by Ike Hamill
He started a family in his thirties. By the time he was forty-two, he opted for an early retirement. His wife managed a retail outlet while Dale took care of the kids. After a year, he grew bored. It was a hard thing for him to admit—taking care of his own children wasn’t satisfying enough for him.
Dale began his job search with small local businesses who were looking for help with their web sites. When his qualifications crossed the desk of Ed Statler, his job hunt was over. Dale had searched on his own for four months. When Ed got involved, Dale found himself in a job by the end of the week. Success in his third career—fourth, if you counted his brief role as daycare provider—was still a few months away.
Dale walked into the small empty shop and a little bell went off. It was tied to the piston that pulled the door shut. He switched his bag to the other hand. It held his favorite computer. He took a deep breath and let it out. These were nice people—he had met nearly the whole company during the interviews—so he had nothing to worry about. After a year with little kids, he wondered if he could even concentrate on a job for a whole day, or if he would need a break for a nap.
The shop was long and empty. It looked like it previously housed a trendy clothes store. There were still some hangers and display racks standing around. At the end of the room, light came out around the cracks of a closed door. Dale walked towards that. It was much brighter than the cloudy morning light coming through the glass at the front of the store. He hoped it was more encouraging, too.
He paused with his hand halfway to the door. He didn’t know if he should knock. Dale considered his jeans. They were Ed’s idea. Actually, they were Ed’s demand. Dale had just met Ed, but the recruiter seemed to know what he was talking about, and he had been adamant.
Ed had said, “You wear nice jeans, loafers, and a blue button down shirt. Got it?”
“No problem,” Dale said.
“No, I mean do you own those clothes?” Ed asked.
During his only meeting with Ed, Dale had been wearing a conservative suit. It was the kind his father said showed respect. If Ed hadn’t been so insistent, it would have been what Dale was wearing at that moment.
Dale put his hand on the knob and tried to feel comfortable in the jeans. He turned the knob.
“Impossible,” he said with a whisper.
The door opened to a catwalk that looked down through a metal grate to a manufacturing floor. About a dozen people milled around, working on machines. They weren’t producing—they were literally working on the machines, servicing or setting them up.
Spencer Christy, the new boss, came at a brisk pace down the catwalk. He wore safety glasses and held a clipboard. Aside from that, his uniform looked the same as Dale’s.
“Thank god, you came to do some work,” Spencer said with a big smile as he approached. He shook Dale’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder. Spencer was a young man with an enormous personality. “You wouldn’t believe the last jackass. He showed up in a goddamn suit. You ready to roll up those sleeves?”
“Absolutely,” Dale said. He felt his own smile mirror Spencer’s. Dale felt his heart swell. He hadn’t even realized how much he needed this. He yearned to feel useful and productive in a tangible way. For a year his only reward at the end of a long day was to recognize that his kids were still in one piece.
“Come on. You can help us get the new shrink wrap machine configured. Have you worked on one of those before?”
“No,” Dale said. He still wore his big grin.
“Then you’re in the same boat as the rest of us,” Spencer said. “We’re figuring it out from the manual. It’s a beast. I think it will be crucial once we get the new order system up and running. I don’t remember how much we talked about. What do you know about the operation?”
“Better start from the beginning,” Dale said. Spencer had said a million things during the interview and Dale nodded along. The job had been so much beyond his reach that he had barely listened. At the time, Dale understood why nobody wanted to hire him. His skills were a year out of date—an eternity in the web commerce world, where every process was reinvented each month—and even when his skills had been fresh, they had been hard to quantify.
“Nice—clean slate,” Spencer said. He bolted down the metal steps to the polished cement manufacturing floor. The space looked brand new and full of potential. “We do everything here, from design to packaging. Every toy we sell is going to be available in that storefront you walked through. That way we can just go up those steps and see the things the same way parents and kids will. They’ve got to be engaging and enriching. I want the kid to clutch the toy to her chest all the way home, until she’s dying to play with it.”
His smile was infectious. Dale imagined his own daughter and wondered how she was coping with day care. She had been pleased as punch when he dropped her off. Her two best friends went to the same day care, and she had always talked about going there. But talking and doing are different realities.
Dale hurried to keep up with Spencer, who was already at the machine several workers were trying to figure out.
“Dale, meet Caroline. Caroline, meet Dale,” Spencer said. Dale stuck out his hand. “Oh, I guess you guys already met, right? Caroline is the head of manufacturing. Dale is the new tech guy. He’s going to help you get this machine squared. You did shoes, right?”
Dale looked from the machine to Spencer.
“Oh, yes. Boots, actually,” Dale said.
“Bet you didn’t have one of these,” Spencer said. He thumped the side of the metal machine. Dale shook his head.
“I hate bad packaging,” Spencer said. “I don’t want anything sharp, hard to open, or wasteful. This machine is just the ticket. It puts a thin, easy to open, recycled, bio-friendly wrapper on a toy that even a kid can open.”
Caroline was nodding along as Spencer talked.
