Evolution of a Business Whiz

Chapter 1

New Zealander Robert Downs' father Geoff disappeared from home with his clingy bar-maid from the local pub, only a few days after the birth of Robert, never to be seen again by his family and local friends.

Abandoned Kitty Downs, daughter of deceased immigrants from England, had taken care to ensure that her son didn't turn out like his fainéant father.

Robert became a top student at lower school but left when fifteen to work to help support himself and his kind-hearted mother, a hospital cleaner. He'd spotted a local job vacancy notice at the entrance to the derelict huge two-level former weaving mill and got the job, being the sole applicant.

He found that most of the ground floor, apart from the mid-building office and adjoining makeshift bedroom and bathroom for the building owner, Mr Reggie Turner (42), was divided into multiple lock-up partitions rented out for temporary storage. There was a lift and stairway to the upper floor that looked rather like an abandoned war zone site.

The property was sited amid the over-grown banks of the Langton River. The large town of Langton was expanding away from the flood-prone river.

The interior refit initially involved dismantling lines of old machinery and dumping all items through the upstairs level's wide loading doorway on to the dilapidated wharf below where barges once berthed to unload supplies to the mill and back-load its manufactured output.

When Robert was interviewed, Mr Turner, pointing to a toolbox had said, "Do you know how to dismantle machinery?"

"Sure, I'm not dumb."

"That's what you said earlier, countering my contention that you were too young for the job."

"Yeah, well what would you have done in the same circumstances, Mr Turner?"

"Same as you did boy. I'll leave you to it to look around upstairs and then begin dismantling work. You ought to be able to figure out what to do. I'll ring the bell daily at 10.30 for you to come down for a cuppa and again at noon and 3.30."

Seven months of tedious single-handed work followed.

Robert dismantled the 123 abandoned manufacturing machines and other processing equipment. Periodically going to the wharf, he'd sort out reclaimable material into appropriate piles from the rubbish for rubbish removers and scrap metal merchants to collect under his supervision. Acting on the instructions of his boss, he accepted only cash in hand from merchants with no receipts offered or requested.

Once Robert had gained Mr Turner's trust, the boss never again sought to check the money he was handed against the written quotations.

The reliable young worker spent most of the next two years upgrading the long expanse of ceiling and replacing all wall linings after supervising the successive pouring of a reinforced concrete topping over the existing long length of under-strength concrete flooring. That topping covered the cracked, scoured surface and holes that had been drilled up to 80-plus years earlier into the concrete to bolt down machinery and other fittings.

The entire upper floor had become a huge renovated open space ready for partitioning into storage spaces. However, Robert suggested it be subdivided into commercial offices for rent once renovations were completed. The views from the upper floors across the rivers to farmland were rather spectacular.

"Uh, uh. That creative thinking sounds like a big hit on my pocket," said canny Mr Turner.

Robert was ready to counter that expected conservative response.

"Wasn't it I that suggested to you to approach Mr Evans, who owns Reliable Certified Concrete, and is a pal of yours? Negotiate a deal with him at an agreed heavily discounted price, I said, to take last-minute cancelled orders or over-ordered batches of concrete being returned for disposal at the mixing depot, to be brought here instead and pumped up to the top floor and levelled?"

"Christ boy, that was a great idea and I saved heaps plus got added-value to the total structure."

"Then what about investing that 'saved heaps' into approving the costly fitting-out of offices?"

"I'll go online to get an idea of current prices and then I'll go around and try to negotiate deals for you to accept should you consider them favourable."

"My oath, Robert. You have a great brain for a kid who skipped school as soon as he turned fifteen and I can't fault your logic in this instance. Proceed with the costly fit-out."

"The idea is to never stop learning, Mr Turner. That's why I read books at night about basic building, basic accounting, machinery maintenance, car maintenance and small business accounting. What do you read at nights, Mr Turner?"

"Mostly I read that day's newspaper and magazines stacked with babes with bared knockers, the large the better."

"No kidding."

"That's right, no kidding boy but don't spread that fetish of mine around. Listen, once you finish all the work on the upper floor, I'll continue to employ you to begin renovating the ground floor rather than employing high-priced tradesmen. And then there's the exterior walls to be repainted. When you turn eighteen, you'll get a wage lift. I'll put you on the appropriate wage rate for itinerant labourers."

