Day 68 - Betrayal

          I fired off another eight résumés today complete with tailored cover letters. I think it’s cool how the job boards make the process easy once you’re properly set up. On the flip side, they make it easy for everyone so it’s harder and harder to stand out, especially in the midst of the huge crowd of folks now looking for work.

*****

          Things weren’t nearly so easy for a job seeker when I began to feel that I’d reached the end of my rope at Quilnutz. Back then everything was still intensely manual and cumbersome, and I was working so hard and under such duress that I just didn’t have the energy to look for a better situation. I was pretty much on my own. Ivan had fired Henry over an alleged breach of fiscal rectitude that was both smaller and less obvious than Ivan’s own trespasses. With Henry gone, Ivan shipped Mike off to Florida, and I suddenly found myself fighting battles on multiple fronts without allies. It was a bleak time.

          Henry’s undoing was interesting in a way. He was sucker punched by the one person who should have had his back. That was his supposed mistress, let’s call her Penny. I don’t know if Henry and Penny were engaged in an affair or not. Most everyone thought they were, including Henry’s daughter and probably, eventually at least, his wife. Penny certainly acted as if they were because she took every opportunity to throw her weight around as if it were Henry’s own—so much so that everyone came to take her excesses at face value. I confronted Henry about it once. I told him it didn’t matter to me one way or the other, but it sure was creating problems among the troops and he ought to consider cooling his jets. “When would I ever find time to screw that broad?” is what he said to me. I never brought it up again.

          Penny had been a payroll clerk in the company that Henry bought out of bankruptcy. When they shut their doors, she found herself relegated back to housewife status in rural Arkansas—not a happy circumstance for a woman with Penny’s aspirations. When Henry sent me out to Arkansas to get the plant ready to open again she was one of the first in line to get her job back. I made her an offer that I thought was fair based on the prevailing rates for clerical help, and Henry promptly cut it in half. She was happy to get that. I thought she must be just that desperate to get out of the house. I didn’t know that she was an expert practitioner of the dark arts, and that just getting her foot in the door was the moral equivalent to her of securing a fingernail paring or a lock of hair.

          We weren’t even open before Penny was promoted out of the payroll clerk position to become Henry’s personal assistant. The rest of her days with us, and subsequently with Quilnutz, were spent solidifying and fortifying her position. With Henry’s company that meant hanging onto Henry’s coattails, whatever that took. All her considerable power was derived from Henry and wielded in his name. At first Henry’s wife was a champion of Penny’s ascendancy. They were great chums. They went everywhere and did everything together—when Penny wasn’t busy ministering to Henry’s needs that is. As Penny’s hold on Henry increased, his wife began to fade into the background. Some of the newer customers even thought that Penny was the wife.

          Henry’s wife, let’s call her Pam, took most of this in stride. She’d been with Henry a long time and weathered all his storms and put up with all his shenanigans. She was content it seemed to let Penny play on center stage because she knew that whatever else may happen Henry owed her for her past loyalty and even a witch like Penny wasn’t going to upset that dynamic. She did have a breaking point though, and I was there to witness when she reached it.

          A crowd of us were out to dinner one night—Henry holding court in his usual flamboyant style. His wife was there, Penny, me, my wife, several other couples, most of them customers. When desert was served Penny began loading bites of chocolate cake from her plate onto her fork and feeding them into Henry’s mouth. It was a shockingly personal and intimate display—completely inappropriate in that or any other context. Jaws dropped all around the table. Glances were exchanged.

Henry’s wife’s usually placid and softly smiling face turned to granite. Her eyes glowed like mica fire-screens. You could see the flames licking up the inside of her skull. She was never the same after. Two years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s had a mastectomy and been through three courses of radiation and chemotherapy already with another to come. I’m sure that she is dying, although no one will say that. I think it was that chocolate cake that killed her.

After Quilnutz bought us out and Henry’s star began to fade, Penny suddenly needed to hitch her wagon someplace else. With Ivan showing no interest in women at all and Fische rooting around in Alicia’s garden, Penny had to get creative. The first thing she had to do was disassociate herself from Henry. At least she’d have a chance on her own. Still attached to his hip she would be consumed in the flameout. At some point it must have occurred to her that if she could be the author of Henry’s undoing she would not only disassociate from Henry but demonstrate her loyalty to Quilnutz and to Ivan in the bargain. Once she’d figured that out she dipped Henry directly into the grease and danced around the sizzle.

