“Good morning, Mr. Davis,” Tim said, apparently unfazed by his boss’s brusque manner.
“How are you at taking tests, Tim?”
“Pardon me, sir?”
“Are you a betting man?”
“It’s been a couple of years since Las Vegas, Mr. Davis, but I got out of there without getting married.”
“Good. Then cal me Alan.”
“Alan. Thank you, I wil ,” Tim replied, though not with a great deal of comfort. Then he fil ed his lungs with air and said, “I have the quotes for the repairs we’l need to implement for the Riyadh refinery, sir. Do you want to go over them with me?”
“Hel no, Tim. I don’t want to go over them with you; I want to see how you handle it. I’m not paying you to talk things over. I’m paying you to make decisions and take action. If you mess it up you’l fail the test, and I may have to chew you out or kick your butt from here to the first floor, and it won’t matter how many MBAs you have.” Alan bit back a smile.
“Thanks for the confidence, Mr. Davis––Alan. Consider it done.” Tim tucked the papers under his arm and prepared to leave. “By the way, word has it we may be looking at a couple of new business opportunities in the Arab world––anything I should know about?”
Everyone in the company had been speculating about the activities on the eighth floor and the new tenant, Mil ar Import and Export Co., that Marie Chavez and Brian Hal had been in and out of so many times. But Alan wasn’t going to fan the fire by involving the likes of Tim Pol ack.
“I’m not real keen on speculation, Tim. So let’s focus on those quotes, shal we, and get that refinery back up and running, okay?”
“I’m on it, sir. Thank you.”
“Got a minute, Alan?” Harry Neumann said, peeking into Alan’s open door not twenty minutes later.
“I was just thinking about you, Harry. Come on in. Sit down,” Alan replied. This wasn’t a lie; Alan had been thinking about Adala on and off al day, and here in the flesh was the man in charge of their advertising campaign.
“Sorry to bust in on you, but we’ve been bombarded with cal s and e-mails ever since we placed our ads for Arabic speaking people. I thought you’d want an update.”
“Excel ent. Let’s hear it.” Alan leaned across his desk.
“We have a list of 612 inquiries already. More, actual y, but a lot of the cal ers have refused to give their names.”
“That’s amazing,” said Alan, his surprise genuine.
“And what’s even more amazing is that we haven’t even tal ied the written inquiries from our PO Box. We’l have the results of that by this evening.”
“How are you handling the review process?”
“The answering service is keeping up with the cal s just fine. I’ve got two shifts of three people each from my office sorting things out. So that’s under control. But I have feeling I’l need some temporary help on the written stuff. I have our temp service ready to send over some experienced HR people once I get a count on the written responses,” Harry said. If he sounded slightly overwhelmed, there was also an element of excitement in his voice. “I say we keep up the advertising because we know we’l probably end up rejecting most of these guys once we sort through their applications.”
“You’re right,” Alan said. “Get me that list by tomorrow morning, wil you Harry?
Let’s say Eight thirty. I know I’m putting the squeeze on, but I’ve got a meeting at 10:00, and our recruiting efforts are on the agenda.”
“No problem. Eight thirty.”
“Thanks for a good job, Harry,” Alan said. “Look for a case of Merlot in your Christmas stocking this year.”
Everyone in the company knew that Harry Neumann was a wine connoisseur of sorts and despised al the Merlot blends. “You real y know how to hurt a guy, boss. Thanks a lot.”