"I would prefer to go on to the ruling rate for apprenticed carpenters aged 17 and to be enrolled at your expense at night school for apprenticed carpenters. If I have to be endorsed by a registered builder, then get one of your building mates at the pub to sign my enrolment with his details."

"You crafty bugger, but that idea would cost me beyond-belief heaps, and so it just won't happen."

"Then I shall leave your employment at the end of next month."

"On the other hand, Robert... Um, Robert's a stodgy name, upgrade to Robbie. That name really appeals to modern lasses."

"Really?"

"And while we are talking names, you best start calling me Reggie."

"Why?"

"Because it suggests we are friends and that I'm not exploiting you."

"Now who is the crafty one, Reggie? However, keep calling me Robert as Robbie sounds too girlie for me."

"Oh, your wage rate from Monday will be at the same rate as for 17-year-old apprenticed carpenters."

* * *

Months later, Reggie was grinning when Robert arrived at work, punctually and he beckoned 'the boy' into the office.

"Happy birthday boy."

"Thanks, Reggie. You know, calling me boy is now rather inappropriate because I became a man when I turned eighteen around 3.15 this morning."

"I'll call you what I want to. Anyway, happy birthday. Go across to the side table and remove the cover, birthday man-boy."

Robert gasped.

He looked down at quite a collection, comprising a leather carpenter's waist apron, claw hammer, three chisels, mallet, leather gloves, cap, safety glasses, tape measure, two hand saws, orbital sander, detail sander, electric drill, impact driver, square, nail gun, nail puller, dust masks and an open carton of incidentals for use with various tools.

"Omigod, Reggie. A huge thanks. Sorry I can't kiss you."

"Thanks son. Your last comment has made my day. Most of those tools you have been using were my father's, and many are clapped out. These new tools are yours, to take when you leave my employment."

"May I have that comment in writing?"

"Fuck off, boy."

Smiling, Reggie then handed his handyman a cell phone.

"I'll pay the service provider's monthly fee for as long as you work for me and I'll place you on an adult male labourer's wage from next Monday which is the minimum that I'm required by law to pay you."

"That is really so generous of you, boss, and the phone is a bonus."

"Is it? It means you won't need to burst into my office to use my land-line to phone out for quotations. And it will save me climbing the stairs so you can hear me."

"Oh yeah, boss? You are so kind to me as you know I don't have a father and you favour me because you don't have a wife or children to enrich with gifts."

"Enrich with gifts? Christ, boy what book have you been reading?

They laughed and man-hugged.

"I'll call mum and tell her what a generous arsehole you've been."

Robert went outside to make the call on his new phone once he'd figure out how to use it and returned and said, "Mum wants to know if you would like to join us for birthday boy's dinner tonight?"

He put his hand over the phone and Reggie said rather unconvincingly, "No thanks pal, I'd be intruding on big family occasion."

"Mum is only two years older that you and she has an almost flat butt and big tits."

Reggie looked more than interested and said, Err... um..."

Robert put the phone to his ear and said, "Yes mum, Reggie is highly pleased and said it would be a great honour to accept your magnificent invitation."

"Good. No mum, I'm sure he's not a prominent writer of awesome descriptive novels. I'm not even sure if he can read. No, I won't tell him what I just said. Bye mum. No, I won't cut myself with my new chisels."

Reggie said critically, "What an arsehole, first you recommended your mother's tits for my viewing and then lie that I cannot read. What on earth is she supposed to think?"

"She'll be waiting for you to make a good impression, that is, if you are capable to rising to the occasion."

"If I wasn't your employer, by now I'd be finding if you can take a punch, Robert."

"That's descriptively awesome comment, Reggie."

The boss smiled, shaking his head in awe.

At 4.00, Reggie called Robert on his new cell phone.

"I'm in a mess, I don't know what to wear. I've just returned from having a haircut and my face massaged. Looking into my wardrobe, I can only see rags."

"Then go nude."

"Robert, don't do this to me. I need to made a great impression."

"It's only my mother, Reggie."

