CHAPTER 179: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET OLD JOBS AND NEW BEGINNINGS MARKETING MYSELF TO THE END 1999

 CHAPTER 179 MARKETING MYSELF TO THE END OF THE WORLD 1999-

 

 I had not wanted to leave that job in Sales Support under Dave Ernst.  It had been exactly two years since I had come to accounting.  Now, WTC posts job openings every week. New jobs go up on Tuesday and are taken down after the following Monday. You are supposed to post during that period. It was suddenly the Tuesday one week after I Saw the posting, beyond the deadline. But what the heck, I probably wouldn’t get it anyway, so I got a job posting form and applied.

I received a call from Human Resources the next day. They had
received my application.  It was beyond the deadline, but they were going to forward it on to the hiring manager anyway.  However,  they added, “WITH WHERE YOU ARE ON THE SALARY BAND THE HIRING MANAGER WILL PROBABLY NOT CONSIDER YOU.”  In other words I was too expensive.

Yet the very next day the same Human Resources person called me and said I have an interview at such and such a time that Friday.  Now as I mentioned, just before I had left Dave’s division, Rita Turner had been made a Senior Manager and Sales Support had been moved to marketing reporting to her, no longer to Robert Harra,  and then she had reorganized two groups and placed Marketing Research under Dave as well.  Jim Wadsworth was the section manager of marketing Research and at the same time accounting had got the PMG profitability System project, Jim had got approval to purchase the AnalytiX System. Both systems cost $5,000.000 each.

There had been some further developments since the purchase of Analytix.   For one, Jim  had posted out a few months prior to when I tried to post back in.  He had gone into a new Marketing Division called Branding. (No, he wasn’t a cowboy rounding up steers.)  Branding was to develop the new Image of Wilmington Trust (high was really rather dull). Jim got the job and found himself reporting to a twenty-six year old woman named Wendy Kopp (right). She wasworking with the High  Net Worth market.

Dave’s division meanwhile had been reorganized into three sections.  Strong Points headed by, my friend, Deborah Williams. Joyce Babiarz was still doing Gemini and reported to Deborah. Also reporting to Deborah was Janet, a part-time data entry clerk.  Basically the same unit I had once been in and I was expecting to replace Terry, who had replaced me as Strong Points Administrator and now retired and was already gone.

The second station was Marketing Research, with a man named Barry Stepko now in Jim Wadsworth old Section Manager position. (Pictured left with his family.)

  Reporting to him were Larry Davis, Tina Armour  and Nathan Hardy, all research analysts.  Larry Taylor was the son of Barney Taylor, former Chairman and President.  Larry was about thirty and a recovering alcoholic with a wild past that for some reason had not prevented him from getting a good job at WTC.  Still, I liked Larry.  He was irreverent and funny despite his connections.

The third section was new and called Marketing Information. This
was the group who  used the AnalytiX system to do Marketing Analyst, prepare lists, segmentation, and other stuff. The Section manager was Harry Urian (right). 

 

Reporting to him was an analyst named Kim DeSabatino (Pictured on the left between  Nathan Hardy and John Behringer in Vail, Colorado.) and a technical system guy named Rick Kazmarczyk.  (Pictured right in Vail, Colorado)

There was also a Secretary-Reception named Mawla Hanza (she was Egyptian), who did those duties for everyone. 

Perhaps I should have taken note of the signs.  There were twelve people.  I would be the unlucky thirteenth. 

The second sign was that my new job was located in the dreaded Pei Building (Pictured right
). I,M, Pei, )pictured right in front of the Pyramid he designed in front of the Louve,) a world-renowned architect had designed designed the Pei Building. Left)  It is an internationally
famous building. It is tall and skinny.  Inside it is dark and ugly. The pipes  and wiring and beams are all exposed.  The floors are uneven. Things don’t work. It was evacuated once because they though the steel bands that held it together were breaking. But it is a renowned building. 

