I never knew when Bob would appear in my office, but I always knew what he would say; “You’re not going to believe this…” And that day was no different.
“You’re not going to believe this, but I believe we can get another 10% production out of the extruders,” he said as he pulled the six-inch slide rule from his pocket with his right hand. Most engineers in those days carried slide rules. The left hand seemed to have a Pall Mall cigarette permanently attached. The cigarette invariably had about one inch of ash about to drop on the carpet. I remember the brand because it was the same brand, Pall Mall, that the author, Kurt Vonnegut, said he was using to commit suicide.
“What kind of changes will you make?” I asked.
“Just little ones, mostly temperature profiles,” he said.
“All right, go for it. Ask the process technicians to make the necessary changes to the extruders. Tell them I said do it,” I told him. I knew my instructions would be carried out to the letter.
Bob was well into his sixties but a bundle of energy. His physique would have been described by Barney Fife as “wiry” though slightly bent. Soaking wet Bob may have weighed one hundred pounds. His face was wrinkled as a raisin and was about the color of a golden raisin. Small tufts of gray hair emerged from his nose and ears. His longish brown hair was streaked with gray and combed straight back. A slightly oversized crooked nose was above a constant smile revealing teeth stained by years of nicotine and the bright brown eyes were magnified by the horn-rimmed trifocals. Bob seemed to radiate the curiosity of a ten-year-old boy.
Bob was one of my favorite time killers. If I let him get started with stories of the war an hour would pass quickly. But I loved his stories. The plant engineer had been a navigator on a B-17 Flying Fortress during WWII. Bob was my eyes and ears on the production floor. He had the confidence of the rank and file. They respected his technical expertise as much as I did and he didn’t mind getting his hands dirty either. They liked that. Currently he was assisting me in the hopeful apprehension of the Klingon poet. This man was driving management nuts!
Every morning when I arrived at work the first thing I would do was check the men’s restroom. Invariably the “Klingon poet” had been there!
It had started three months previously with his first verse scribbled in one of the stalls of the men's restroom. I suppose you could call it a parody. It was like a daily journal of the factory operation presented as a Star Trek episode. Members of management were the crew. Captain Greg commanded the Starship GBL. Greg Larson was the president of GBL Manufacturing. The writer's imaginative poetry was very entertaining to the production workers. Manufacturing output had increased by 11%. It was indeed amazing the boost to morale the poetry had been. Prior to the scribbling of the poet, morale had been at an all time low. There were rumors of unionization and a possible strike. But all that had gone away when the Klingon Poet started his writing. I had to admit the stories, or rather poems, were quite amusing, but of course I had not yet appeared in any of the episodes.
It was uncanny how the poet would write about little known facts. The workers were fascinated by the ongoing galactic soap opera and the romantic adventures of Captain Greg and communications officer Glynis. Glynis Harrison was Greg's secretary. She was by far the most attractive woman at the plant. On the production floor tales of her sexual exploits as a high school cheerleader were legendary. Captain Greg had no knowledge of this since he came from a different galaxy (New England), but the poet knew a lot more. He wrote about the clandestine meetings between Captain Greg and Glynis. It was a number of weeks before Greg found out about the writing on the wall. When he did he stormed into my office demanding that I find the culprit. I therefore enlisted Bob.
“The poet found a new subject; Billy Duncan's new office assistant," Bob said. Billy Duncan was in charge of purchasing for the company. I had been told that he considered himself God’s gift to women. But I had no verification for this speculation.
"So he has a new assistant. I signed the transfer to move that girl from production to administration. What does that have to do with the poet?" I asked.
"Well, the poet said that the first mate of Star Fleet GBL Procurement Command had retrieved a new assistant from the galaxy Mammary Maximus," Bob said matter-of-factly.
"Mammary what?" I asked, hoping Bob would remember he had some place else to be.
Bob snickered and said, "Kinda reminds me of the Parisian cabarets after the war.”
“Parisian cabarets?”
"Yeah, you know after the war they got English girls to dance in the French cabarets. They were much bigger than the French girls up top," he added with what I perceived as a leer and what could have been considered lewd hand gestures.
"I guess I forgot that. We'll talk later, Bob. I need to check the specs on the new product back at the testing lab."
On my way to the lab I stopped by the men’s rest room. Sure enough Joe, the company handyman, was busy painting in one of the stalls. “How’s it going, Joe?”I asked.
“It’s going okay, Boss,”he said continuing to paint. Joe called all management “Boss”. Then he added, “I think dat poet fella is left handed. My sister write like dat an’ she left handed.”
I could see the writing that he had not painted over and it had a left slant to it.
“He keep dis up, we gonna hafta git mo’ paint!” he said.
“Don’t worry about that, Joe. Max will get you some more when you need it,” I said in parting.
I dropped into the employees canteen area to buy a cup of coffee. Before I could drop my quarter into the vending machine someone beat me to it.
"What's going on in the front office?" Jake asked while putting the coin into the machine. Jake Witherspoon was my warehouse supervisor. He was in his late twenties, about five feet six inches tall, muscular with dark brown hair and a rattail. It was not unusual for Jake to appear for work on Mondays with multiple bruises from a weekend martial arts tournament.
“What do you mean?” I asked as I pushed the extra cream button on the coffee vending machine.
“ We know that Billy’s getting a new assistant, Maxine Ledbetter,” he said and added with a grin, “Yeah, Billy really knows how to pick ‘em!”
“What else did you hear?”
“Nowadays all you have to do around here to find out anything is read the restroom wall. I thought you could give me an update before I had to read it on the wall.”
“You know who the poet is, don’t you? Come on, you can tell me. We’ve known each other a long time!” I insisted.