It was as thorough and awesome a betrayal as I have ever seen. It eclipses anything that’s ever been done to me and I’ve been the victim of some doozies. What was alleged was that Henry was getting some money directly from customers on deals he was booking for Quilnutz at shows—knocking down cash, always one of his favorite tricks. Trouble was he’d already been warned about it and he knew Ivan was watching him like a hawk. I would have thought that he’d be more careful, but then Henry was always happiest when he was cheating someone. The more Ivan pressed him the more likely Henry was to cave in to his instincts. Cheating Ivan under Ivan’s nose would have been an altogether irresistible proposition to Henry. The mere suggestion that he try it would have been entrapment to his greedy soul.

I don’t know what part Penny had to play in all this. I know that she bore witness against him, and that was enough to undo Henry and cement her position at Quilnutz. Whether she urged Henry to do it, whether she made the whole thing up and Henry was actually innocent, I couldn’t say. Either is possible, but in all probability neither would have been necessary. In the grand scheme of things what happened to Henry was just Karma. For the rest of us life went on. The difference for me was that I was out of players who shared my interests and my fortunes. I was alone in a dark and scary place.

Day 62 - Beautiful Sheet Metal and Curves in the Road

          I went to visit another recruiter today. This one was way over on the west end of town. She indicated on the phone that she had a controller position open so I agreed to see her today. When I got there something seemed amiss right off the bat. First of all I had to fill out an application and some other paperwork before I sat down with the recruiter. They already had all the information they asked for on my résumé so I was a little confused about why they needed to capture it again in a different format. Still I’d already driven all the way across town so I filled out forms without complaint. The other thing that seemed off was that there was quite a parade of candidates going through the reception area, all filling out packets like me, all with appointments at the same time, and all very obviously applying for clerical rather than executive positions.

          When I finally got in to see the recruiter who had called me I found that she didn’t even have a cubicle. Her desk was in the midst of an army of recruiters in a large open space. I sat in a chair next to her desk. Every other place I have been I was at least taken to a conference room for the interview. This was a high volume operation with, as it turned out, low paying positions to offer. The recruiter was happy to tell me that I had excellent credentials and experience and she was sure that she could place me in one of a number of positions they were trying to fill. She then gave me the salary range of the position she was actively working. It was less that a third of what I made last year. I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Another colossal waste of my time! What the hell was going on?

          One good thing about this particular appointment—the only good thing—was that the recruiter’s office was right next door to an Aston Martin dealership. I love Aston Martins. I think they are among the most beautiful cars built today. The DB9 model that I would most like to own comes in at around $170,000. Stopping to gaze at the graceful sheet metal and opulent colors was a bittersweet moment. I’m unemployed. If I don’t get something cooking in my job search within a couple of months I’m going to be homeless. Maybe then I’ll be able to run out into the street at stoplights and occasionally polish the windshield of an Aston Martin with a filthy rag while the owner yells obscenities at me from behind the leather clad steering wheel—something to look forward to, huh?

*****

          I got a strange e-mail from an anonymous source while Alicia was off in Florida with Fische. The gist of the e-mail was that Fische had been bragging around the water cooler that, in his opinion, Alicia could be had if a fellow played his cards right. The sender of the e-mail was concerned that Alicia was about to become the victim of blatant sexual harassment and that Fische was exposing the company to a lawsuit.

          There were a number of other employees from our Arkansas facility who also had gone to the open house, mostly sales people and technicians from our service department. These folks came back with stories that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Chief among these was that Alicia had been seen leaving the open house in Fische’s car with her feet sticking out the passenger side window. There was a lot of speculation about how far that particular posture had caused her skirt to ride up and how much of her nether delights were thus exposed to Fische’s view. Another story was that Fische had been seen leaving her hotel room early in the morning wearing the clothes he had been wearing the previous day. Either Fische had been correct in his assessment of Alicia’s availability or Alicia had been an enthusiastic participant in the tryst—seen by her as an essential component of her new career path. This was all new territory for me, certainly not the kind of thing they teach you in business school. Oh how I wish that they had.

