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From: "Bill Morgan" <morg105829@hotmail.com>
Subject: {Morgan}NEW Turnaround 1/16 M/F Rom - lite sex
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Author's note: If you are looking for wall-to-wall sex, look elsewhere. 
This book is a romance with a business setting. Beyond that, the sex is 
comparable to - or less than - what one would find in almost any work of 
popular fiction.

Permission is granted to post on any free site, as long as the copyright 
statement is included. Please advise the author of any such postings.

Comments are welcome and encouraged. Please address me at 
morg105829@aol.com.

I hope you enjoy the book. My plan is to post a chapter each weekday; it 
will take about three weeks for it all to be up.

Six-Month Turnaround

Copyright 1992, 1998 by Morgan. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Clifford Fitzpatrick eased his car into the parking lot at the 
headquarters of Murphy Manufacturing Company in the outskirts of 
Milwaukee. He saw a parking place immediately adjacent to the building 
entrance with a newly-painted sign reading President and immediately 
below the title, C J Fitzpatrick. He pulled into the spot and parked.

Cliff Fitzpatrick was a trim six feet two with sandy brown hair and blue 
eyes. He looked like an athlete and moved like one. As he got out of the 
car, he looked down the row of what were obviously executive parking 
spaces, and saw that most were still empty. It was eight-fifteen on a 
Monday morning in early April but Cliff was not surprised. Although he 
had been told that working hours at Murphy Manufacturing began at eight 
o'clock, the late arrival of executives was just one more sign of a 
general slackness in the operation. Normally an early starter, Cliff had 
waited a few extra minutes this morning, his first at Murphy and his 
first as its president. He wanted to give the other people a chance to 
arrive before him. He noticed there was a row of signs similar to his 
own running down the line of preferred parking spaces. Clearly, the 
sequence of names was the corporate pecking order presented for all the 
world to see.

Cliff entered the building and was greeted by name by the recep tionist. 
Obviously, she had been told to expect him and had been watching for 
him. Going up to the second floor which served as the executive offices 
of the company he went around to the corner where he knew his new office 
was. He found his secretary, Sandra Donnell, sitting expectantly at her 
desk waiting for him.

She rose from her chair and held out her hand. "Good morning, Mr. 
Fitzpatrick. Welcome to Murphy Manufacturing!" Cliff was sur prised at 
the firmness of her grip.

"Good morning, Miss Donnell," he replied. "Could you arrange for someone 
else to cover our phones for a while? I want to talk with you and I 
don't want us to be disturbed." While the girl made arrangements Cliff 
entered his office and sat down in the big chair behind the desk.

* * *

Cliff Fitzpatrick was thirty-two years old, five years out of Harvard 
Business School and two days out of Cumings & Company, one of the 
world's preeminent management consulting firms. He had accepted the 
position of president of Murphy while recognizing the risks. He had 
agreed with Ezra Stiles, the trustee of the Murphy estate, on specific 
performance objectives to be achieved by September 30 - just six months 
away. At the same time he recognized that, had he been unwilling to 
accept the very ambi tious targets, he would not have been offered the 
position. Cliff was relying on being able to make dramatic improvements 
in operations, even if not quite up to the objectives he had agreed to. 
Privately, he believed them to be unreachable, but he thought he could 
get close enough to have his contract renewed anyway.

He thought about the decision he had made. Murphy was in the Fortune 
second 500 in size with sales of about $500 million a year. It was an 
old-line automotive supplier with a good reputa tion in the industry. 
However, Cliff's investigation before taking the position showed 
conclusively - to him at least - that the company was in trouble. It was 
a victim of dry rot on the inside. The numbers were all trending in 
unpleasant directions although the trends were not yet apparent to the 
outside. He reminded himself that he had an appointment with a 
securities analyst from Chicago who was scheduled to visit him on 
Friday. Cliff suspected that the analyst who claimed to follow Murphy 
had noticed the trend in the numbers. He recognized it would take some 
fast talking to avoid a very negative report which would be followed by 
a sharp drop in Murphy's stock price. Because of the ownership position 
of the Murphy estate - about 65 percent of the shares - the stock did 
not qualify for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange and so was 
traded on the American Stock Exchange instead.