I remember being in a meeting there once and they wanted to show slides. There was no light switch in the meeting room.  You had to find the circuit breaker panel in a closet in the hall to turn out the meeting room lights, which also turned out several office lights.  But it is a renowned building.  

John Behringer was nervous whenever we had a meeting in the meeting room, because he had a worse fear of height than I. The one side of the meeting room was all floor to ceiling windows and the floor was not level. It slanted to the window side and you could easily slide in that direction until you were looking straight down from the high floor we were occupying to the sidewalk far below. But it is a renowned building.

The third sign to me  should have been at the interview with Dave upon my arrival, when Dave said we are going to make some changes and you will not be reporting directly to me, but to Harry.  How odd.  Harry had nothing to do with Strong Points.

I got the job and they dropped a bomb on me.  I was not going to administer Strong Points.  They were going to give Strong Points to Joyce along with her Gemini system. I was going to be an Analyst on AnalytiX. I was to start on February 25, 1999, another day to live in infamy.  

Prior to that date, I had two weeks left in Accounting. Everything  on the new job was to be made ready for when I arrived.  A computer would be setup with AnalytiX.  My phone would be made ready. 

Then a week later I got a call from Deborah saying the telephone guy had been there and  said the phone installation had been canceled because Larry Meredith was leaving the bank.

WHAT!!!!!!!

Scared me to death.

Here is what happened. Prior to me applying for this job in Marketing, it had been decided to rearrange the cubicles in Accounting.  I was supposed to move to a cubicle behind my Unit Manager.  An order had been placed 

to move my telephone to that cubicle. So one day this six-foot eight, 400-pound guy shows up (his name was Tiny, what else).  He had a tool belt and said he was there to move  my phone.  My supervisor says, “oh we’re not going to do that now, Larry is leaving.” They though he was there to move my phone across the aisle, instead he was there to move it across the street.  So Tiny leaves, goes over to Dave’s area and says I ain’t coming. 

The signs of the devil at work were everywhere!

Well, I got that rumor stopped and eventually reported to work at my new job, in my new brown TIN cubicle.  Yes TIN.  It looked like it was wood, but when you rapped on it you discovered it was some kind of thin metal.  I was canned fish.

And no telephone. Nope, telephone had never made it. And no computer. Nope, computer never made it.  Thus we spent my first week trying to get hardware in place, which we did. And oops! Rick can’t get AnalytiX to work on my PC.  For the next two months most of our time was taken in trying to get AnalytiX to work on my PC.  

AnalytiX is not like using Access or Excel.  You have to key in coded instructions to get anything, and you have to be careful, because if you misplace a comma or use “every” instead of “any” or use one too few or one too many parenthesizes, you get the wrong information.

By the way, there was another added source of confusion in this division. Of the 13 people, we had a Harry, a Barry and two Larrys. As you will learn, later there would be a Mary and a Sherry.

Now Harry, ever ready to panic decided I should get training as soon as possible. Rick suggested he wait until we had AnalytiX working on my PC so I could get some idea of what it was, but Harry insisted that we must fly me to Denver, Colorado right away for some Basic Training. 

 

It used to be that WTC issued employees a business MasterCard,
and I had once had one since I did traveling several times a year when I was in Deposit Services. Then the cheap sons-of…I mean then the senior management decided it would be cheaper to do away with these business credit cards. The new policy had become the Bank pays for the airfare, but you pay for your food and lodging and rental cars, then submit an expense account and are reimbursed…eventually.  I pointed out to Harry and Dave that I did not have the ready cash to go to Denver for three nights and four days.

“Not to worry,” they said.  “We’ll take care of everything. We’ll have it put on some business account.”

  “Well, what about food,” I asked.

“You can eat at the hotel and charge it to the room.  Okay. And you’ll need a rental card to get to back and forth to the training everyday, so we’re use Dave’s Hertz account. Don’t worry about a thing.”

I received my itinerary from the Bank. There was a voucher and the amount paid was $1,790.  Okay, I thought, that must be the airfare and the motel payment.