Day 40 - Sport Philandering

          The Cipro doesn’t seem to be having any effect on my infection. I developed a fever over the weekend that hasn’t been diminished at all by the antibiotic. I’ve been in and out of bed all day, napping, pissing, pushing fluids, taking pills. I don’t know why I have to keep dreaming fitfully of work. It seems unfair, now that I’m out of work, to have to keep suffering the indignities and hassles of being at work in my dreams. Why can’t I dream of idyllic tropical islands, graceful sloops, leaping fish, soaring birds, exotic women? I’ve heard that you can actually program yourself to dream of specific things. I made a mental note to myself to study how to do that once I am drug free enough to focus on a topic for more than 15 seconds at a time. Now that I’ve recorded it here it is no longer a mental note is it? A mental note is like Samuel Goldwyn’s infamous verbal contract—‘not worth the paper it’s written on.’ Meanwhile Henry and his antics occupy more of my time now than they did when I was working for him.

          In addition to being a cheat in business, Henry was a cheat at golf and a cheat in his marriage. He was famous for parking his golf cart between himself and the rest of his party and improving his lie by whatever means came easily to hand, usually his foot. It became known as ‘Henry’s foot wedge’ among his familiars. Another irony—Henry was full of them—is that he was actually a pretty good golfer. He didn’t need to cheat, but he couldn’t resist the temptation. After years in his employ I came to realize that Henry was happiest when he thought he was putting one over on someone. He could often expect to get the exact same outcome in a situation by cheating or not cheating, but when he cheated he felt better about himself and his innate shrewdness.

          He didn’t need to cheat on his wife either, not that I’m suggesting anyone does. It’s just that it’s possible to imagine a marriage so cold and loveless that a man (or woman) would seek solace in the arms of someone other than their wedded spouse. Contrary to this vague imagining, Henry’s wife was a lovely, charming, warm, and loyal woman who worshipped him in spite of his many faults. He could not have done better in any universe familiar to me.

Still he was an incorrigible philandering dog—incapable of any kind of faithfulness. It’s not as if he was faced with difficult temptations. It’s not as if comely and affectionate women were throwing themselves at him willy-nilly, overwhelming him with irresistible enchantment. No, Henry was a runner, a chaser, a hound of heroic proportions. Henry would pursue any woman that crossed his path. It mattered not whether they were attractive, beguiling, refined, friendly, or even available. All that mattered was what Henry thought he could get away with.

It often surprised me how unattractive the targets of Henry’s intentions could be and still hold some fascination for him. He once asked a pair of 200 pound lesbians in dirty jeans and flannel shirts to flash him their breasts. He flirted or propositioned women of every station and situation from scullery help to executive, from jailbird to officer of the court. He hit on waitresses, flight attendants, gate agents, secretaries, hostesses, sales clerks, machinists, loan officers, realtors, maids, nurses, welders, accountants, and machinists. He did not seem to care if he failed in the attempt, which often was the case. Rather he would be emboldened and enlivened by a rebuff. When he did succeed it often cost him more than he bargained for.

Once, when his wife was out of town, he took a group of employees out to dinner and then to his house for an evening of serious drinking. This was the same house that my wife later sold for him. It was an $850,000 waterfront showcase that had been built by an architect designer. It was a stunning piece of work and sure to impress the gaggle of factory workers that he had in tow on this particular evening. I wasn’t there so I don’t know what all ensued or even who ended up with whom or how. What I do know is that soon after this little soiree Henry apparently felt compelled to give one of the young women who’d been in the group a brand new, candy-apple red Ford F-150 pick-up truck, complete with leather seats and a bed liner. The ‘gift’ and the circumstances under which it was given were the subject of a great deal of speculation on the plant floor for months to come.

On another instance Henry found himself drawn to the company receptionist who sat behind a high counter at the front door to the plant. He walked up to the counter, pulled out a wad of currency, and began peeling off twenties one at a time, lining them up along the countertop.

“Let me know when I’ve counted off enough,” he said.

“Enough for what?” asked the receptionist.

“For me and you to run off and have ourselves a nooner,” Henry replied.

This particular affront on propriety, manners, sensibility, sensitivity, and good sense lay dormant for two years, seething and festering in the receptionist’s injured heart until she got herself a boyfriend with whom she wanted to buy a house. Then it manifested in the form of a letter, addressed to the company and delivered to me, from the receptionist’s new attorney. The lawyer felt that $40,000 was a sum sufficient to redress the insult. Henry’s attorney, apprised of the circumstances, thought that was cheap.

