by Albert Able
Louisa was secretly grateful to slump back into the pillow; she had never felt so wretched and empty in her entire life.
That fact that Carlos had deceived her was painful enough but Louisa’s real nightmare now she that she was literally backs on the street and with her mind still in turmoil she drifted into a fitful sleep.
In the event it was five days before Louisa reported back to the Three Towers Hotel and that was when I met her for the first time.
Chapter 27 - Marcus
Under Sam’s paternal guidance, Max Harris was successfully growing his catering business, skilfully sighting his High Street outlets in strategic locations to benefit from commercial clients during the day and residential during the evenings.
The restaurant at City Express hotel was now running smoothly and Max was itching to establish his brand in our new Highway Express Hotels as they came on stream and the opportunity to run the catering at Three Towers Hotel also gave Max an excellent opportunity to train his growing team.
On the morning we entered Three Towers to take over for the bank, whilst Connie and I assumed command of the ‘Front of House and Housekeeping’ Max headed straight to the kitchens and installed his brigade. It was important that he accomplished the takeover and recruited a completely new kitchen brigade as quickly as possible, so that the staff he had borrowed from other parts of his business could return to their regular duties as soon as possible.
Max employed a personnel manager Jim Newman and it would be his job to see that all the required positions were suitably filled. As with most hotels ‘staff accommodation’ was a very important part of the employment package especially when employing immigrant or seasonal staff.
After the first couple of days by which time he was confident that his temporary team were in complete control, Jim Newman’s next task was to check out the availability of staff accommodation. What he found came as no surprise to me but would have horrified Raines Bullock had he known.
Three Towers Hotel employed around eighty staff of which forty had or should have had accommodation provided. There were two standards available; rooms within the hotel for administration personnel, receptionists, porters and the like, the other a converted annex close by for the remainder.
What Jim discovered was that Rains Bullock’s General Manager was letting, for a substantial cash sum, half the rooms in the annex to workers not employed at Three Towers Hotel and housing his own staff in hotel letting rooms, with the consequent loss of revenue to the hotel.
Jim Newman was anxious to employ new staff and so his first task was to evict the current occupiers so the accommodation could be renovated for the new staff; trying to get the illegal tenants to move out however proved to be a major problem; each of them claiming a host of different ‘rights’ of occupation.
That was until Max got involved. “Give each of the illegal tenants notice to quit by Saturday ten-o’clock,” Max instructed Jim Newman “that is when their rent is due to be collected by the manager.” Max raised his eyebrows in characteristic frown. “If they are still there by ten past, I’ll get Louis and the boys to pack for them!”
Jim smiled as he visualised what packing would mean in this instance.
In the end took another two weeks to clear them all out.
Like the rest of Bullocks empire there had been no control or discipline in the staff accommodation either.
I knew this particular accommodation block because we converted it originally and remembering the frugal facilities I personally endured during my early years in Italy, I swore that I would never be responsible for forcing people to live in similar circumstances and so these rooms, as with all of our staff accommodation, were built to a particularly high standard.
Each of the centrally heated rooms had been fitted with a separate toilet and walk in tiled shower. Tastefully decorated, each room had fitted carpets, twin or double beds, wardrobes, draws, chairs and TV.
When the last of the illegal tenants were removed Connie and I were finally able to get access to the rooms and the sight we faced filled us with anger and despair with the manner in which these people had chosen to live.
Almost every door panel had been kicked in, the locks shattered; most of the beds were littered in the filthy remains of sheets and blankets, many obviously soiled with urine and faeces. Newspapers littering many of the floors still contained the remains of half eaten takeaway meals. Most of the electric radiators were hanging off the wall. Wardrobe doors were ripped off and abandoned; here and there old clothes hung forlornly from buckled wire coat hangers.
The toilets in several rooms were choked to the brim, having been used as waste-bins; in a couple of these rooms the wardrobes had been used as the alternative toilet. The walls of all the rooms were daubed with vulgar spray painted messages; whilst an array of tattered posters were randomly pinned or nailed to walls or window frames where the curtains and their tracks had been ripped away.
It took another two weeks to completely repair and redecorate the rooms suitable for re-occupation.
I must confess that I never relished one of the main responsibilities of running a business; that of telling people that their job has come to an end. This occasion however was a rare exception.
On the day of the take over the General Manager drifted into the hotel just before lunch; glancing briefly at the receptionist and apparently without recognising that a new face was manning the desk, he headed to his office apparently without noticing the change. When he entered I was sitting at his desk working through some schedules.
“Who the hell are you?” He growled poised ready to attack.
“I think you’ll understand more easily if you read this.” I passed him a copy of our appointment by the bank.
The man snatched the paper from my hand and carefully read the authority and then raising his head slowly it was obvious that he had been struck a devastating blow.
