by Eric Flint
Papa Donnie had some pretty good ideas. She wondered where he had gone to school to learn how to control people like he'd been outlining for her. She knew teachers that couldn't control a class very well; and here was Papa Donnie, telling her how to make other people do all the work and like it.
"A few deserved compliments and rewards go a long way," explained Papa, "in keeping people happy and keeping them carrying most of the load, if you do it right. Delegate the responsibilities, but do it in such a way as to not lose control."
The way Papa put it sounded pretty simple. But he also said, "Never think things are as simple as they seem. They ain't. It will blow up in your face like a firecracker with a short fuse if you aren't prepared for something to go wrong. So you need to have backup plans. Just in case everything starts to fall apart."
She could do that. Freddie could be rather sneaky when he wanted, Dakota had smarts, and Sybie knew WB and Franz better than anyone; so between the four of them, they could have a main plan and then look at all the things that could go wrong and plan for them.
It was too bad Papa Donnie was going away tomorrow. She sure would like to be able to ask his opinion about what they came up with.
* * *
Kloee, Freddie, Dakota, and Sybie met at Marcantonio's Pizza. Kloee had told the other three to meet her after school to discuss important business. Now was the time to get things started—before the Saturday meeting of the Murray Bates Pipe Company when everything was taken over by Helene again.
They had scraped enough money together to buy a small pizza to split and a glass of juice apiece.
"Well," Freddie said—with tomato paste and cheese leaking around the corners of his mouth—"why did you want us here today?"
Kloee was prepared, had been preparing since last night. With a dazzling smile she started her speech. "We started our pipe making business just to get a little more spending money than we have been getting . . ."
A sour look gathered on Sybie's face.
Freddie shrugged. "Tell me something new."
Kloee backpedaled in her head. No one had interrupted her while she had been practicing. She improvised for a moment. "Well, that's what we were going to do, originally." Then she hurried back to her prepared speech.
"No one intended to do a lot of work and get caught up in it like we have been. Everything was supposed to be simple. Make a few pipes, collect some money, split it and everyone would be happy."
Kloee watched her companions give her unpleasant looks, as if she was some sort of simpleton telling them things they already knew. She hurried on. "Well, Helene has made the Murray Bates Pipe Company into a job that is eating up our free time and we have to put a stop to it."
"By Gnu and Yater," Freddie swore, causing Kloee to cringe. "I'm ready to quit the whole thing." Mama Melodie and Granny Murray both said Freddie's idea of a curse was sacrilegious. Kloee wasn't sure what they meant.
She listened as agreement came from Sybie and Dakota. Now was the time to reveal the plan she had worked out from Papa Donnie's advice.
"There is a way we can take back our company and not have to work ourselves to death in the process," Kloee began with a sincere smile. She had practiced the look half the night in her mirror. She was going to make sure her speech was perfect. "Do you want to hear my idea?"
"What the heck, let it fly," Freddie said.
"First, we need a written agreement that says six of us started up the business," Kloee said. "That means we need to get WB and Franz to sign it. But we don't want Helene to know anything 'til Saturday."
Freddie gave his best impression of his adopted father when Uncle JJ was pissed. "They'll do it and not say anything. Besides, Helene comes home late from meeting with Anton and thinks her story about working late is fooling everyone. So then what?"
Kloee continued, "I'll get Uncle Slater to get the paper drawn up tomorrow then. He knows a shyster or two."
"A what?" Sybie and Freddie both chimed.
Dakota laughed. "A shyster—what Papaw Murray calls lawyers."
Freddie grinned. He'd have to look it up in the dictionary, but shyster didn't sound too nice. Maybe he would add it to his vocabulary.
"Oh," Sybie responded.
Kloee cringed inside. "Uncle Slater can get a lawyer to draw up a legal paper for us. Here are copies of what I think it should say." Kloee grinned conspiratorially at her companions and gave each of them a handwritten copy of her statement. She had spent all of her eighth-grade study hall period working on the start of a contract for forming the Murray Bates Pipe Company.
Kloee noticed that Freddie did read the proposal himself but he waited for Sybie to go over the thing, "Well, Sybie, is it okay?"
Sybie smiled. "It looks good, Freddie. But I don't know all that much about things like this. It says we will all own stock and we will vote on the management of the company. It looks okay to me, but I don't want to waste time managing the company. There are better things to do."
"Well, I don't want all my time tied up, either," Freddie growled.
Before Dakota could voice her opinion, Kloee took over again. She was beginning to see what Papa Donnie had been talking about. Maybe she could get things done the way he said. It was starting to all come together. "All this voting and control of the company has to do is place Helene in a position where she can't take over but can still sell the pipes and make sure the money comes in. We'll be able to tell her what we want done, not her telling us what to do."
