consistent, quality work. The engineers I hired for Bill were made well aware of the standards that they would be expected to perform to, and the quality of the finished product that was demanded.
A few days before Kelly and I were to leave, Ted showed up, too – armed with a couple of lawyers and an accountant to help set up the local bank accounts. The majority of the facility money would stay there in the Philippines; only when the funds exceeded a certain amount would a fixed sum be sent to the main accounts in the U.S. Ted met the engineers I'd hired for him, and after talking to them, heartily endorsed my actions.
All six of them were to go to the main plant for two months worth of*intensive* training and familiarization before they came back to start doing their 'real' jobs.
Almost two months after we got back, Bill asked me to make one last trip to supervise the installation of the Instrumentation and Control systems I'd designed. I'd figured it to be a month's work – Marlyn, Ted, and the other people they'd hired surprised me with the quality and motivation of the people I had to work with: I got back home exactly a month after I'd left, and ahead of schedule.
As things fell into place more and more, and people starting taking over their proper jobs from Marlyn, she was able to focus on doing her job – and loving it. There had been some initial complaints about the facility, but she squashed them in short order through the simple expedient of a standing offer to provide guided tours for any group of ten or more. When someone claimed the outflow water from the plant was poisonous, she and Ted filled glasses with it, and drank them – before explaining that the water that left the plant was cleaner than what it took in. When another group complained that children were being hurt by the increase of traffic in and out of the plant, Ted and Marlyn opened the plant clinic to treat anyone in the area. After a minor surge in treatment to the complainers, the clinic quickly returned to it's near-zero activity – safety was highly emphasized.
She and Ted worked very well together, and the employees were delighted with the jobs: they didn't have the back-breaking labor they'd known before, and were paid a more than fair salary. Salaries were quoted in U.S. dollars, but paid in Philippine Pesos at the current market rate.
That one, simple act did more than anything else to make the facility as popular as it was: by keying salaries to a 'hard' currency like the dollar, fluctuations in the Philippine economy were automatically compensated for: a salary increase or promotion actually meant getting
In just a few months of operation, it was running smoothly and efficiently – a situation that it maintained for many, many years.
That all happened several years ago. I had to go back once to supervise a slightly complex upgrade to their systems; Kelly went with me, of course.
A few months after the plant got going, Ted and Marlyn were a Couple. A couple years after that, they were married – with Ted adopting Marilyn as his own before he and Marlyn had their own son, named Daniel for some strange reason. Ted still lives there, running the plant; he hasn't expressed any desire to return to the U.S. – he's simply too happy where he is. Gus was gone from Bill's company before the year ended – pretty much to everyone's relief, I think.
Marilyn finished high school, and is attending college here in the States. The college was initially a little hesitant about accepting her, but handwritten letters of recommendation from not one, but two Bishops, the owner of a major business, and an independent engineer convinced them she was a good risk. She's majoring in economics, with a minor in political science. She's got definite plans about returning to the Philippines and eventually running for government office – after she uses her education to help the people there, first.
Kelly and I walked away from the whole thing with a check from Bill in the amount of $925,000 – and a nice chunk of stock in his company. That assured us of enough retirement cushion that we finally agreed to Bishop Ferguson's request that we teach at the high school. It's only one class, each, per week – but they seem to be pretty popular classes, and the Bishop is happy.
Bill's company has grown, of course. Even with all Ted and Marlyn have done to keep the plant popular there, it's still a lot more efficient and profitable for him to manufacture there than here – but he's keeping his plants here open and running, too. Like I told Marlyn, he*does* take care of his people.
Kelly isn't an engineer by training, but she's picked up a lot. I still have to come up with the initial design, but she's quite capable of taking anything I give her and running with it. She even came up with a way of mathematically modeling the designs, to try and find potential troubles and determine the system's reliability. She tested it against one of my early designs, and almost matched what I'd experienced with it, point for point. She's going to save me – us! – a lot of money and trouble.
Me? I'm still trying to figure out how I got this lucky.