Dale glanced around the space. There was lots of light, plenty of room, and good airflow. The ceiling and walls were paneled to absorb sound before it bounced around. The floor was taped to describe the layout of the manufacturing process.
“You give me a shout when you’re going to fire it off the first time,” Spencer said. His words trailed after him as he moved on to his next project.
“How old are your kids?” Caroline asked.
“Five and three,” Dale said.
“Eleven and five and two,” Caroline said. “Girl, girl, boy.”
“Girl, boy,” Dale said. He grinned. “What do you want me to do?” Dale set down his laptop bag against the wall and rolled up his sleeves.
“I’m on step two-dash-four-point-two—leveling the outfeed roller process assembly bars,” Caroline said with a big smile. Dale laughed.
They spent their morning in close collaboration. Dale found his new co-worker intuitive, pleasant, and incredibly smart. She read the instructions aloud and then reasoned how the machine should work so she could translate them into actionable steps. Dale wondered how anyone ever managed to set up one of these machines without Caroline’s help. He wondered if even the manufacturer employed anyone more qualified to put together the machine.
One minute he was pushing up his sleeves, and it seemed that a few minutes later Caroline was pointing and talking about food.
Dale lowered the assembly manual and said, “Pardon?”
“We’re putting together a lunch order. There’s a meeting room over here where we all eat. You like Thai?”
“Love it,” Dale said.
“Great,” Caroline said.
Dale recognized many of the faces around the table from his interview, but he still didn’t have a lot of their names. Caroline sat next to him and introduced him around. They all had kids. They all talked about their kids. Dale’s heart thumped in his chest as he thought about his little son, alone amongst a room full of his peers.
“You were taking care of your kids?” the guy to Dale’s right asked.
“Yeah,” Dale said.
“You
’ve got that look. You think it will be a big relief to go back to work, but you still worry about them, right?”
“Yeah,” Dale said. He took a big bite of spicy Thai food. It helped.
“Don’t worry,” the guy said. “You get over it quick. It’s good for kids to socialize. They have to develop relationships early so they turn out right. You know, people are pack animals. You look at any pack, like wolves, and all the cubs are kept together while the parents go out and hunt and stuff. It’s perfectly normal. It helps them bond with other kids their own age, you know?”
“Sure,” Dale said.
A woman across from Dale intervened, saving him from the talkative guy. She spoke low, bringing Dale into her conspiracy. “Spencer only hires parents of young kids. It’s probably illegal discrimination or something. On Monday, everyone just talks about their kids. Don’t worry, by Tuesday we’ll all be talking about TV or something else.”
Dale nodded. Caroline passed him a cell phone. It showed a picture of an infant wearing a giraffe hat. He nodded and passed the phone down to the pack-animal guy.
After lunch, Dale and Caroline fired up the machine. It worked great. They executed the diagnostics and actually ran a small batch of product through it. The operator’s manual suggested a one-person process. It seemed to run more efficiently with two.
“Where’s your office?” Caroline asked as they stood back and regarded the machine.
“I don’t know,” Dale said. “I’m not sure I have one.”
“We can fix that,” she said.
She showed him a couple of options and Dale chose the one next to the server room. He figured it would save walking back and forth even though the other office was bigger. It was four. Caroline bid him farewell. She had to pick up her oldest from school and then gather the other two from daycare.
Dale moved his desk to the other side of the office and set up his laptop. The passwords for the server were written on a sticky note and stuck to the corner of the monitor. Dale memorized them and put the note under the keyboard. He spent Monday’s final work hour patching the servers to get them secure. By the time the clock read five, he was ready to go home. He had labored all day and he had something to show for it. A machine was ready to use, and the servers were patched. He had accomplished something.
When he had picked up the kids, got them home and fed, and set them up playing with blocks in the living room, Dale realized that he had never been happier. He couldn’t wait for Helen to come home so he could tell her all about his new office. She was late. The kids had just fallen asleep when she finally came through the door and kicked off her shoes.
He sat on the stool in the kitchen while she put bread in the toaster.
“It’s the coolest place,” he said. “The whole back is manufacturing, but it connects to a storefront that’s in like a row of shops. You’ve got to come see it.”
“I’ve had enough of shops for one day,” she said. “Eighteen people quit this month alone. Can you believe it? Eighteen. I pulled into my parking spot this morning and before I could get out of the car, I just started crying. It’s a good thing I don’t wear makeup. I cried for five minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” Dale said.
“Yeah, and then Mary said she has to take Thanksgiving weekend. She can’t do that. I have two managers who want that holiday, and one of them is pregnant. How am I going to tell a woman who is eight months pregnant that she can’t take off for a holiday. Do you think she’ll ever come back to work if I do?” Helen asked. She sighed and took a bite of toast. She washed it down with the rest of her wine. “How was your day?”
“Excellent,” Dale said.
“Well that’s good. It’s nice to hear some good news around here. Were the kids traumatized by day care? You know Kelly Stafford took her kids out of that day care. There was an incident.”
“Oh?” Dale asked.
“Yeah, you don’t want to hear about it. It’s gross,” Helen said. “What did you do on your excellent day?”
