Del wasn’t sure why he’d asked. He wasn’t even sure when he’d realized he wanted to start seeing Merce. But he did. He wanted to see her all dressed up in a pretty dress and having him hanging on her arm. Del would never presume to think she would be on his arm unless she wanted to be there. Laughing, he was thrilled to death to see his mom talking to the elder Lowery. And he seemed to be enjoying himself too.
Chapter 3
Merce watched the prototype arm as it moved through the motions. It was being recorded, too, something they’d only just started doing since taking on this project. She wanted to be able to go over the way it moved with Del, and since he was out of town for a few days, Merce thought this was the best way for them to do it.
“I don’t like the way it moves.” Not looking at Billy, she asked him why not. What did he see? “It’s clumsy. Like it knows what it’s supposed to be doing, but it has to think about it too long. Like a person that has only just gotten a body, and they’re learning how to walk. They don’t want to mess up.”
“Maybe that’s what he wants. I mean, this isn’t like an arm putting a door on a car. This is going to be for an operating room where lives are at stake.” He asked her if he could tweak the program a little. “Just don’t save it over theirs. I don’t want them coming back on us and telling us we fucked them over.”
Not that she thought they would do that. David had spent the entire day yesterday at their plant just looking around with her. He had pointed out the things that Del had told him about. The way the workers were happy, and the number of personal things they had around them. He even went over the design with her, telling her that if after producing one of them they found errors, not to hesitate to work on them. They were perhaps the best company they’d worked with.
While Billy worked on his tweaking job, she went back to her office. She didn’t have anything in her office to say that she was the one working out of it. There were no family pictures around. Not a single piece of art. There were no little things she’d picked up on vacation. Merce hadn’t been on vacation since…well, she didn’t remember the last time.
Moving to the busy side of her desk, she sat down and closed her eyes. Merce had been working almost nonstop on this project for five days now. She’d even slept here last night in order to be here bright and early for the first finished prototype. As she sat there resting, she thought of Del.
He’d asked her out when they’d spoken on the phone yesterday. Merce had hesitated long enough for him to change the subject. What she’d been thinking about was how long it had been since the last time she’d been out on a date, even with her dad. She needed to do that more too. Have some fun with her dad and grandda.
Merce did have a date with her grandda tonight. They were going to get some dinner, just the two of them, then head back to her apartment to play some chess. The other day when they’d been out, he’d told her how much he missed the game. Telling him she’d get them a set had tickled them both. She was glad now that she’d been able to find them a good set for them to play with. However, she was much more excited to have Del ask her out again. This time she’d be ready for it.
“I have a couple of questions for you. Well, I don’t, but David does. He’s on line two.” She punched in the number and put it on speaker phone. Her dad, always thinking no one could hear him on speaker phone, yelled at David that she was here. “Go ahead, ask her what you were asking me.”
A short burst of laughter from David had her smiling. “The first hospital we’re making this for just called. They want to know how hard it would be to put a permanent sign on the machines telling how to use it.” Merce asked him why they’d want to do that. “I would imagine so that there isn’t any confusion on how it works.”
“No, what I mean is, why do they want it to be permanent? It wouldn’t be any trouble to have it put into the stainless steel before it’s put together, but what if there are upgrades to it? You do want it so it’s easy to upgrade, correct?” He said he’d not thought of that. “I have put that in the design. A way it can be worked on without taking it apart too much. But the user information we’d put on there would be outdated the first time we had to do that sort of updates on it.”
“That’s a good point. I wonder if Del had thought of that.” She could have told him it wasn’t on the specs but didn’t. “There are a couple of other things they want on it. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this part. They want their name on it—Jackson Memorial Hospital. We will have both our names on it, as well as the manufacturer and design companies, but adding their hospital name seems like it would lessen the resale value but increase their cost to purchase it. It seems silly to me when it’s in their hospital.”
“Maybe that’s why. They want to have it known that it was made for them especially. It’s a vanity thing. And I have no idea how much you’d charge for that sort of input, but again, that would be easy to put on there for them.” David asked her if they had run into this sort of thing before. “You mean the vanity thing? Yes. Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. A couple of years ago, this company wanted their opening date put on the machine they wanted. Within two years, they were out of business. Not that I’m saying this will happen to the hospital, but I just read an article the other day about two hospitals being combined into one, and the other one was renamed. If that were to happen, they’d have a piece of equipment with a name of a hospital on it that no longer existed. I would imagine people would then think they’re using old, outdated equipment.”
“What a brilliant argument. Would you mind if I pitched that to them? Not the selling part, but that the equipment would seem outdated to people that might need it. Brilliant. No wonder Del endlessly talks about how smart you are.” She looked at her dad, and he winked at her. “All right. You’ve given me a great deal of information. I’m so glad I called. Thank you so much.”