“What happened to Mr Bullock?” He queried incredulously.
“He’s gone just like you I’m afraid.” I answered.
“What do you mean like me?”
“Do you want me to go into detail or perhaps I should call the boys in blue to check it all out?”
“I don’t understand.” He tried to sound insulted.
I tapped the pad on the desk. “Let me start with fraud; a very nasty business fraud,” I consulted the papers in front of me “shall we start with the staff accommodation?” I flipped over another page. “Then there is the payroll; how many staff do you claim to be paying?” I stared into his eyes. “I’ll give you ten minutes to collect your personal belongings and if you’re not out of here by then I’ll call the law; is that clear enough for you?”
The man held my stare for a moment and then looked away. “You bastard,” he sneered and stomped from the office leaving the door open.
I was still angry several minutes after he left and I can remember to this day how I wanted to punch the pompous ass in the face.
I must have calmed down eventually, because I decided that, at least for the moment, the three under managers were probably not party to the scams.
All young and inexperienced they would clearly have been overawed by the dominant nature of the crooked General manager and when I subsequently interviewed them, without exception they demonstrated enthusiasm to follow the ‘new code’.
Now only the reception system needed rescheduling; so with the addition of our own people I believed the whole team would easily shape up in time.
Stan was naturally keen to press on with reorganising the accounting system, which he discovered had been run exclusively by the manager and the young woman Raines Bullock had run away with.
The Conference and Function department was being run from a large office adjacent to reception and so Stan decided, as there appeared to be plenty of space that he would make it his base and set up the accounts office there.
The Conference and Function manager’s roll was to organise almost anything other tha
n room and restaurant reservations. Wedding receptions, Club Dinners, Birthday parties and Board Meetings were all included.
The person in charge at the Three Towers was Hester Livingston, a matronly woman with a genial disposition.
Sam stood up politely when she arrived at ten o’clock that morning and courteously explained his reason for being in her office.
“I understand.” She said quietly and then raising her head proudly. “What about my job?” She asked a little hesitantly.
Thunderstruck by the exotic lilt of Hester’s gentle voice and the dignity of her reaction to the new management team’s intervention; Stan was suddenly thrown into turmoil of long forgotten emotions.
It was twelve years since his wife and children had been killed and not once in that time had he thought of anyone else to replace the memory of his beloved family, now suddenly as he stood facing this gentle lady a nerve had been somehow touched; he was deeply confused and for a moment couldn’t speak.
“Do you want me to leave?” Hester responded to Stan’s hesitance.
“No, no” he stammered “on the contrary.” I want to talk to you about the job.” Sam gestured to the vacant chair.
Hester sat down. “I’m an accountant really,” Hester started “so it was all a bit new to me, I have tried my best.”
“You are an accountant?” Stan asked politely and whilst his own emotions calmed, Stan thought she was about to burst into tears.
“Yes I am but they did not want me to do the books, I always thought it was because they were up to something,” Hester sat upright. “I needed the job you see and so I learned to be a conference organiser; its quite interesting really but in reality it’s a much younger persons job.”
Stan sat in a sort of hypnotic daze listening to Hester’s voice as if he was absorbing some of the gentle classical music he loved so much.
Fate moves in strange ways and at unexpected windows in time and Stan never even tried to figure out why but somehow knew that Hester was special and in that extraordinary moment decided that he wanted her to become a part of his life and so it was that ‘Group and Conference’ enquires would be actioned by a new operator and thereafter Hester Livingston would be working side by side with Stan, stetting up and managing various accounting systems and not just at the Three Towers but that is another story.
Chapter 28 - Marcus
I often think of the time when Raines Bullock was with the bank and how he had deliberately set out to cripple our business and how in the event, it was his actions to destroy us that were instrumental in setting our business on the road to success; whilst his own attempts to emulate our ambitions, ended in disaster and bitter defeat.
Bullock’s problem was that he was a jealous and resentful man, without the ability to value or appreciate other people’s skill and so showed little if any respect for the people he worked with. The reward for such an attitude, is that those people have no respect for you and though wrongly, have no conscience about ‘creaming a little off the top’ for themselves.
Over the years we have inevitably had a few employees who tried to take advantage and therefore had to be quickly weeded out; that old saying about the rotten apple soon turning the rest of the barrel bad, is so very true and is why we developed a reputation for being tough but fair and was one of the reasons why banks and other investors at that time, flocked to us to manage their troubled hotels.
In business as in life, you also need a little luck and in those times whilst the rest of the hotel industry was in a state of collapse, with half the business across the Nation under administration of one kind or another we, at the peak of the ‘hotel recession’, and only because of our reputation, were fully stretched managing over fifty hotels for banks and receivers. This in turn proved to be the perfect training ground for our own growing organisation.
