Memoirs of a Road Warrior

By Fred Klein

Imagine you work for a company that thinks everything it does is right but it is wrong. They are so outrageous they are comical. That is Memoirs of a Road Warrior!

Andrew Livingston, a young naive college graduate gets a job as sales engineer for a crazy company. Set in New York in the corporate raider 1980's this humorous book is a recounting of all the strange history of a high tech company with an eccentric CEO. This character gathers together a strange assortment of employees who endeavor to manufacture and sell their products to an equally strange collection of customers. The book tells of their amusing conflicts and experiences throughout the decades. Follow the company's encounters with Red Chinese agents, horse trailers, rocket fuel disasters, con-men, bedbugs, and airplane crashes. Learn how not to run a business!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fred Klein
• Release date: Feb 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781986771283

Book preview

Klein

Copyright © 2018 by Fred Klein

ISBN-10:  1986771288

ISBN-13:  978-1986771283

Disclaimer – this is a work of fiction and does not represent any actual person, character, organization, or company

Dedication

To my wife – my editor, my encourager and my muse.

              Table of Contents

Prologue

Sales Call with Vince

The Great Slingshot Caper

Chinese Government visit to TVC

The Fake Engineer

Trade Shows

Lunches

Chefs

Bubba Clyde

VSA

Vince

The Family

Vince’s Girls

Timmy & Tommy

Buildings

Consultants

Dr. Heisenberger

Sales Offices

Government Labs

Universities

Companies

Restaurants

Rivalries

Texas Trips

Other Sales Calls

Shipments

Foreign Trips

Field Service

Communications

Hotels and Motels

Rental Cars

Flying

Non-commercial Flying

The Horse Trailer

Embarrassing Situations

Sales Managers

Customers

The End of an

PROLOGUE

I had graduated college several years before but had never been able to get a job in my area of study. Instead I took jobs as a lab technician at several chemical companies. At one of these I met a scientist, Dr. Rupp. He was a small man, about 5 foot tall with curly red hair. I towered over him in height and he thought he towered over me in intelligence and ability. He told me about a company he used to do technical writing for, The Viscosity Corporation (TVC). It was a startup company making scientific instruments that measured the Rheology of materials (viscosity, elasticity). We had gotten into this discussion because he knew I was looking for a better job.

He said, TVC is high tech. You won’t fit in there. It would be over your head.

This annoyed me especially because one of my lab technician co-workers had just been hired as a Sales Engineer for a high tech company in Chicago.

The next day I noticed an advertisement in the newspaper classifieds for a Sales Engineer position at TVC. Since I was the kind of person who would want to do something just because someone else told me I couldn’t, I decided to send in my resume. A week later I got a call from TVC for an interview.

At the interview, I was taken into a small conference room about the size of a broom closet. I introduced myself as Andrew Livingston, the applicant. There I met Vince Costello, the President of the company, and Mabel Epson, the Vice President. Vince was a man in his thirties about 5’9, wearing an ill-fitting suit. Mabel was also in her thirties, about 5’7 with high heels and bad teeth. Vince talked first inviting me to sit down opposite them at the conference table. Mabel said they had noticed in my resume that I had performed some Rheology testing in the lab. Vince then asked me to spell the word RHEOLOGY, which I did. Mabel asked me if I had sales experience.

Yes, I have worked at inside sales for a chemical company. I replied.

Vince then laughed, handed me his pen and asked me to sell it to him. Vince had a loud nervous laugh that was very distinctive and made him seem somehow unstable.

I said, This is a unique pen in that it was made by the Cross company, had recently belonged to the president of a major company, and is now available at a very remarkable price.

This seemed to satisfy them, and we proceeded to negotiate a salary. Later I found out that I had the job once I spelled RHEOLOGY correctly. So started my strange, odyssey at The Viscosity Corporation.

          Chapter 1 (Sales Call with Vince)

Chapter 1 (Sales Call with Vince)

My odyssey with The Viscosity Corporation (TVC) began in the early 1980’s. (The era of the cold war when anything defense related or any test equipment the government needed they would buy). They offered me the job of sales engineer. Since there were no other salesmen other than the president, I was going to be the only sales engineer.

On my first day I reported to the corporate headquarters in NY. The human resources department made me fill out a myriad of forms which I labored at for an hour. Finally, I reported to the president and founder, Vince Costello.