Off I flew, into the west, landing at the mile high city, which
looked like any other city sitting on the plains. Around the airport everything was flat as a pancake.  The mountains  were off in the distances, not right there at Denver airport.  I got my bags and went to the Hertz counter. 

I told them my name, oh yes; they have a Subaru Outback reserved for me. They just need a major credit card.  Say, what!  This was supposed to be taken care of. They let me call their headquarters. They  handed me a phone I could call through for free. No, no, Hertz never does business that way.  You need a major credit card right here and now is basically what their headquarters told me.  I pulled my own MasterCard, not sure there was enough left on it for this or not.  Fortunately it worked.  I was soon driving route I-70 into Denver.

I got to the area they call the Tech Center and got lost.  I saw a food mall and stopped.  As I was walking into a Ruby Tuesdays, I met a couple going in. I asked them if they knew where the Marriott Courtyard Hotel was.  They were sorry; they were visitors from Delaware and didn’t know the area.  Delaware is a small state.  We have a population of around 700,000, yet everywhere you go you meet people from Delaware. 

I go in and call the hotel from the restaurant and get directions. I
had been going the wrong way. I get in my Subaru Outback, turn around and finally arrive at the Marriott. I check it. “We need a major credit card” says the desk clerk.  I say.  Say, what!!!  This was supposed to have been taken care of.  “”Sorry, sir, we have no  prearrangement.”  I give them my battered MasterCard and go to my room. I am shaking.  I am sweating. I am scared to death.  I am going to be in jail in Colorado for not paying a hotel bill.  That voucher for $1,790 was only the airfare, because Harry was so anxious to fly me to Denver he had to book a flight at a premium rate.

I have to make a bunch of calls to Wilmington, to Mawla and thank goodness, she actually gets a credit card number to the hotel that they will use. Then I find I have to call another person about a Hertz card. He says he will FedEx a Hertz card to me. And it does arrive – two days later. Now my only issue is meals.  I decide to go to dinner. And you know what: The HOTEL DOESN”T HAVE A RESTAURANT.

Okay, bad news, but I was just cash flow poor, I wasn’t destitute.  I had enough money to  buy my meals if I could find someplace reasonable to eat.  I could go drive and try to find that Food mall again, but I wanted something nearer, so feet do your stuff.  I walked across a field to the highway and finally found a couple restaurants nearby.  A Bennigans and another place called “Günter Toddy’s” after a character in the old Phil Silver’s Show and car 54 Where are You?  It had a fifties theme and the food was pretty good. 

I went to Training at the Tech Center Monday Morning.  Now this
was the basic training for AnalytiX.  It was supposed to be for three days.  It cost $1,500 a day. Harry didn’t want to pay $4,500 dollars, so he asked them to squeeze it all into two days.  He would pay premium airfare, but not for full training. (If he had scheduled ahead some he could have gotten a round trip under four hundred dollars. So he paid $1,390 and saved $1,500 on training. The brilliant business mind at work.  He saved the bank a net of $110.  And in turned out Experian could not quite squeeze the three days into two, so I never got some of the most important parts of the training.

I flew home with what knowledge I had, to put it to practice, but AnalytiX still didn’t work on my PC and so I couldn’t practice.  I could only wait out Rick trying to figure out the problem and listen to him and Kim call each other names and Harry and Kim call each other names and Rick and Harry call each other names and see Nathan Hardy and Kim (pictured left with John Behringer)  always

disappearing to parts unknown and see Dave hiding in a corner of his office like a hermit and  listen to Joyce whimper about not understanding the Strong points System, when she showed up for work.

And begin to wonder…what is wrong with this picture?  I think I  am Alice in a modern Wonderland.  Harry is the Jabberwocky and Rick (on right)  is the Mad Hatter and Kim is the Evil Red Queen and Nathan is the Cheshire Cat and Dave is the Dormouse hiding in the teacup.  Oh, I wish I could find the rabbit hole out of here.

And then things got worst.