got pissed and put forth my real plan. My existing operation consisted of eight departments (in six different locations in the Doris Building), over sixty employees, and only two senior clerks. My plan proposed adding twenty employees, including eight supervisors and two managers. Two of the supervisors and the two managers would report directly to me. Of the remaining six supervisors, three would report to one manager, three to the other. My budget of slightly less than four million a year would be increased to well over six million. It was like walking into the living room on Christmas morning, 1949, and finding my doll house … I got exactly what I wanted. Now you can’t have an empire without an emperor, so I was promoted to Operations Manager, breaking another record in GE’s history.
As soon as approvals came through, I promoted Bob Peron to Supervisor of Mail & Shipping, reporting directly to me. The new and improved, clean and sober, Joe Cain became Supervisor of Office Services, also reporting to me. Joe always credited me with his sobriety, but in truth it was all lucky timing or simply Jesus. He returned to the office early one afternoon completely shit-faced. I could have, I should have, and I would have fired him on the spot any other day … but there was no way I could bring myself to fire him on Christmas Eve. That was his wake-up call. He went to his first AA meeting Christmas Day.
My secretary—a firebrand union activist (and vicious bitch) who hadn’t left after the union‘s defeat—was promoted to Purchasing Agent (the job she had been doing for a while), reporting to one of the new managers. She was smart as a whip and a good worker—I respected her although I didn‘t like her—so with that sly move I made her Robert’s problem, he was the first manager that I hired. He had a strong printing background, so was also in charge of printing and supply, and responsible for promoting/hiring his own supervisors.
PURITAN’S GROWTH CONTINUED UNFETTERED, and the quest began for a location where the entire company could be brought back under one roof. I must give Ralph credit, he found the ideal location. A brand new building in Warwick, with shopping and restaurants nearby. It was ready for occupancy, had plenty of parking, good access to public transportation, more conveniently located for the majority of our employees than any of our current offices, had enough space for our current needs and 30% growth … which wasn’t anticipated, but then again the previous 300% growth hadn’t been anticipated either. There was no question about it; no room for debate, this place was picture perfect. My buddy Ed Harrington shot it down.
He had found some acreage in North Smithfield, and had grandiose ideas about constructing our own building. It was in the middle of nowhere, convenient to nothing. Getting there would be very difficult for the majority of the employees. It was not near any of the freeways, all of the roads were two lanes winding through hills. The closest artery of any size was an old four lane divided roadway more than five miles away, which was the main route between Providence and Woonsocket, and bottlenecked at each end most of the day. There was no public transportation, no shops or restaurants nearby, nothing for miles, nada.
It only had one thing going for it, proximity to Ed’s house. He paid $100,000 for an option to buy, and an additional $20,000 for a feasibility study. When the study came back saying that that location would be a disaster tantamount to the Edsel, he paid $30,000 for another study, which included a lot of aerial photographs, saying that the place was perfect. If not before, there was no question about it then, I was getting a very clear picture as to how corporate America operates. It explained a lot.
By some miracle, while Ed’s plan was going through the channels, the right opportunity presented itself. One of the country’s largest insurance companies had built an absolutely gorgeous campus on a fantastic piece of property in Johnston, Rhode Island. Rolling hills, stands of trees, gardens, beautiful landscaping, water-scaping, it looked like a resort. Lovely dining room (too classy to call a cafeteria), recreation facilities, day care centre, acres of parking, they had thought of everything. Sadly, they had over extended in a particular area of causality insurance, and then got hit with a natural disaster that almost bankrupted them. They survived, but were forced to downsize by about 50%, leaving their stunning complex in Johnston more than half empty … enter Puritan.