Reggie's yell of anxiety was heard afar. Dogs barked and mature females probably remarked that sounded like a guy having woman trouble.

Reggie said to his handyman/fake apprentice, "Robert, please save me."

Robert said calmly, "Reggie, release your tight fists. Go and buy yourself a light blue suit, white shirt and wear it open necked so that you conform to the male dress sense of today."

"Shit awesome," Reggie said, lapsing into local colloquialism, and then added grandly, "My social respectability lies in your hands."

Robert, now certain that the arsehole had in mind to woo his mother, sight unseen, felt sorry for the mid-aged widower and said supportively, "Go mate, buy that suit and a quality white shirt and don't forget to polish your shoes and pocket condoms. Who knows what might happen?"

Reggie said rather like a man saved from drowning, "Omigod, son. You're the man."

Alcohol-befuddled birthday boy awoke at 2.27 am to the sound of a car motor starting up and his mother's surprisingly sexy voice calling, "Goodnight my beautiful man."

OMG, thought Robert. His mum usually had a guy hovering around her every three weeks or so, but this was the first time he'd heard her voice in a goodnight rhapsody. That was marvellous, for both her and Reggie and certainly they getting together had his approval.

At next payday, Robert received the hoped-for pay increase and surprisingly, notice of enrolment into basic business management night school classes.

Indignantly, he asked, "What about my building apprenticeship?

He was floored by Reggie's response.

"Listen mate, for a bloke with a mother as lovely as yours, you don't want to be a tradie (tradesman/person); you have to aim as being expert in management to give you the foundation to become a wheeler-dealer in business."

Robert said belligerently, "Who says so?"

"Your mother and me."

"Oh?" Robert said, thinking, who could argue with that wisdom with Reggie and his mum being on the same wavelength?

Before long, Reggie was visiting the old warehouse only a couple of times a week. He was of course sleeping and eating with his new wife, Robert's mother Rose, and his wife had found Reggie loved gardening. Currently, he was doubling the size of their vegetable garden and Rose had him renovating the brick and tile home.

Rose's friends admired Reggie's workmanship and soon she was hiring him out to perform renovations of her friends' homes.

Robert now lived away from home.

Although tight with his money, Reggie was aware that his handyman Robert was doing well being in sole charge of Reggie's now potential huge asset. He'd been bequeathed the abandoned mill from his late father's estate eight years earlier. His late mother had been pleased that she hadn't inherited that property because she thought no one in their right mind would want to buy 'that stinking eyesore'.

Chapter 2

Local authorities completed flood protection work that included landscaping along the riverbanks and those projects had restored the popularity of the lower end of the town.

A registered partnership entity was formed between Reggie holding two-thirds of ownership and Robert one-third holding. Rose had pushed for that to happen. Once that was in operation, Reggie reduced his visits to the old mill to occasional drop-ins to check on-going progress as he didn't trust written progress reports from anyone.

Robert had found the administrative work had become too much for him alone and so hired an office manager.

There were thirteen applicants.

With his Diploma in Business Studies underway at night school, Robert's studies had already covered 'recruitment' and 'human resources' as part of office management studies and so he had a good idea of what to look for.

That explains why the successful applicant was the shortest and less attractive of the applicants. He was influenced by her comment that she liked to work independently and he'd noted she had the best smile. In his opinion, Beth was also the applicant most likely to be totally compatible with him and possessed the least sex appeal, meaning she could be expected to create the least distraction for him thereby causing the least impact on his own productivity.

* * *

Usually, everything went to Reggie's satisfaction but when receiving the company's end-of-month reports the month following completion of the renovation of the entire exterior of the building plus other 'extras', he had a fit.

Grabbing his phone. he called Robert only to have a coldly efficient woman answer and in a clipped businesswoman's voice tell him that Mr Downs would not be available until another fifteen minutes.

"I want to speak to him now," Reggie thundered.

"Perhaps you didn't hear clearly that he will be available in fifteen minutes, Mr Turner."

"Woman, how the hell did you know it was me calling? Have you had Robert's phone tapped?"

"You've said good morning to me whenever you have visited over the past three months of my employment, Mr Turner, and so I recognise your voice. As you know, I'm Beth Jackman, your office manager."