Day 8 - Funny Business

          Simpson showed up this morning from Kentucky. He actually let me know he was coming, which is kind of unusual for him. Ron likes springing a big surprise. I think he secretly hopes that he will find someone doing something they shouldn’t if he catches them off guard. He’s here to go through the closing with me so he can help my replacement should the replacement turn out not to be a quick study. I imagine that Fritz also wants Ron to do a read on me to make sure I’m not going to throw them a knuckleball or a spitter. I’ve never done anything to suggest to them that they shouldn’t trust me, so I’m beginning to think that they think that they have done something so heinous to me that I will completely change character and launch a personal vendetta. They don’t have any idea how happy I am to be shed of them. I’m not going to say anything. I don’t want them to get the idea that they can take the severance away and I’d still stay happily gone. I may be trustworthy, but I’m not above taking advantage of what little leverage comes my way.

          Parts of this were confirmed when Ron called Fritz from my office to report in. “He seems okay,” he said to Fritz at one point in their conversation.

          “Fritz checking up on my attitude?” I asked when Ron hung up.

          “Yeah. He wanted me to take your temperature.”

          I thought of a rectal thermometer as soon as he said this, mostly because that image fits the new elevated esteem that I have for these bozos. I didn’t say anything about this of course. I was the very picture of maturity and judiciousness.

          “How’s he doing finding my replacement?” I asked.

          “I don’t know.”

          Ron seemed a little deflated to have to admit this. Ron likes to let you know that he is in the know, so it would follow that he’s not that happy with not being in the know. When he brightened suddenly and broke into a conspiratorial grin, I knew that he was about to share something with me that he shouldn’t in order to make up for not knowing how Fritz is fairing with my replacement.

          “I don’t think Fritz has gotten over the first guy turning him down,” he said.

          “Oh, really?”

          “Really. Do you know that the guy took another job for less money than we were offering?”

          “Oh, really? The guy said that?”

          “No, but his recruiter did…and do you know why?”

          “I can’t imagine.”

          “He said the guy talked to Fritz for an hour and a half in the interview, and Fritz never said one thing to convince him that this was a good place to work.”

          “He took less money because of that?”

          “Well according to the recruiter it wasn’t so much that Fritz couldn’t convince him. It was more like he didn’t even try.”

          “Why am I not surprised?” I asked.

          Ron nodded his head. I thought that if I could show Fritz a video of this conversation between Simpson and me, Simpson would be training his own replacement in pretty short order. This was a way more gratifying image for me than the rectal thermometer.

*****

          The proximal cause of my getting fired was someone else’s marital infidelity. That’s how I read it. It’s rather more complicated than that, but that’s where it all began for me.

One fine night in July, Threasher, the corporate human resources director in Kentucky got a phone call from a woman who lives in Nebraska. She related that her common law husband worked for a maintenance and cleaning services company that had contracted with our company to clean our buildings and provide other maintenance and repair services at our facility in Omaha. She went on to say that this man had been stealing materials from our facilities and storing them in a warehouse leased for that purpose. She said that he had confided to her that he now had over $100,000 worth of our inventory stored there. Then, even more remarkably, she went on to say that the director of maintenance and facilities at the Omaha location had full knowledge of these alleged facts.

Threasher was curious as to why the woman had called him with these revelations. She told him that her common law husband, the alleged thief and ware-houser of stolen property, had confessed to her that he had a girlfriend who was now pregnant with his child. Incensed at this betrayal, she had decided to gain retribution by revealing his ill-gotten gain to the management of the company he had bilked. Why she chose Threasher in Kentucky rather than Bill in Omaha, and how she had got Threasher’s phone number remains a mystery to me, but these revelations were the beginning of the end, in quite short order, for the head of maintenance, and eventually, months later, for me.

Threasher called Bill. Bill called the maintenance guy. They met at the office in the dark of night, and Bill commenced an interrogation that, after a series of missteps, deceptions, lies, catchings-in-lies, and subsequent revelations, disclosed really only one pertinent fact.  The maintenance guy (let’s call him Larry) was in fact the owner of the company that had contracted with our company to clean the buildings—the company that employed the errant common law husband on whom the deceived common law wife had ostensibly blown the whistle. This of course represented a serious conflict of interest and was in fact strictly forbidden by company policy.

There was no admission at this time (nor would there ever be) of any thievery, or of the warehousing of stolen property, or of any knowledge of the same. Bill asked for and received the maintenance guy’s resignation, effective immediately. Gina, the local HR manager came in to prepare the necessary paperwork into the wee hours of the morning.