AS FAR AS OFFICE FURNITURE WENT, I WAS A MAJOR FAN OF HERMAN MILLER. Why wouldn’t I be? It was a cut way above its competition (Steelcase & All Steel) in quality, design, and innovation. It was, after all, Herman Miller designers Charles and Ray Eames, who created the Eames Chair. A company bursting at the seams attracts a lot of attention, especially from furniture vendors, and the Herman Miller rep invited me for a tour of their operations in Michigan. Five of us were transported to the airport in a stretch limo—the rep, me, my counterparts from two banking institutions (both vice-presidents, I might add), and Rhode Island’s foremost interior designer, whose name escapes me, Bob something I think, so we can call him Bob Designer.
At the airport we were escorted to Herman Miller’s private Leer jet, the interior of which had been completely redecorated with Herman Miller fabrics, woods, and veneers, etc. This was only my 7th time on an airplane, the six previous round-trips to New York and one to Philly, on commercial planes. Consequently, flying all the way to Michigan in a small plane was daunting, but uneventful.
At the airport in Grand Rapids the plane taxied to another stretch limo, where they literally rolled out the red carpet from the plane to the car! Then we were off to the headquarters in Zeeland. It was a delightful and educational day, including a scrumptious luncheon, and while the limo whisked us back to the airport, Bob Designer invited all of us to be his guests at one of Providence’s five star restaurants, which he happened to own (it was rumoured that he had Mafia connections, but it’s Rhode Island, who didn’t?).
We accepted, so upon arrival at the airport in Grand Rapids, he called ahead to have the soft-shell crabs flown in from Chesapeake Bay. Herman Miller’s “old man” as he was called was a devout something, and a teetotaller, so all company functions were dry, as was our lunch. For the return flight, however, the rep had smuggled a few bottles of wine on-board, and the spirits continued to flow freely at the restaurant in Providence, so the latter part of that day’s adventure is a little hazy. Yet I do remember feeling pretty darn special dining with the owner of Providence’s premier restaurant, and my association with Bob Designer didn’t end there.
SINCE LEAVING WOOD STREET, BILLY HAD BEEN ESTRANGED from everyone in his family except his sister Kitty and brother Bobby, and while we were living on Squire Lane his mother died. Despite the issues, I fully expected that we would go to the funeral, but Billy would have no part of it. My concern was for him, not his family … I didn’t want him to have future regrets about not having paid last respects to his mother. At least go to the wake, I pleaded. He told me if I wanted to go I should, but he wouldn’t. Looking for an alternative I called the funeral home, to see if we could arrange a private viewing, and that was no problem. When I presented this option he got very angry, and I didn’t broach the subject again. Bobby was enraged. He understood our reasons for staying away from the family, but Billy not paying last respects to his mother was beyond the pale. Bobby “disowned” him and Billy would never again see his brother Bobby, or sister-in-law Debbie. The only family member who remained in his life was Kitty.
MEANWHILE ON SQUIRE LANE IN EAST PROVIDENCE things were not going so well. Billy announced that he was leaving, and my world fell apart. The trauma of Wood Street, then Fawn Road, the unrelenting pressure at work, now this. I crumbled. Went to bed and stayed there. Diana and Connie, my dear friends from Human Resources, came to my rescue. They got me to the physician that I had gone to for the requisite annual executive physicals (who happened to be ‘gay’), and he set me up with a psychiatrist, Dr Thomas Keller, also a friend of Dorothy (i.e., ‘gay‘), whom I started seeing three times a week.
It felt as though I was bringing Dr Keller a big sack full of pieces that was me, and I needed him to put them back together, because I couldn’t do it anymore. With his counsel and some good drugs, by the end of the second week I could get to his office on my own. By the third week I started riding my bicycle along the bay, without thinking of throwing myself in (well, I thought about it, but I knew I wouldn‘t). A month and I was back at my office, where I closed my door and hid-out as much as I could, which was actually quite a lot. Gradually somehow life returned to me one little step at a time.
