The Early Months:
Being pleased as punch with myself for convincing my new employer that I had skills I didn’t really have, I showed up early for my first day. The offices were fast upon the eastern edge of the Ontario International Airport in one of those ubiquitous concrete tilt-up industrial office parks. The business park was relatively new, neatly landscaped and it brimmed with that unique brand of American optimism and excess. Lots of imported luxury cars driven by the execs and entrepreneurs, all of them leased to maximize the tax benefits. Since this development was located just beyond the eastern boundary of Los Angeles County there was plenty space. The City of Ontario no doubt carefully crafted their planned community of business parks.
On one’s first day the first stop is generally HR, Human Resources. I filled out the obligatory paperwork, tax withholding document, health insurance application, industrial privacy document, etc. Afterward I was shown to my new office. Whomever assigned me an office curiously put me in an office right off of the lobby next to the front door. If things weren’t working out, I could have quietly slipped out the front door never to be heard from again. Perhaps it was the hand of Providence hitting me over the head . . . .
I met my teammates, including those whom I had not met during the interview process. I was struck by not only how young my teammates were, but all of the employees who worked for this company. I took a tour of the facility and I was impressed by the upscale functionality. The manufacturing space out back, which accounted for at least 80 percent of the square footage was thoughtfully organized and appeared to be working efficiently like the motors in those imported luxury autos in the parking lot. After all of this parading about I’m sure the HR folks and Shannon, my fellow controller, were more than happy to be released so they could actually get some work done.
My new boss, Tom, was a mountain of a man; born and raised in rural Arkansas. He was a good 260 lbs on a six foot frame with an ample brown beard resting beneath a head of thick curly hair. He was an easy-going man, dare I say jovial for an accountant. He had that innate quality of character that drew others to him. You wanted to trust him. He explained that as the largest division of Sunrise Medical, Bio-Clinic was known as the most aggressive of the divisions as it was constantly on the hunt for acquisitions. He himself had personally found and championed the acquisition of a couple of targets. Having participated in tax planning for numerous large corporate M&As (mergers and acquisitions) this idea of finding and facilitating the acquisition of complementary “partners” appealed to me.
Tom was a busy man and he gave me some busy work to get me out of his hair. He explained that the idea in hiring another controller was to provide better oversight into two very different business units living under the same roof. The first and largest business segment was known as the foam overlay business. This group cut and packaged foam mattresses and mattress overlays that met the specifications for health care use. This unit would continue to be serviced by Shannon. I would lead up the newer, but faster growing Air Bed unit. These medical beds consisted of a permeable air mattress controlled by a pump and a microprocessor. This product was proven to diminish skin breakdown in patients bedridden for long periods of time, thus reducing the occurrence and severity of bed sores.
I had not seen two controllers working in the same business unit before in my travels, but the explanation seemed plausible.
Toward the end of the first day or on the second day I received a call from Mike O’Connell who was checking in to see how I was settling in. Looking back on the conversation that was a smart move, as it gave Mike a chance to address any second thoughts I might have had and thus ensure his commission would not be compromised. I reported all good on my end. Mike then cautioned me to be wary of those would step up first to foster a relationship. He explained that often times it is the ones on the outside, those who don’t have internal supporters, who will look to find a new friend. Without prior experience the newcomer wouldn’t know if their new friend were respected player or if they could be trusted. Noted.
Working in this first-floor office that opened up to the lobby I was a fish in a fishbowl and a natural curiosity. And so, if an employee didn’t poke their head in the door to introduce them self, they certainly gawked on their way out to lunch. My first earnest visitor was a gal who had an administrative position upstairs. She stopped by and introduced herself as Amber from upstairs and she asked me some questions about my background.
Later in the same day Amber stopped by again to visit. She lingered in my doorway offering me trivia about the organization and who does what. In as much as my office was probably located on the busiest thoroughfare in the building it didn’t seem odd that one might stop by a few times a day. As the days rolled along members of the R&D team, Manufacturing management and the Marketing Department would stop by to introduce themselves. And of course, Amber would stop by multiple times a day to briefly chat. I did notice that the lengths of her visits were growing as she would try and engage me in non-work related conversations. I didn’t rebuff her but I didn’t indulge her conversations either.
Amber was in her late twenties, Rubenesque and while not particularly attractive she was not unattractive. She moved with a certain confidence; not a “Getting things done in the office” confidence, but a rather self-possessed femme fatale confidence. She dressed casually if not a little salaciously on casual Fridays. All the while I was making friends with my fellow managerial peers in other departments. Surprising I found the greatest bonhomie with the folks in R&D and Marketing.
Eventually a new friend in R&D shared with me that my regular visitor, Amber, was in fact a stripper on the side. I’ve long forgotten her alleged stripper name, but she allegedly worked a seedy club in the sadly self-destructive city of San Bernardino. I was surprised but not surprised. I did notice in retrospect that she did lean into the door jamb of my office like it was a stripper’s pole which I had initially assumed was simply an indolent repose. Of course, I had to call Mike O’Connell to share with him who it was who was looking to become my friend. We had a good laugh over the matter although Mike did caution me not to indulge her. While I became increasingly busy, I saw less and less of Amber but she’ll reappear in a surprising cautionary tale later in the story.
As a division of a publicly traded company, the parent company required monthly reporting, known as, not surprisingly, “The Reporting Package.” I was assigned this task that reported not just financial results and analytical reporting, but also manufacturing and sales data. The Company’s founder, Phil Michaels, was a brilliant, creative though naïve business leader. He believed in Esprit de Corp and regularly gathered the troops for global meetings to share best practices. Preparation of the Reporting Package required me to gather data from all departments within our division and I quickly established relationships throughout the company. Some of the information was difficult to obtain, for one reason or another, and so there was a certain level of stress involved in meeting the deadline each month.
My business unit, Air Beds, kept me busy throughout the month. We had 35 or so rental facilities that would rent out the beds to both medical facilities but also home healthcare customers. So, there were inventory control issues, local sales and cash collection issues, and on and on such that my days were long. I quickly learned that the Air Beds unit accounting was not very buttoned up and in dire need of discipline. I had an encounter months later with my boss while I was pouring through an acquisition binder that included all of the documents incident to a particular acquisition. I noticed that no testing was done before closing to confirm the existence of the inventory being purchased. I found that really surprising, maybe even shocking and when I asked about it, Tom dismissed it by saying “You know how it is around here. You’ll never have enough time to get everything done.” By this time, I had traveled around the country with Tom and Shannon and others and we’d become fast friends. And while I found that professional lapse surprising, I trusted Tom and let it go in the moment.