“It was great—I set up part of the manufacturing line and then I picked out my office. Spencer is doing everything right. He has the best equipment and really good people to run it.”
“I thought you were head of IT. What are you doing setting up equipment?”
“Everyone pitches in. Besides, that kind of machine is right in my wheelhouse. It’s the kind of thing I would have worked on in the boot factory.”
“That’s great. It must have been nice to have something you could point to at the end of the day. You know, something you’d accomplished.”
“It’s definitely not the same as taking care of the kids, but I was proud of that too,” Dale said.
“I know you were. I didn’t mean to diminish it. You know how strongly I feel about giving our kids a good sense of home,” Helen said. “And I know you wouldn’t have taken this job if you felt like it was going to monopolize your time like before.”
“No,” he said, “it’s not that kind of company. Everyone there has kids. They’re big on maintaining a good balance between work and life.”
“Sounds perfect. I hope you work there a long time,” Helen said. She pressed her finger to her plate, picking up crumbs of toast and placing them on her tongue.
Dale didn’t reply.
The next morning Helen took the kids to daycare and Dale went to work early. He finished configuring the servers, drafted the new policies for employee accounts, and sketched the basics of the web site. Caroline knocked on the frame of his open door.
“You got a minute? Or an afternoon?” she asked.
“Yeah, definitely. I was just about to take a break from this,” he said. The requirements for the company’s web site were modest and they had a couple of months before launch. He didn’t mind taking the process slow in the beginning.
Dale followed Caroline out to the manufacturing floor. Several more machines were being moved in.
“I’ve got my staff running production tests and working on documentation. I’m hoping to get these two machines functional so they can train on them tomorrow,” she said. “They were delivered late.”
“And so now you only have four hours to stand up two machines,” Dale said.
“Exactly,” she said. “I’ll do either one, but I’d rather work on the press.”
“I’ve got probably a thousand hours of experience on a press just like that. I’ll flip you for it,” he said. Dale lost. Caroline worked on the press and Dale worked on the coating machine. He had never seen anything like it. By the end of the day, it was operating smoothly. Dale went home with another big smile.
“I don’t know what they put in the water at that place, but I wish you’d bring some home with you,” Helen said when she saw Dale’s joy.
For his first few weeks, every day working for Spencer was better than the last. Dale liked the people, loved the work, and grew to admire his new boss. His stated responsibilities—the servers, the website, and the network—took up the least of his time, and were the least interesting things he found to do. He spent most of his time with Caroline, designing and implementing the processes to produce the toys. Spencer spent most of his time with the design department, so he appreciated the collaboration between Caroline and Dale. Together, there was no manufacturing problem they couldn’t solve.
Dale was approaching his three-month anniversary when Spencer called a meeting with him and Caroline.
“Please, have a seat,” Spencer said.
His office was at the top of a winding staircase. The windows looked out the back of the building, towards a little creek that cut through the scrub under the power lines. Dale sat with his back to the window and looked at Spencer. The man’s ever-present smile was gone. For the first time, Dale noticed the big puffy bags under Spencer’s eyes. He wondered if they had always been there—maybe the cold light of the production floor made them hard to see?
“You guys have been great,” Spencer said.
Dale and Caroline l
ooked at each other. Caroline smiled. She didn’t seem to sense the approaching doom that was making Dale’s skin tighten up.
“You’ve got everything perfect down there. Efficiency is way up. Costs are down. That material recovery plan was genius.”
Caroline nodded. Dale gripped the armrests of his chair.
“I’m going to have to stop down production,” Spencer said.
Dale exhaled and looked up to the ceiling.
“Why, Spence?” Caroline asked.
“We don’t have enough cash to finish the retail space, distribution fell through, we’re not getting any support from down the chain. We’ve got a great product, we just don’t have a way to get it in front of the consumers.”
“You had a plan this time, Spencer,” Caroline said. “What happened to your backers? Where’s the money?”
“I found a buyer who wants the shop and a lot of the equipment. I’m sure some of your workers will get a chance to apply with the new owners. I don’t remember what they manufacture.”
“What happened to the funding?” Caroline asked.
Dale pushed his chair back. He wanted to get up and leave. He didn’t know if his legs would support him.
“I broke up with Steph,” Spencer said. “I’ve been having some personal financial problems. Some of my problems bled into the business, but really it’s just bad luck. We didn’t capture enough attention to get the interest we needed. On the scale we got them, our pre-orders can’t justify a full run, and you know how much volume we need to turn a profit.”
“You’ve got twenty-five people down there who believe in this product,” Caroline said. “Give them a chance to invest and we can fund this thing. Give the employees a chance to invest.”
“It can’t work,” Spencer said. “We’d be buried under the interest we already owe. I’ve got to liquidate fast.”
“Jesus, Spencer,” Caroline stood up. Dale looked up at her and envied her fire and commitment. “Twice you’ve done this to me. How the hell did I let you talk me into it again? What, did you piss it away on another mistress? Did you start gambling again? Just tell me so I know what to put in my fucking suicide note.”