Elaine didn't come home Friday night or even Saturday morning. She also didn't call and leave a message - because by then I wouldn't have spoken directly to her anyway.
I finally did fuck Susan Price last night, mainly just to get rid of her. She seemed to enjoy it and I didn't have to fake my own orgasm - just fake the relaxation and "acceptance" I conveyed to her afterwards. She left about 2 AM and I had a water glass full of Grey Goose Vodka and fresh squeezed OJ in a final half and half large Screwdriver - and fell into a fitful "passed out" condition. I woke up by 8 AM anyway the next morning and REALLY felt shitty, with the hangover added to my broken heart. I called Elaine's Mom and asked her if she could babysit Julia for the whole weekend and even Monday - that Elaine had to go out of town suddenly for a huge real estate deal she was working - a combo commercial/residential opportunity and we weren't sure exactly when she would get back. I lied my ass off and figured Elaine could handle it all when - and if - she actually returned.
Meanwhile I had my own work to do, as I also told my mother-in-law, more truthfully.
I called my one real salesman rep friend at IMT&R and told him to "count me in" and that I was resigning from IMT&R Monday morning. His name was Ross Price (no relation to Susan) and he was no Ross Perot, but he wanted to be. Many people may not remember but Ross Perot was once a salesman for IBM - a "Marketing Rep" there - and a supersalesman at that. IBM Reps were sometimes considered underpaid in that rarified world of heavy/expensive equipment sales. Many companies paid their salesmen pretty much "straight commissions" at a 10-20% rate - for every $1000 worth sold - they got $100 to $200 as their commissions. IBM didn't work that way - Reps were compensated at a "60-40" kind of structure. 60% straight salary (including all those great benefits of IBM paid for Medical, Dental, Hospital, Vacation days, etc. etc.) and 40% commission - with the commission payments depending on "percent of quota attained", rather than just a fixed percentage of sales dollars. A rep who made just 90% of his quota one year would receive at least 100% of his "targeted total compensation" - that amount his manager deemed fair and equitable depending on his length of time with the company and past performances - but that rep would also be on "notice" and a second year in a row not making quota would mean termination. A rep who DID make at least 100% of his quota made at least 110% of his total target compensations (salary and commissions and bonuses) and also an invitation to the 4 day "100% Club" recognition event held each year for all commission employees at a place like Las Vegas or Miami Beach or Phoenix in early February the following year, and most importantly - job security and certainly a "raise" in his or her own targeted compensation for the next year. As a rep achieved ever more sales above his quota, he earned ever more commission dollars - to a point.
Perot was such a good salesman he was making 2 or 3 times his "targeted compensation" every year and more than his own direct report manager AND often his Branch Manager - and his own personal quota achievements didn't really translate much into more pay for them - since a Marketing Manager's quota was based on 8 or more reps and a Branch Manager's quota based on 24-32 reps total. And some natural human jealousy and "control" issues came into play. Perot got frustrated at his own managers telling him to "back off" after making 200% of his quota. He was a naturally aggressive and competitive little man and was looking for the best way out of IBM by then.
IMT&R wasn't quite as bad and complicated in it's own commissions structure - but almost. They had studied IBM and other corporations and tried to incorporate "best industry practices" from the learned pragmatism of other companies. And was largely successful.
IMT&R became really, really successful once they added that "R" (Robotics) to their product line and name in the 1990's. They also copied the business model that was so phenomenally successful for IBM in the 1960's - total customer service oriented lease-only "turnkey" solutions for it's customer's business needs. In other words, lease IBM's hardware and software and you get "free" all the System Engineering programming resources to fine tune the CICS or Accounting packages specifically for each individual customer. The customer only need hire their own IT operations people - a lot cheaper than actual programmers.
IMT&R did the same thing with their Robotics solutions - lease only the equipment and the actual integration and fine-tuning on each production/manufacturing line and the customer gets "free" the IMT&R engineering technical expertise to most quickly and efficiently get everything up and running and really productive. The customer need only hire operators for the equipment - rather than engineer level programmers. And the "operators" were really just the best manufacturing line employees they already had. Of course, once the robotics went in a LOT of regular machine operator employees (many union people) lost their jobs - just as computerization of businesses by IBM mainframes once cost some human jobs as well. IMT&R's success and size now meant it was very much on the political radar - and the Justice Department brought an anti-monopoly action against them - just like it had against IBM in 1969. That suit dragged on for 12 years and cost IBM at least a billion dollars in legal fees and lost employees time fighting it. IBM eventually changed some of it's own business practices "voluntarily" and eventually the suit was dropped.