I lifted the sliding door on the vending machine and retrieved my coffee. Jake raised his hands over his head and backed away with a smile.
“I dunno, “ he said with a smile spreading over his smooth shaven face. “And if I did, I dunno if I’d tell ya! It’s just too much fun to read it!”
As I was leaving the canteen I saw two of our younger employees in the corner listening to a small radio. They were listening to rap music. In passing it occurred to me that rap music had rhyming verse. I could not help but wonder if these young fellas could write in rhyme too. One of them was holding a cigarette in his left hand!
After going by the lab and seeing the results of the new polyester product on the Instron machine, I was back in my office. Hoping to hear nothing else about the “Klingon Poet” the rest of the day.
I called Max Fooshe in our maintenance department. “Good morning, Max! How was the weekend? Did Johnny play well Friday night?”
My portly, balding, fiftyish maintenance manager answered, “You betcha! If he keeps playing like this I believe he will get a scholarship. I’d be good it he could go to Minnesota, but I don’t think they look at anybody this far south.”
“I wish I could have seen that game, but we had to go to the wife’s family for the weekend. You know how that is.”
“Well, you gotta do what you gotta do. By the way, Joe is up painting that wall in the men’s room again. You were probably going to mention that, weren’t you” he asked.
“Yes I was. I saw him painting when I was going to the lab. You don’t know who’s doing this, do you? Greg is about to have my head!”
“Sorry, can’t help you. Some of the writing is kind of funny though”. I could hear him smiling.
“Later, Max,” I said, as I hung up the phone.
Back in my office I closed my door and asked Janet, my secretary, to hold my calls and to tell everyone I was not to be disturbed. What was I gonna do? I simply had to find the Klingon poet and take appropriate action. But I had to admit that the verses were amusing, and production was improving daily. I used the rest of the day to compile some reports for our corporate guests arriving the next day. Our little operation would be getting a lot of attention at the corporate offices in New York. Maybe tomorrow I would catch the culprit. But, it was not to be.
The next day a new verse appeared in the usual place:
“Captain Greg went out to see
If sweet Glynis was now free,
For a ride with Captain Greg
Maybe a word for Lady Peg!
And may galactic laughter embrace the universe!”
Lady Peg referred to Greg’s wife, Peggy!
I had to get that verse off the bathroom wall before Greg either saw it or heard about it. I made a quick call to Max, and he assured me that Joe would paint the wall as soon as he reported to work. I walked through the production floor. It really looked good. The Italian extruders looked like new machines, although they were over five years old. The employees were all dressed in white coveralls and wore yellow hard hats. Some of the women had opted to choose their coveralls about two sizes too small. Greg really knew how to put on a show when company was coming. The visitors from the corporate offices in New York would be there in the afternoon. I continued my walk to the Quality Control Department for another check on our new polyester product testing before returning to my office.
The phone rang as soon as I replaced the receiver in the cradle of my phone. I dreaded picking it up...I knew who it was!
“Get in here right now!” Greg bellowed from the phone.
I didn’t answer. I replaced the phone’s receiver and hurriedly walked toward Greg’s office. My mind was quickly going over a story to tell the boss why I had not apprehended the Klingon poet. The last time Greg had spoken to me about the poet, he had implied that my future with the company may well depend on whether I caught this literary villain or not. Greg’s secretary, Glynis, nodded her head toward his office door and with that sideways smile of hers said, “He’s waiting for you”. The smile turned into a smirk.
His office was the biggest at the plant. There was a small sofa and two wing chairs in dark leather. Greg sat in a high-backed leather chair behind a large mahogany desk. Behind him was an ornate credenza and a huge oil painting of some Napoleonic battle. Although Greg was over six feet tall he had his desk and chair on a raised platform. Greg felt it was important to look down on subordinates.
He looked up from some papers on his desk and straightened them with manicured hands as I entered. The ice blue eyes beneath shaggy gray eyebrows peered over the gold rimmed glasses. As usual he was impeccably dressed; dark blue suit, white shirt, and striped tie. His monogrammed cuffs were visible at his wrists, along with a Rolex on his left wrist. The silver hair above his wide forehead was carefully styled.
“Sit,” he ordered, “we have business to take care of!”
“Yessir,” I said, as I perched on the edge of one of the wing chairs. Greg could become almost violent at times. He would yell at us during staff meetings and sometimes pound his desk with his fists. Then he would frequently turn off his hearing aids so as not to hear our responses!
“As you know we have visitors from corporate offices in New York due this afternoon. Before they get here we have to take care of a few things,” he said in his clipped Northeastern voice. Although he had been in the South many years his New England accent returned when he was excited.
“I’m listening.” I hoped he did not see me cringing.
“Everyone is very pleased with our increased production. I think you’ve done a great job, but…”
“Here it comes,” I thought, the hammer is about to drop.
“...you’ve really done too well. We now have too much inventory! So… I want you to reduce our labor force by three people. Just go by Human Resources and get the three least senior employees from Larry. I’ve called him already. He’ll have the names ready for you. The usual severance pay, et cetera, et cetera. I want it done by the time our guests get here,” and in the words of Jean-Luc Picard he added, “Make it so!”
His attention returned to the papers on his desk, and I quickly followed the boss's orders to the letter. We would be ready for our visitors that afternoon. All went well, and at dinner with our corporate superiors that evening, Greg and I basked in the accolades of the New Yorkers.
The next day I came into work early, although I was somewhat groggy. As usual I checked the men’s room first. To my surprise there was no poetry on the walls. It was over. And we never learned who the Klingon Poet was.
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This is basically a true story. I was the assistant to the president of the company. All the names have been changed of course. Certain liberties were also taken with descriptions.