This is the state of affairs that confronted me the following morning. Bill caught me in the hallway and shepherded me into his office while I was on my way, lunch bag in hand, to mine. He laid out the whole sordid story from beginning to end. He wanted me to immediately launch a full scale accounting investigation into every transaction that had Larry’s fingerprints all the way back to his date of hire, which, thankfully, had not been but 8 months or so before. As it turned out, and unbeknownst to me at the time, this was like handing me a shovel and asking me to dig my own grave.

Now I have to say at this point that Larry’s conduct, his modus operandi, had ever been a source of suspicion for me. He spent money like it was water, and his guiding philosophy seemed to be it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. The problem was that Larry never had much trouble getting either—forgiveness or permission. It seemed to me that he was given pretty much a free hand to get our facilities up to snuff. There were certainly a lot of things that needed to be addressed, and Larry was no slacker when it came to getting things done.

In addition to several buildings that were in considerable disrepair and equipment that was constantly breaking down and causing stoppages in production, the company was also trying to implement a lean manufacturing initiative. They had earmarked a prodigious sum of money to upgrade facilities and to improve and rearrange machinery to eliminate waste—the main focus of a lean implementation. Larry worked hand in hand with the vice president of operations (let’s call him Juan) to make this happen.

Now besides suffering from years of more or less benign neglect our facilities had been built and structured to purpose on the cheap and in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion. The result was electrical and plumbing systems that were not up to code and did not support the volume of work they were being asked to perform. All this had to be fixed. It would have been a good idea to fix these things anyway, but in a lean environment, where downtime and wasted motion are mortal sins, these fixes became critical tasks.

Larry was in some respects the perfect guy to do this because he didn’t let anything get in his way. Unfortunately one of the things that he didn’t let get in his way was policy, especially policy as it relates to accountability along with its attendant paperwork. Larry bought into the lean concepts with all his heart. The guiding principal of lean is that everything you do has to be value added, and in Larry’s lean heart of darkness paperwork did not add value. Paperwork slowed you down. Paperwork was the enemy. He was not alone in thinking this.

Now when a person such as Larry goes to work in an organization that has robust controls in place and rigorous enforcement of well documented policies and procedures, the Larry person usually finds his natural creativity unnaturally stifled and he moves on to greener pastures in relatively short order. If on the other hand he finds himself in an environment where the policies are arcane and slipshod and only infrequently and arbitrarily enforced, then he is in his element and will flourish. This particular Larry had not only landed in the second such place, but had landed at a time when everything was being reinvented under the lean imprimatur. So long as Larry produced the results that management was looking for Larry flourished. When Larry overstepped his bounds, as he was likely to do on occasion, management tended to look the other way, excusing his excesses because they were seeing him transform our facilities into something approaching a lean showcase.

Larry’s style first became problematic for me when he started exceeding the budgets for the lean implementation and facilities consolidation. These budgets had been developed in considerable detail before Larry’s arrival on the scene, and were scheduled by me and monitored in total by corporate finance on a monthly basis. When Larry started exceeding the budgeted amounts, I started scheduling out his expenditures in detail—that is line by line—and analyzing the payment details to determine their appropriateness. I had some misgivings about the nature of some of the amounts, and felt that they were in fact misclassified, that they should not have been charged to the lean and consolidation budgets at all, but rather to operations. I distributed the schedules to Larry, Juan, Bill, Fritz, and Ron for review and comment. While we made numerous reclassification adjustments to correct these charges, no one ever questioned whether or not these expenditures had been properly authorized. In fact it appeared as though they had because they all had signed purchase orders attached and Larry and Juan provided succinct and plausible explanations as to what the purchases were for and why they were necessary.

When I questioned the amounts of some of the expenditures, $84,000 for instance to change out all the locks on the premises, I was shown valid purchase orders, signed authorizations, and told that the change had been mandated by OSHA and had to do with accessibility to closed rooms by the fire department in the event of a fire or other disaster.

When Larry’s conflict of interest problem came to light, I had to revisit all these analyses I had already performed. It wasn’t just Bill who wanted this either. By the time I got to my office after getting marching orders from Bill I found several hysterical e-mails from Fritz demanding a complete and immediate review of all transactions initiated by or involving Larry in any way—to include especially any that had to do with the janitorial and maintenance services company owned by Larry. I have to say that at this point I agreed with Fritz’ sense of urgency regarding said review, but it did occur to me that he must have talked to Bill and known that such a process was already being initiated so the hysteria to me seemed a little misplaced.