Billy hadn’t moved out and I didn’t ask him to, but he had begun living his new “single life” in earnest. That did not make things easier. When I thought I was pulled together enough, I went to Provincetown for a long weekend; took a room at the Atlantic House, the “A” House, right above the loud bar. I couldn’t sleep. I ate junk food sitting on the curb. One or two fellows picked me up, but I was non-responsive. On the way home I stopped at Bobby and Debbie’s. Bobby was aghast at my condition. How can you let him do this to you, he wanted to know, he’s not worth it … he was talking about his own brother, perhaps he knew better than anyone. With their counsel and support a few pieces came together. At the very least, I accepted that Billy and I could not continue living together, he had to leave. Thus fortified, I left for home.
As I walked into our townhouse I was in a state of shock. It seemed surreal. There was a big banner welcoming me home, and a lovely dinner awaiting me. Billy was having second thoughts. He had had a change of heart. He wanted us to try and work things out. He agreed to couples and individual counselling. Oh, okay, I guess. What did I know … I considered it a good day if I could get out of bed. We worked on some material inequities of our relationship. Financially, when he worked he always gave me his pay check, and I gave him whatever he wanted. Now we started to handle our finances individually. That didn’t work too well for him though, because he had become accustomed to living in the manner to which I had made his accustomed. He wasn’t very happy living solely on his own income. We put a bandage on this, a patch on that, we moved along.
NOT LONG AFTER THIS THE HARASSMENT STARTED. We had been on Squire Lane less than a year when two blatantly heterosexual, dangerously homophobic studs moved in next-door. Epithets were written on the walls, “Fucking queers in #2!” and the like. Pizza deliveries, the rescue squad, fire trucks, taxis, etc., were coming to our door at all hours of the night. Wild parties next-door were going on most weekends, all weekend. The back window of my car was smashed, and the inside was covered with potato salad. This was my car, the one that Billy drove, not the company car. Strange that they never touched the company car… we later learned that other neighbours were close friends with two strongly pro-union Puritan employees.
After everything else, then this, it is a good thing I was already in psychotherapy. Once again we were planning our escape. While driving around western Rhode Island, the state’s last frontier, we discovered an idyllic old farm house for rent. It was in the middle of nowhere, seriously. No neighbours for over a mile, and the nearest place to buy bread or milk was eleven miles away. We rented it … Green RFD (ADDRESS #20).
My attorney sent a letter to Squire Lane’s property management, charging them with “effective eviction” and claiming our lease null and void. We never heard anything from them. From Green RFD our commute was forty miles each way, but at least we felt safe. We planned a big open house inviting everyone from Puritan, only Bob Peron and Lorraine (his girlfriend) showed up. We had all this food; we kept begging them to eat more.
THE REUNITING OF PURITAN’S SCATTERED OPERATIONS UNDER ONE ROOF in Johnston was imminent, and there was no way that I was up to the challenge of single handedly orchestrating all of the logistics of that move, and all of the space planning, layout and design, as well as fighting and negotiating with all of the managers and vice-presidents over allotments and allocations. So with a $25,000 retainer, I hired Bob Designer whom I had meet on the trip to Zeeland, and he dove into the project with gusto. Before long we had colourful renderings of stylish conference rooms, exquisite executive suits, cosy employee lounges … all of which made it perfectly clear, to me anyhow, that he was an excellent interior designer, and that he didn’t have the first clue as to what office space planning and layout was all about. Oops! Maybe he wasn’t the right man for the job. Sorry about that.
For Christmas, however, he gave me a gift. When I opened it I was disappointed, almost to the point of insulted. From him I had expected something very nice and classy. It didn’t have to be expensive … but certainly not a wallet in dark brown vinyl. Vinyl no less, it wasn’t even leather, and it had gold coloured asterisks and the initials “LV” all over it. Not even my initials, mine are LE! I threw that cheap thing on the table with the rest of my loot. When some of my gal friends from another department stopped by to check out the gifts I had received, one of them exclaims, “Who gave you Louis Vuitton?!?!“ “Louis who?” “This wallet, who gave you this wallet?” “That piece of crap?” “That’s not crap! I just paid $45 for this key case.” She showed me, it matched the wallet, and it was small. “That wallet goes for well over $100!” “Oh, okay, give it here then.”
No comments:
Post a Comment