In those days many suburban pubs and hotel properties suffered terminal decline as the introduction of tough new drink driving laws also took their toll.
Many of these properties however had substantial grounds; country pubs especially usually had large car parks. Assuming the location was suitable we would then make a private deal with the bank and buy the car park usually well below its true value. We then obtained planning permission to build a room only Highway Express Hotel on some of the car park land leaving the old pub building to be renovated as the catering facility.
Under Stan’s paternal guidance Max Harris was successfully expanding the ‘Max’s’ Restaurant chain, mainly by offering franchises for his restaurants, which allowed him to expand more quickly and giving the franchisees a better chance of financial success by trading a proprietary brand. Now he was creating new trading brands for our hotels. ‘Family Fun’ and ‘Country Charm’ were two of the new names he devised to work exclusively with the Highway Express hotels.
Highway Express grew rapidly and by the end of year five we were operating thirty properties, with several new units in build and coming on line at the rate of one a month.
That was when we almost ran out of cash ourselves.
Stan had warned us that in spite of the current willingness of our venture capital providers to invest more funds, their exposure to one individual enterprise had, in their shareholders best interests, to be limited; that moment had now arrived and so in order to continue with our current rate of growth we were going to have to find a new source of finance.
The hotels we had been managing were gradually being returned to their owners or sold by the creditors as a going concern. In some ways we were our own worst enemy, in that as we made these properties profitable again, they were sold, putting ourselves out of work.
On the other hand, we had also generated a powerful reputation with the banks we were working with and so looking for funding for our own project, became much easier than we had anticipated and so I was even more surprised when Alan Rolls the manager at the main bank we had been working with declared. “In fact I am so impressed with your progress and plans for the future, I would love to be a part of it.”
I had worked very closely with Alan Rolls over the previous two years and developed a good working relationship with him; he was definitely “One of us” as Max described him.
I immediately realised that Alan’s proposal to join our business would not just help with our own ongoing refinancing package, but would greatly strengthen the whole management structure; which we knew needed to evolve significantly, if we were to successfully move to the next stage of corporate development.
I thought Stan would object to such a plan but he was philosophical. “This may well be the time to create such an appointment but we will have to sure that he earns his keep.” He advised sternly.
Alan Rolls was the first of the professional executives to join the business; I don’t include Stan when I say that because he was more like family.
Up until that point we had been essentially a ‘hands on’ business with an all hotel trained and orientated team but that was about to change as we evolved from traditional hoteliers to being in the hotel business.
Alan immediately set up a small head office team to manage our spreading empire. No longer did Connie and I need to be available twenty four seven, in fact we regularly taking weekends away with the children, whilst the machine our business had become ground steadily on.
Max Harris was also obliged to take similar steps to manage and control is restaurant chain. In fact he had reached the stage where he had set up a ‘food factory’ to prepare most of the dishes he offered on his menu in bulk, guaranteeing that they were prepared and served to a reliable and consistent standard.
I must admit that whilst I enjoyed the new found freedom the corporate way of life gave us, I often hankered for the good old ‘hands on’ days of dealing directly with our residents and the every day issues that created.
It also furnished us with so many memories, some funny some down right amazing and of course some extremely sad.
Chapter 29 - Connie
Cheated by Bullock's uncontrolled and unscrupulous management practices. Louisa Teixiera had been working eighteen hours a day trying to earn enough money to send home to keep her young son and assist the rest of her family.
Since she had been in hospital for almost one week and was clearly not yet one hundred percent fit I refused to let her resume her multitask regime.
“You have a choice,” I told her “from now on you either work full time in the pastry section or in the reception. You seem to have developed both skills equally so the choice is yours.”
“I am most grateful” Louisa looked down “but you see I have to send much money home.”
“I understand but you have not fully recovered yet. So what I recommend is that you chose one position for the moment and see how things go. I will ensure that you are paid the correct rate and also see what we can do about getting back some of the money you are owed.” I assured her.
Louisa agreed and happily chose to work in reception. I was also pleased because it meant she would stay with my team rather than with Max’s catering side of the business.
Louisa quickly honed her reception skills and for the next six months was a key member of the team, until one morning pale and exhausted she tapped on the door and walked into my office. “Oh Mrs Connie, I’m so sorry but I feel sick everything aches.” She flopped listlessly into a chair.
At first I presumed she had the flu but then I remembered her visit to the hospital just before we took over the hotel. “The best thing for you young lady is to go back to bed and I’ll see that you have some aspirin and a hot drink.”
Louisa heaved herself painfully out of the chair dragged herself away; a few minutes later I went up to her room with the promised hot drink and medication but I was shocked to find Louisa laying semi conscious across her bed; my own pulse quickened as I touched her forehead, she was stone cold, somewhat dramatically I actually thought she was dead but a laboured wheeze of breath reassured me.