When the call was disconnected, she looked at her dad. “You could have told him that same information. Why did you come to me for it?” He looked guilty, and she asked him again. “Tell me, Dad. What’s going on?”
“I’m wanting to retire.” She sat back in her chair. This was news to her. “I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now. But lately, hanging out with my dad has been so much fun I no longer want to go to work and have to take him back to the nursing home. I think he’s enjoying it as well.”
“I know he is. It’s all he talks about when I hang out with him.” Dad nodded. “Will you take him home with you for good? I wonder what your sons will have to say to that.”
“They’re no longer your brothers?” Dad laughed and said he didn’t blame her. “I don’t care. After last week with them, I’m having a hard time thinking of them in a nice way too. But yes, I’d take him home with me. Perhaps if it got too bad for him, I’d just hire someone to come in and help out. But I think he’s more energetic. I know he’s eating more. Just the other day, he was telling me that he had two bowls of oats for breakfast.”
“I don’t know why anyone would want just one of them. But I do understand. We’re having dinner tonight. I have a feeling he’s going to ask if he can not go back. I didn’t tell him about the fight I had with Harley and Brock, but he told me that he gets lonely with no one around to see him very much. I don’t know why, but I thought they’d be seeing him all the time to make sure that he’s in compliance with what they think he should be doing.” Dad told her that she was right in thinking that. He had as well. “If retiring is what you want to do, then I’d say go for it. So long as you let me know who you’re going to have run this place. I don’t want to be blindsided by someone I can’t work with.”
“What do you mean?” She said he’d have to leave someone in charge while he was retired. She wanted to know if he had a list of names yet. “Honey, there is only one person I’d leave this place for, and that would be you. You might not realize this, but you’ve been running it for a long
time. I’ve just been showing up to hang out with you.”
“Dad, that’s not true. You’re a vital part of this company.” He nodded and said he might well be, but she still ran it. “I don’t know about that, but I do love working here. And the people. Are you sure you want to leave it to me? I mean, I’m very promiscuous and still basically a child.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that about you too.” Dad stood up. “The paperwork is at the attorney’s office now. As I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and I think you’re going to make this business better than it’s ever been. My dad agrees with me. He said you’d make it shine. Whatever that means to an eighty-year-old man.”
She was still sitting at her desk when her phone rang. Picking it up, she said the name of the company and waited for someone to speak on the other end of the phone. Nearly ready to hang up, she heard Del speaking to someone that was apparently with him.
“Del?” He asked her to hang on a second. She could tell he was angry and didn’t make any snide comments as she usually did. When he asked her if he could call her back, she said it was all right. “Is everything all right there? Do I need to come there and bail you out?”
“Maybe. But I will call you back. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?” She told him she would. “Good. That makes me feel better already. I’ll call you right back.”
It had never been anything she’d done before, worrying about another person. She didn’t count her dad or grandda—they were family. But with Del, it really made her feel like she really needed to drop everything and run to his side. It was the strangest feeling she’d ever had.
When her phone rang again, she picked it up, saying his name. His laughter made her feel better, but she was no less worried about him. Asking him what was going on, she heard someone, although muffled, talking in the background.
“I’m in Arizona with this company that wants us to retool their entire line for what it cost them to have the outdated lines put in the building when it was built nine years ago. Not only that, but this owner thinks we should feel privileged for doing this for them, as they are number two—not one, but two—in the market for getting their product out on time.” She asked him what they did. “They’re a warehouse that sends items to places like dollar stores all over this side of the country. I think he said something like four-thousand stores. I quit listening to him when he called me a dummy. Whatever. So now I’ve locked myself in his office so I could pretend to talk to someone with higher authority than me. He wants me to see, whoever my boss might be, if they’re willing to take a huge cut in profit, not to mention time and energy since he wants it done in two weeks.”
“I’m used to clients like him. Tell me the specs you would need to make this work for them, and I’ll be your higher authority. I think him thinking you have a female for a boss would make his nuts curl up around his tonsils.” Laughing, Del told her what he’d told the other man. “I’m assuming he wants more than one of the door readers. And this price you quoted him, it’s a little on the lower side?”
“Yes. If we were doing all twenty-eight of his bay doors, it would cost less. It would just be a repetitive job by then. But the one he wants for the system at the higher level, outside of the mods, he called them, that’s going to be costly. There are three levels per mod, and he had fifty mods.” She asked him if they used conveyor belts with wheels and rubber treads. “They do, as a matter of fact. Why? Do you know something I don’t?”