"Is that so," Reggie grated, not prepared to give an inch. "I'm coming in. Beth tells Robert to meet me in the chairman's office in 15 minutes and to sweep the decks clear for an hour."

"You mean you'll require his attendance for 60 minutes."

"Yes, and that too. You appear rather smart for a female."

"Rather like Robert's mother?"

"Yes, Miss. And that too."

Beth dropped her phone and rolled off her office chair in near-hysterics.

"Omigod, what a relic from the past," she gasped. "But I bet the new Mrs Turner will update him substantially in due course."

Reggie was impatient to rip into his business partner, but his anger was subsiding by the minute. He went to the old mill by taxi, as neither he nor Rose had learned to drive. During the journey he flicked through his copies of the latest monthly reports, refreshing himself for the attack.

As the cab headed down Unicorn Street to the mill, Reggie sighted the bulk of the building in the distance and thought how gleaming white and modern the structure appeared to be. The boy had really done a great job, and must receive credit for that before being verbally decapitated.

Fancy Robert spending $127,000 of potential profit money on signage for the building when it was already widely-known throughout the district historically as 'The Old Mill'. One of his mates could have painted that on the building in return for six pints of ale for six weeks if the boy had been too lazy to do it himself. Studying business management appeared to be giving Robert highfaluting ideas.

Outside the building, Reggie looked up and gaped.

Huge painted steel signage bolted to extend out from the top of the frontage with lettering announcing, 'Langton River Old Mill Business Hub', The illumination over the signage meant that business naming probably could be seen for at least 10 miles away at night.

Reggie swallowed. How the fuck had the boy gotten such massive and expensive signage for less than, well perhaps $200,000? He decided to reign in his anger even more.

He entered the building proudly and sniffed in distain when looking at the fancy tiling that now replaced the totally shagged carpeting at the entrance and eyed new carpeting stretching outwards and laid at a ridiculous cost to top previously bare concrete floors throughout the entire building.

Reggie stood under the wide indented simple entrance portico that had required extra space amounting to half the space of a small office ('a fucking £762,000 improvement also with loss rentable floor space') and admired the renovated oak doors that once opened to the rear wharf at the ground floor mid-section of the building.

It had also cost $2.21 million to strengthen the perimeter foundations and develop underground parking spaces for 166 tenants' vehicles and 24 visitor parking spaces plus emergency pumps for any water intrusion from the river designed to 'never happen'. But the boy insisted on provision of that pumping backup to satisfy the insurers and to provide for an unexpected catastrophe. Reggie had capitulating under extreme pressured to sign-off that massive expenditure.

Beth the office manager, one of the few females around who was shorter than Reggie, bounced over and seized both of his hands in hers and greeted him warmly. He approved that because clearly, she knew who the real boss was.

"Hi Beth. Lovely day."

"Omigod, you've called me by my name at last without prompting after all this time and I just handed in my resignation."

Reggie looked at the sparkler on her ring finger she was holding and he muttered, "Oh, you are pregnant at last and the chap is doing the recent thing by marrying you."

"Omigod, how astute of you, Mr Turner," Beth said, very red faced.

"Yeah, well congratulations and have a great life as a married woman. Since you are now practically family, Beth, please call me Reggie. You have been with us what, two months?"

"And the rest."

"God, doesn't time fly. Has the boy got your replacement?"

"Yes, it's my older sister who has returned after working in New York for eight years and I recommended her as my replacement. 'The boy' as you call Mr Robert, said he trusted my judgement and told me to hire her as my replacement."

"The stupid ass. He should have interviewed her."

"Reggie, I said he said he trusted my judgement and Mr Robert knew she has been an office manager in the Big Apple for six years."

"Ah, well I accept his judgement. Tell me, why has our monthly wage bill jumped 300% in just two months?"

"That's easy to answer, Reggie. Three months ago, the last of our space renters left and we have since renovated those areas and they are now being advertised as premium office space. We have taken on new staff to managed increased requirements. You will have noticed that in that same 3-month period that company revenue increased by 527% over the comparable three 3-month period of last year. I have four prospective tenants to show around and interview this afternoon"