Before anyone could interrupt, Kloee put on the "I know what I am saying" face she'd practiced. "See? As a board of stockholders, the four of us could outvote anything WB and Franz might want if we stick together. And we can give Helene stock to keep her helping us, just not voting stock; so even if WB and Franz sided with her, we could still outvote them."
"But we would still have all that work," Freddie interrupted.
Kloee was ready for that. "Well, we hire people to make the pipes. They do all the work and we just sit back and get our money. It's even better than what we intended to do." Kloee flashed her best smile and continued. "On top of that, we elect one of us as boss. They have to watch things, so the rest can just kick back and enjoy their money."
"I won't do it," Freddie grumbled. He was echoed by both Dakota and Sybie who could also see it as a much bigger job than any of them wanted.
"Well, I guess I could do it." Kloee looked at her companions, her eyes filled with disappointment. This may not have been what Papa Donnie had meant for her to do, but she had watched Mama Melodie and Mama Marlene get things their way in the past and had incorporated it in her spiel. Let them think they were forcing the job on her.
A few minutes of token arguing on the part of the others put the job on her shoulders.
"Well, if we're going to do this, I'll see Uncle Slater on the way home," Kloee said. "Are we going to try this?"
She smiled when the other three agreed.
Saturday Meeting of the Murray Bates Pipe Company
Freddie pushed Helene aside. He informed her she would have to wait until after the first meeting of the Murray Bates stockholders' meeting to talk.
She glanced at WB and Franz, who looked miserably guilty to her.
Freddie opened the meeting. "Fellow stockholders and employees of the Murray Bates Pipe Company, we are here today to elect our company boss. She will make all the decisions for the company with a majority of stockholders' approval."
Helene started to smile until Freddie said, "I nominate Kloee Baxter-Bates-Murray as boss for the Murray Bates Pipe Company."
Sybie and Dakota jumped up and seconded the nomination.
Helene realized something was terribly wrong. Franz and WB just sat there looking lost and didn't even recommend her. She should be running things. After all, she was the one who was studying business. She should be CEO. They didn't even have the name right. Where had this sudden change come from anyway?
As the question entered her mind, she noticed Kloee's
triumphant smile. The heart shaped face and red hair reminded her of Frau Smith. Helene felt as if a younger version of the hard-driving woman she worked for was looking at her with the same smug and self-assured air.
"I nominate myself!" Helene yelled out.
Freddie smiled at her. "No can do, Helene." He laughed. "You ain't a stockholder. You're just an employee right now."
Helene felt as if she had been set up by everyone. Even Franz hadn't given her an inkling as to what was happening. She sat and listened as Kloee was voted head of the fledgling company by a four to zero vote with two abstentions. At least WB and Franz hadn't voted for Kloee. But it looked like Kloee had Freddie, Sybie, and Dakota firmly behind her.
No work would get done today because by laws and company charters had to be agreed upon. When the meeting got around to her position in the company, Helene was forced to accept the offer Kloee made her. It had already been decided to hire workers and train them, starting this week.
WB and Franz were made supervisors, in charge of training and operations. They seemed happy about their new positions, though how they would keep up with the demands of a fledgling company and still attend school she wasn't sure. But they both had drive and ambition—something Kloee apparently had, too, but hadn't demonstrated before.
When Kloee had presented the proposal for her future employment with the Murray Bates Pipe Company, she had almost walked out. But the future monetary gain from the infant company was too tempting. And while she would receive stock from the company that equaled a seventh of its value, it would be non-voting stock. Where the fourteen-year-old Kloee had picked up so much business information, she didn't know; but Kloee had rigged it so she couldn't gain control of the company.
It wasn't all bad. The responsibilities she had to the Murray Bates Pipe Company would increase. But with the increased work force, more pipes would be produced and sold. Already, they had sixty new orders and the Tobacco Shop was wanting another fifteen. The kids would never be able to keep up with demand. They needed to expand and start up a larger factory and hire more employees. Which, now that she thought about it, was exactly what they were doing.
She was given a copy of the Company charter with all six signatures of the founders: Freddie Bates, Sybella Doebling-Bates, Wilhelm Engling-Bates, Dakota Ockfen-Bates-Murray, and Kloee Baxter-Bates-Murray.
Everything looked legal and binding and was cosigned by a parent or legal guardian. She even recognized the witnesses names.
Helene agreed to continue working for the company. If things went like she thought they would, she would earn more than she ever could working for the Exchange, though she wouldn't be quitting anytime soon. Murray and Bates would be a part-time job when she was not in school or working at her desk for the Exchange records department.
Helene looked at Kloee and saw the girl returning her gaze. She had been outmaneuvered by a girl nearly five years younger and who had never before shown any ambition. She felt respect and dislike for Kloee at the same time. She had been wrong about her. Kloee was not silly and superficial; she had proven she could be someone who warranted watching, not just what the young up-time men called a babe. She also had brains, something she hadn't displayed a lot of before, as far as Helene knew.