The most significant change IBM made in the early 1970's was to "unbundle" H/W and S/W and programming services, as well as offer for outright purchase as well as lease all it's products (except for the copyright issues on it's packaged S/W, of course). And this was the key that opened the door for Ross Perot and his own vast future wealth - EDS, Inc. was born to fill the void offered by IBM no longer offering "turnkey" solutions at an attractive pricing level. Turns out IBM System Engineers hired at an hourly level could NOT be had cheaply. The Justice Department regulators made sure of that. Also, IBM H/W orders were on a strict "first ordered/first shipped" basis and preferred customers (largest) even with "emergency" situations could get no priority deliveries. All of this admin oversight meant ever increasing costs of doing business. EDS just leased (or sometimes purchased outright) IBM H/W and O/S S/W and then offered much cheaper turnkey solutions using the brightest people he could hire right out of college - all those new nerds and computer science graduates - way less than IBM's overhead and under absolutely no DoJ constraints. It made EDS a very successful company and Ross Perot almost rich enough to buy the Presidency of the USA.
So - what does all that have to do with me? IMT&R bit the bullet and threw in the towel on that DoJ suit very quickly. A consent decree was hammered out and about $900 million saved on legal fees - but IMT&R could no longer offer the best price kind of turnkey installations it once had. And Ross (the other Ross, he would soon be known as) Price saw his own chance - just like Ross Perot.
He had already resigned from IMT&R and was forming RSS, Inc. (Robotic Systems Solutions) despite that "yellow dog" employment contract all IMT&R employees had to sign. You know - the "can't work for a competitor for a year" kind of terms. Even clerks like me signed the same boilerplate contract. Ross ignored it. I ignored it.
Ross wanted me to join his fledgling and risky start-up as "Corporate Head of Administration" and develop and manage the admin side of the business. He knew what I had been doing the past 11 years - basically learning everything there was to know about IMT&R's adminstration from the ground up at merely a branch level - but I had also developed contacts and information from HQ's, Plants, and Labs - and I had even started making some improvements and documenting everything in a large but comprehensive and comprehensible looseleaf note book. For once I had a really good direct report manager - a girl named Carol (younger than me) with a 4 year Accounting degree and a little bit of manager experience elsewhere before joining us as a "direct hire" into first line manager here. She had nowhere near my own technical knowledge of all the clerical procedures and specific audit points here - but she WAS a great "people person" able to keep her people as happy and motivated as possible. I was the senior clerk under her and eventually showed her all my work to help her get up to speed technically. She was amazed and very pleased, and soon started pushing me and my work to her own higher management - I was already now scheduled to jump 3 normal levels of promotion to a great management position in New York City, and start implementing many of my own changes nationally - and maybe even globally.
But Elaine had ruined all this, unknowingly. If the scheduled promotion went through, I was sure the rumor mill would churn and decide that I was just given that promotion as a "reward" AND to actually just bring his "hot wife" to New York to be more available for one horny exec or another, whenever.
It would make my own work that much harder and maybe even impossible. And I didn't want to do another thing for this company now, anyway. So - Monday I was resigning and joining Ross with no promise at all with what my initial salary would be - probably not much even with the great title. Start-ups are hard and risky and I didn't fool myself - Ross would have to sell his ass off just to get our first order - I could have the admin stuff in place - and would probably be doing an awful lot of just "grunt work" myself - but I didn't mind working like that and just kept my fingers crossed.
Ross as an accomplished and experienced salesman had all kinds of contacts, and all kinds of fans, actually. Many people believed in his talent and future - and he was rather quickly gathering all the other major necessary talents into his new company - including the venture capitalists he would need to get off the ground. The actual IMT&R H/W and O/S for even a medium sized company's manufacturing plant was going to run from $500,000 to a million. And a medium sized company was the first goal - to prove RSS could deliver and beat IMT&R's own bids - and then hopefully word of mouth and industry press would do the rest. But it also HAD to be profitable right from that first customer. We didn't have the finances to do it otherwise. Most of the other principles and chief officers brought some of their own skin - capital - into the game. I couldn't and he wanted me anyway. It was a great opportunity that I couldn't pass up, now - just like I couldn't afford the risk for my family before, when I had a marriage and family.
Elaine and I were both juniors in college when she got pregnant. I dropped out almost immediately once she decided she was going to keep the baby and that we should marry right away. Neither of our families were well-off and no financial support was forthcoming, nor expected. I was an English major with a history minor because I was hoping to then go to law school, someplace. Elaine was a psychology major and wanted to become a psychologist and hopefully teach and do continued research. At least Elaine was able to finish out her junior year and even finally get her B.S. degree in night school that third year after Julia was born. I tried taking a few night courses myself, since IMT&R would pay for either "job improvement" courses or merely "degree acquisition" courses. Because I didn't have a degree my job advancement opportunities were pushed back by the general USA business culture that so highly prizes a piece of paper. I really finally settled down and just concentrated on doing such a good job and even bringing efficiency improvement ideas forward that someone in management would finally notice and HAVE to advance me. But no one really did until Carol. Eventually reading "Dilbert" made things a lot clearer for me.