“I doubt that. But if they’re using conveyors to put their things on the trucks, it would be helpful for me to know if they have roll-tainers. I think they call them on that level. These would be loaded up for each store and then rolled into the stores per department. That would mean you’d have to have a program for each store and what they consider each department. Such as, health and beauty aids might not include things like headbands for children. You’d need to put that into each store’s inventory. Or make them all the same. Which is costly at the other end, and not usually something a store might be willing to pay for simply because the warehouse is changing their way of doing things.” Del asked her how she knew this. “When I have to go into a warehouse, which is more often than not, I have to know exactly what they might want and how they might think things need to be distributed. I try hard to be able to work with each department to know what it is they do. I’ve found out that just because a person is in charge of a certain area, they might not know squat about how it’s really run. What they think is needed and what is actually needed are two very different things.”
When she was ready to speak to the company manager, Del stayed on the open line with her. She wanted him there, but he also thought he could learn a little more if he heard this man’s ideas. As soon as Markus said hello after introducing the two of them, Merce started talking like she’d been working with him since the beginning. Del was so impressed, he called David and let him listen in on the conversations too.
“So, as you can understand, there isn’t going to be just a simple fix for your warehouse, Markus. As soon as we start moving departments around and having the labels redesigned, things are going to go from bad to worse for you and your company.” Markus asked her how they could go at this cheaper. “Cheaper? Well, I would say that you need to start from the beginning. Such as, you leave the building up that you are using now and work with our company in getting the most up-to-date equipment and programs into place. While that is being worked over, let your stores know you’re improving for their benefit. And it will be once you’re finished. The stores could download a copy of every item they ordered and be able to compare it to the list they’ll get when the truck is unloaded. New belts in the new warehouse will last longer, as well as not slide and tangle up with the product going down the line. There are other advantages too that you might not be aware of. If you hire more employees than you currently have, the government might be so thrilled with you that they give you a low-interest or even a no-interest loan on the construction. That right there will save you millions of dollars. Then, once you get the new warehouse set up, you have yourself an entire building for extra product, as well as overstocks that you can’t carry now. I think everyone can be happy with that.”
“Why didn’t this other fella tell me all this?” Del was worried for a moment, but he knew he shouldn’t have been when she answered Markus. “I suppose I did put a lot of demands on him without listening to what he was talking to me about. Yes, I can see where I messed up with this. But this is a great deal of money.”
“Yes, it is. It is also a great deal more income for you and your partners if you have any.” He said he was the sole owner. “Great. There is no long, drawn-out committee that you have to wait months on to get their heads out of their asses—you’ll be able to make decisions on your own. Del is the man to go to when you want the best. The company is one that doesn’t cut corners and will give you the best value for what you want. If you wish to go ahead and get things done the way you wanted, I’m afraid there isn’t any way that we can help you. You’ll—”
“No, no. I think you’re right. I have to expand and get this place up to date. I will admit, I’m spending more money on repairs than I care to. What sort of guarantee do you think I can get on this upgrade and new system?” She told him that wasn’t her department, that she was more of the hit you between the eyes sort of person. “You have that down very well, honey. You would make a great politician. Someone that doesn’t hold back. I’m going to stop talking and listen to what Del here has to say to me. You should have come with him. I’d love to have had dinner with you.”
“Markus, I’m not the boss of Del. I’m just a woman that can be calm when it’s necessary and a bitch when that’s needed too.” He asked her what she thought he was, and Del closed his eyes, waiting for Merce to answer him.
“I thought I was going to have to go there and kick your ass to see reason. Then after talking to
you for a few minutes, I changed that to a middle ground. By the end, you impressed me with being a calm man. You should make a habit of listening to people who know a bit more than you do about things. I’m sure that if asked, Del wouldn’t know nearly as much as you do about running a warehouse. However, he can and will walk circles around you when it comes to putting the right equipment in the right place to create a good workplace.”
For the next several hours, the three of them—David, Del, and Markus—talked about what would be needed for the upgrade. Del was impressed that he was pretty much leaving the programing and equipment up to him and David. Also that he seemed a good deal more excited about the upgrades than he had been for the repair work Del had been called out here for.
Once he was in his car, David called him back and asked him to call Merce. As soon as she answered, Del told her he loved her for what she’d been able to do for him. Then he told her how she’d sealed the deal for them and that they would be able to hire more people to work on this project, even to expand. When she thanked him, he knew immediately that something had happened. He asked her about it.
“Not now. I’ll see you tomorrow night, right?” Del told her he would. “Then I’ll talk to you then. I might even need a few hugs.”
“It would be my pleasure.”
Del was able to get her out of her slump and had her laughing. She was so excited for them. When they finally hung up the connections, Del decided he was going to finish up as soon as he could and fly back home. He needed to see her as much as she did him.
~*~
Harley put the phone back in the cradle and sat there with his hands holding his head up. This was a nightmare. They were so fucked right now, he wasn’t sure what they could do about working this out, so they came out on top. Calling Brock to come into his office, he told him to close the door. As soon as he sat down, Harley told him what was going on.
Delmar (Archer's Dynasty Book 1) Page 4