Curiously absent in the hysteria was any mention whatsoever of the alleged thefts of inventory and any urgency attached to locating the alleged warehouse. I should point out here that in fact no warehouse was ever found, nor was any credible proof that materials had gone missing in any systematic, recurring way, although we certainly didn’t know that this would be the case early in the investigations. It was eventually concluded that the aggrieved woman had made up a great deal of the story wholesale just to dip the errant and randy common law husband in the grease.

The result of the review was that all the transactions seemed normal and reasonable. The janitorial and maintenance services costs had actually decreased somewhat since Larry replaced the former contractor with the one surreptitiously owned by himself. In fact Larry had indicated to Bill in the process of coming clean that the reason he set up his own company was that he couldn’t find anyone else to do the work to his satisfaction at rates he found reasonable. He claimed that he would have preferred to do the work internally, but the current budgets and lean initiative had obviated the addition of any indirect personnel to our payroll. I don’t know how much of Larry’s explanation was true and how much was smoke blown to deflect the attention he was getting during Bill’s interrogation. What I do know is that the transactions I looked at, while they might not have been squeaky clean, at least supported Larry’s contention that he was just trying to save money. In my opinion the only serious problem was the alleged missing inventory, but no one else seemed to be concerned about this.

Several days later, I received notice that Ron Simpson was coming (on Fritz’ orders) to conduct his own review of Larry’s activities. I knew that this was going to be a huge pain for me, that a lot of work was going to be duplicated not just for me but for my staff as well. I don’t know why Fritz decided to do this. The only two possible reasons are the either he thought I was incompetent to conduct the review or he thought that I had colluded with Larry somehow to defraud the company. In any event to forestall having to do things twice I stopped my review in its tracks and awaited Ron’s arrival.

Ron stayed three days, made an extensive review of a large volume of transactions—most of them in the lean and plant consolidation categories I had already analyzed, scheduled and distributed to him, Fritz, and Bill. He found a few items that should, according to policy, have required an authorization for expenditure form (AFE) to be filled out and signed by management before being processed for payment. Instead these items had post-dated purchase orders attached.

The post dated purchase orders meant that my accounts payable clerks had pulled the invoice because it did not have sufficient documentation for payment, and routed it to purchasing for review and approval. Invoices submitted for payment must usually reference a purchase order as evidence that the purchase was properly authorized and a receiving document as evidence that the items invoiced have in fact been delivered to us. Payment is only made when the required documentation is either attached or matched in the system. In the normal course of business my clerks would not know without a lot of research that an authorization for expenditure (AFE) was also required. If they can match a PO and a receiver they pay the invoice. If they cannot match, they route the invoice to purchasing for resolution. If purchasing returns the invoice with a PO and notes some proof of delivery the invoice is then paid.

The trap in these few expenditures was an antique policy written in the days of an anal retentive corporate management. This policy required that an AFE be executed and signed by the president of the company in Kentucky for all non inventory expenditures in excess of $250. Holy crap! We’ve got annual revenues in excess of $110 million. Virtually every expenditure we make is over $250. This is the most burdensome and ridiculous policy I have ever seen or heard of. In the company I just came from line managers on the floor could authorize expenditures of up to $1,000 without having to get an approval. The vice president in charge of a division had authority to spend up to $10,000. A $250 spending limit would grind a company like ours to a halt. It would make a champion of lean enterprise blanch.   

We had actually discussed this policy at our company-wide controllers’ conference nearly a year previous to the Larry fiasco. We had agreed then that the spending limits were overly burdensome and needed to be revised upwards. No one did anything about it though. One of New Ron’s projects was supposed to have been rewriting the accounting policies and procedures manual. Unfortunately Fritz had changed direction and fired New Ron before he got around to doing this. I had no recourse at this point but to agree with Old Ron that there were indeed some expenditures initiated by Larry that were contradictory to policy.

When Ron finished his review he met with Bill and me to go over his findings. He indicated that while it appeared that Larry had deliberately undertaken to circumvent some of our controls, there was no evidence to suggest that he had done so in order to convert any company assets to his own benefit. That is Larry had not stolen or misappropriated any company funds, and his peccadilloes, to the extent they could be identified, appeared to be undertaken only so that Larry could avoid any additional paperwork. In other words there were no alarming transactions in our system indicating any serious problems or evidencing any malfeasance.

          Then Ron flew back to Kentucky and wrote a report that made it sound as if there was wholesale disregard for any and all accounting safeguards, policies and procedures at our company, and that under my watch it was nothing short of a miracle than the company had not been robbed, bilked, scammed, and purloined into insolvency. Did I already say holy crap!