I asked; Is there any training course?

Vince just said, No. Just come with me on my sales call today!

He had me drive an old green mini-van while he sat in the back seat sorting 35mm slides. I found out later that Vince never planned his talks in advance. He would just pick up some slides and make up the talk as he went along. So I am driving to Pennsylvania and Vince is throwing discarded slides all over the van saying Yes to some slides and Hell no to others. We finally arrived, and of course Vince knew the customer from all the technical talks he attended.

Vince shook the customer’s hand and pointed to me and said, This is my salesforce!

Vince gave a very ad hoc talk on Rheology, the study of flow and deformation of materials. He said viscosity was resistance to flow and elasticity was a memory factor. This all related to processing and quality control factors for plastics and other materials. Vince spoke over the people’s heads but that seemed OK with the main sales contact (the decision maker).

After the presentation, we took the main contact out to lunch at an expensive restaurant. Vince had told me before lunch not to say anything. He then ordered a very rare wine to impress the customer. Over lunch Vince and the customer discussed rheometers (devices for measuring materials properties-viscosity and elasticity). Of course what the customer wanted wasn’t exactly what we sold so Vince decided to design a new rheometer to fill the customer’s needs. (I found out later that Vince made a habit of designing custom instruments even if there were no other possible customers; he frequently lost money from this habit). Vince and the customer designed this new rheometer on the back of a napkin from the restaurant. After they were finished, they shook hands and Vince put the napkin in his pocket.

On the way back to the home office Vince and I discussed sales strategy.

Is that how you deal with customers? You give a presentation, go to lunch, and design a new instrument? I asked.

I design new rheometers only for special customers,

Vince sarcastically replied.

Although TVC had been in business for several years, Vince explained that it was essentially still a start-up. The corporation’s products were still not well known and certainly not a proven commodity. Vince said because of this the main focus of sales at that time was missionary work (educating the customer). Vince explained that most customers were stupid and needed to be told what they needed to buy. 

It was well after dark by the time we got back to NY. Back at the home office, Vince dropped off the napkin to the VP of Engineering. I thought the VP might be upset by this design on a napkin but evidently he was used to it and took it in stride. He alone could figure out what Vince had in mind on these impromptu designs.

Before I went home that evening Vince showed me my new office which was a tiny windowless room next to the Applications lab, which I would share with two Applications Engineers. I was told to be in early the next day to start calling customers. I had no idea what to tell them!

                  Chapter 2

(The Great Slingshot Caper)

Chapter 2 (The Great Slingshot Caper)

Vince Costello was a mischievous boy at heart and being the president of a corporation gave him greater opportunities to play. (This was long before there were harassment lawsuits at the workplace). In previous weeks, Vince had scheduled a demonstration of one of our products in the applications laboratory for a major tennis racket manufacturer. Our premise was that we could aid the manufacturer in determining the proper cure conditions for their new composite tennis rackets. The epoxy required a heat cure that if not correct would lead to structurally weak tennis rackets that would break at the throat of the racket. To show we could help them, we cut down good and bad tennis rackets at the throat and tested pieces on the rheometer. What was left was a handle with two projections above which looked like a giant slingshot. I made the mistake of mentioning my observation to Vince which I later regretted.

It looks like a big slingshot!

That gives me an idea what to do with it, replied Vince.

He had a big elastic band attached to it by his father’s (Angelo Costello) extensive machine shop. This made a very powerful slingshot.

Since Vince was the president and he could get away with it, he decided to shoot the girls in the secretarial pool with paperclips using the slingshot. Now of course the secretaries didn’t like that but he was the boss. In New York at that time people knew not to complain or get even with their boss (much the same as with the Mafia) because it would have great consequences.

However, one of the secretaries was not from the east coast and she was very feisty and independent. Martha Treen was a short blonde farmer’s daughter from Iowa. She had to take a major role in running the family farm early on because her father lost an arm in a shredding machine accident. She and her husband had only recently moved to New York and she was not used to bosses like Vince.

She shouted at him, Don’t do that again or I’m getting even!

This did not deter him, so she plotted a revenge.

    The president of TVC was very informal around the office and would frequently walk around with no shoes in his stocking feet. Everyone knew this. The other reason

for the no shoes policy was that Vince frequently bought new shoes that were not always comfortable or at least that is what he claimed over lunch.