* * *
Helene sat at the table in the Gardens with Anton. "So I got made a non-voting share holder." She shook her head. "I still don't know how that little witch did it. But it was staged. Kloee had them all lined up ahead of time. Even WB and Franz were bought off with the fancy titles she gave them."
"Did you take it?" Anton asked.
Helene nodded and gave a half shrug. "I'm still in on the ground floor of company with big potential."
Three weeks later
Mid-September, 1635
Kloee walked through Granny Murray's barn. The company was now paying rent for the old space they had used plus additional rent for the rest of the barn. Much of her adopted grandparents junk had been moved to Uncle Slater's barn or her own for storage. The whole barn was now being used as a factory for making corncob pipes. It sounded like a big expansion and, in some ways, it was. But it wouldn't last. She had let things get out of hand.
The two old milking stalls were gone and the floor had been planked over. Ten men and women were busy in the four parts of the barn that were the work areas for different stages of pipe making.
The first section was used to sort, cut, and hollow out the corncobs for the pipe bowls.
The second section was for sorting, cutting and hollowing out the stems. They were experimenting with different types of branches to make the stems from because Granny Murray claimed they were destroying her elderberry trees. She made elderberry wine, which she used as a tonic for colds and flu. So far, they weren't having any problems, but Franz was arranging for the materials to make stems.
The third section was the assembly area where the stems and bowls were fitted. There were three people working in each of the first three areas.
The forth and last area was the packing and shipping area. Right now they only had one employee working there.
Everything was running smoothly now, although the factory had gotten off to a rough start because one snag after another had cropped up. The company was, as Helene put it, a marginal success.
Today was her turn to walk through the infant pipe factory. She, Franz, and WB took turns spending time after school seeing how things were running. The older men and women working for them seemed to accept the fact that they were working for children. Besides that, Philip Dirst, the foreman, kept everything operating; so she and the others just made a show of doing a daily tour. The workers seemed happier and operations went more smoothly because they didn't have any of the owners around except for an hour or so every day.
The employees were working on a pay system Helene had devised—a small weekly wage with a commission for each pipe they produced. It was something she had learned in her business classes and actually had a fancy name: Gant, or something like that.
Granny Murray and Auntie Phyllis would sell them more of their corn crop this year for pipe bowls. Even Uncle JJ had volunteered to let them have part of his corn crop over Frau Meyers objections. Freddie had talked Uncle JJ into letting them have part of his harvest this year. What she couldn't figure out was how Uncle JJ got Auntie Margaretha to agree with him. She usually sided with old Frau Meyers.
Mama Melodie had volunteered to let them plant some areas farther back in the hollow come next spring. So next year, they would have a good crop to harvest which would ensure they had enough corncobs to operate year around.
They would run out of useable corncobs before the end of winter this year. It was too late in the season to plant another crop. But who would have thought the pipes would be so popular? No one had thought they would be sturdier and hold up better than the clay pipes.
If the corn was fully ripe, the cob wasn't as good and Helene insisted they should sell only quality products. Kloee agreed with her. Like Papa Donnie had told her, "Listen to good advice and always seek it out. You can't know everything and you can use what others tell you if it's good advice without letting them run the show."
Kloee smiled. She was still learning. She had learned a lot from running the Murray Bates Pipe Company. For one, the company wasn't going to make it this year. The company would fold up from lack of materials—namely, a sufficient supply of corncobs. It was a success in that the pipes sold well and there was a growing demand. But they had only planned far enough ahead to get pocket money. The money was being realized—more than realized. They had pocket money and then some, but they had not planned for growth or expansion. Everything had happened haphazardly with little real planning. She thought they had planned well, but it hadn't turned out that way.
In the spring, a new company would be born: Cousins' Genuine Corncob Pipes. A new company charter would be set into motion; and as much as Kloee disliked the idea, Helene would be a voting stockholder in the company. Helen
e was already arranging for temporary work for their current employees and setting up a share purchasing program for employees of the new company when it came into being. Selling shares to the employees was what Helene called an employee incentive plan. She said they had to have trained employees or lose valuable time and assets retraining. The best way to keep good employees was to keep them happy, and owning part of their workplace helped keep them happy.
Kloee frowned and had to admit she had outsmarted herself by cutting Helene out of the management. Over the last three weeks, she realized how much she had taken on herself. She liked the feel of power, but it was too much for her to handle. Things had definitely not worked out as she had envisioned.
She had picked the wrong allies in Freddie and Dakota. Neither of them had been any help past getting her into the position of control. Manipulating people wasn't all that great if they turned out to be of little or no help. She had learned from that. It was part of planning for everything that could go wrong. Papaw called it Murphy's Law.