Chapter 3
Monday morning brought James an anemic sunrise and the chance to clean out the marketing department clutter. One of the old men who held court at the corner table at The Diner met him at the second-floor elevator. Today he “dressed to impress” in a blue suit fashionable last decade and a wide tie that should never have been in style.
“Walter McKenna, in case you forgot. That first week was a bit hectic.”
James didn’t bother to introduce himself, but accepted the hand offered to him. The old man had a firm handshake that belied his wrinkled, frail look. Confident men were harder to fire, but this guy made a good candidate for early retirement.
“We’re a bit of a maze. My office is in the back.” Walter led him through a large well-lit room filled with drafting tables, oversized computer screens and foul-smelling machinery. He pointed out staff members with names not worth remembering until he figured out who, if any, were worth keeping on payroll.
“You have a lot of expensive equipment in here.”
“We produce all our marketing in-house. We’ve won several national awards.” Walter gestured to a spot on the wall above a printer as large as a car. Four plaques graced the space, but between the high gloss of varnish and smallness of the awards, the dates were unreadable. They looked ancient anyway. Nobody did wooden plaques anymore.
Upon entering Walter’s office, the massive amount of personal clutter set off warning bells inside James’s head. The other higher ups he’d met in this company shared Walter’s need to display artifacts from their life outside of the workplace. Even the supervisors kept photos and junk in the shared office off the hardhat area. In his mind, that was a strike against them, all of them. If they disliked being at work so much that they piled up stuff to pretend they were somewhere else, then perhaps they should be somewhere else. One of the secretaries cried while packing up her stuff, the one given early retirement. She should have been grateful to spend more time with the people and not photos.
James shook his head. Adena seemed full of nostalgic employees, who displayed photos of kids, dogs, sloppy art, houses and tractors instead of work charts, calendars and contact lists. Walter’s obsession appeared to be trains.
Each bookshelf held the expected out-of-date textbooks, technical manuals and reports in three-ring binders, but each also displayed a train engine, with or without accompanying cars. Some said Adena on the side, likely an overpriced premium from yesteryear. Most walls had windows overlooking his staff, but the solid wall was cluttered top to bottom with oversized various posters and photographs of toy trains, some stamped with the year and company name, like they’d been promotional. He recognized Walter with varying amounts of hair, standing beside a large model train display, sometimes giving a thumbs up, sometimes dressed like an engineer, but always with a goofy grin. Grow up.
The blonde from the diner appeared in a couple. In one, she stood all the way to the right of a group of five old men. Unlike the men who looked at the camera, she seemed to have a secret smile for something off camera. In another, one of those where Walter had more hair, a younger, teenaged version of her scowled from the center of the pic. Her hair wasn’t always blue. He should ask about her, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to find out she was his employee’s daughter. That would be awkward when he fired the guy. Besides, that might get him talking about those stupid trains and he refused to be derailed into that conversation. He had too much to do. He needed to cut more payroll before his one-month check-in, and promotion was easy to outsource.
Fifteen minutes into the butt-numbing conversation, James admitted to himself that some spot in Walter’s brain escaped choo-choo land and understood business.
“I’ve been around long enough to have survived other lean times. I know what works and what doesn’t. I’ve reduced expenditures by twelve percent over the last two years.”
“You certainly didn’t waste any of that savings on seating.” The chairs looked like something from a mod TV set, but the low back plastic was not comfortable.
“Don’t complain about the chairs. Original Eames from the 1950s, according to my daughter-in-law who cares about such things. More to the point, they still work, so why spend money on replacements?”
“So where did you make cuts?”
“Paper quality. We moved away from high gloss and thick paper. We also stopped hiring prop planes for aerial photography and switched to drones. Even with the equipment expense and a full-timer who understands those things, we saved a bundle on airplane maintenance.”
“It’s a good start.” James drummed his fingers on the leather portfolio on his lap and tried to find something to focus on that wasn’t overgrown nose-hair or a tiny train. Walter had to be close to retirement age. He might be a good candidate for a buy-out, even if he had some know-how.
“How large is your staff?”
“I have thirteen full-timers, one part-timer, and currently one intern getting college credit.”
“Do you pay the intern?”
Walter nodded, the jowls under his neck squishing like an accordion. Way too much fat existed in this department. If Walter retired, he could downgrade V.P of Marketing to Director of Marketing and promote someone from within that might manage a small in-house staff of two or three and hire outsiders when necessary. Whoever bought Adena out could sort through those long-term details. Marketing was marketing, no matter the business, only the end product differed. Although did consumers really have much of a choice when it came to picking a utility company?
“Who