Cliff was a man in a hurry. He recognized that the odds against a 
successful turnaround - achieving the promised operating results in just 
six months - were very high. Weighing against those odds, though, were 
two other factors. First, he had saved some money while he was with 
Cumings, and had received a big jump in salary - to $200,000 a year - 
when he joined Murphy. Second, there was Stephanie Simpson. Stephanie 
was the beautiful dark-haired daughter of George Simpson, Chairman, 
Chief Executive Officer and largest individual shareholder of Ajax 
Industries, Inc. When they were together in bed Saturday night, she 
again tried to get him to refuse the Murphy position and join Ajax 
instead. He was madly in love with Stephanie so he could not really sort 
out his feelings. From the first time he mentioned to her that he was 
thinking of leaving Cumings and going into private industry, she had 
been after him to join Ajax as a staff vice president in stead. He 
reflected that she had run through the full gamut of her emotions as she 
tried to persuade him, stopping just short of rage.

Cliff examined the relationship he enjoyed with this beautiful girl who 
had a successful career of her own in public relations. Although, he 
admitted, she *was* working on the Ajax account. She was five feet six 
inches tall with dark hair and a voluptuous figure. He reflected that 
she was soft all over. Occasionally, as a great favor she would permit 
him to share her bed as she had on Saturday night. Thinking about the 
offer from Ajax, Cliff decided that it was more a gift to a prospective 
son-in-law than a real job. He didn't like the idea of being a kept man, 
even though Stephanie had been introducing him to her friends as her 
fiance. Cliff wanted to make it on his own in a company he was running. 
He recognized that only the problems at Murphy, coupled with his 
performance objectives and the very short time horizon to reach them, 
had made this opportunity possible. He was objective enough about his 
position to know that the situation he faced was the only one in which 
an ex-consultant with no direct management experience would have 
possibly been considered. Well, Cliff thought, there was my time as 
Gunnery Officer on a destroyer. That was managing something. Murphy with 
its eight hundred employees was only his second shot.

* * *

Cliff looked at Sandra Donnell as she entered his office. She was a tall 
girl - about five feet eight, he thought - with a lovely face and a very 
trim figure. She was conservatively dressed in a tweed skirt and a loose 
fitting beige sweater worn with a single strand of pearls. The tan color 
set off her hair which was a lovely shade of auburn. He noticed that she 
did not have the very fair complexion that often accompanied the hair 
color. In fact she had a tan suggesting she had vacationed in the sun 
recently. She had her stenographic notebook with her and took a seat 
next to his desk. Her pencil was poised for dictation.

"Do you go by Sandra, Sandy, or something else?" Cliff asked.

Startled, she looked up and then smiled, "My friends call me Sandy," she 
answered.

"May I call you Sandy, then? And I would appreciate it if you would call 
me Cliff. I'm used to informality even though I gather it's not the 
style here at Murphy. In fact, I haven't encountered such formality 
since I worked on a consulting assignment for an old-line insurance 
company."

"Of course you may," she replied with a quick smile. "And you're right. 
Things have become rather formal around here lately. I haven't been here 
that long myself on a full-time basis, but I gather things were more 
informal when Mr. Murphy was still active in the company. I hope you 
don't mind, but I scheduled a staff meeting for you at ten in the board 
room to meet the senior executives. Do you have some dictation for me?"

"No, Sandy, I don't. I want to level with you. This is going to sound 
strange since we only really met a few minutes ago..." Then he 
remembered. "But you were present when I met with Mr. Stiles, weren't 
you?"

She smiled, and he noticed again how her smile lighted up her face. He 
also noticed laugh lines suggesting that she smiled often. "I was here 
hiding in the corner. I'm surprised you even noticed me. I never did 
learn why Mr. Stiles wanted me to be in the room, though."

Cliff continued, "At any rate, I'm the stranger around here and I need 
all the help I can get. Sandy, let's be honest. If you don't like me, 
you can cut my throat... or rather, just watch as I cut my own. I have 
several changes in mind, beginning right now. I would like to sound you 
out first and get your thoughts on the probable company reaction. Would 
you mind?"

Sandy looked a bit skeptical. "That wouldn't make me a spy, would it?" 
she asked.

"I certainly hope not!" he replied. "I just want your opinion. I have 
the feeling that you know a lot about this place. Am I right? After all, 
you have been the president's secretary for quite a while, haven't you?"

"Yes, sir. I worked for poor Mr. MacDougal for three years after I got 
out of school. Is the staff meeting at ten o'clock okay?"

"That's fine. Now, some basics: First, where does a guy go for coffee 
around here?"

Sandy reddened, "I'm sorry, sir! I forgot to ask if you wanted any. Mr. 
MacDougal ended the coffee service on the executive floor over a year 
ago. I think someone spilled coffee on some business papers or 
something. But I could get some for you from the cafeteria if you would 
like?"

"Why don't we both just take a walk? I never did have much of a chance 
to look around. He smiled and added, "But you're going to have to lead. 
I don't have the foggiest idea where things are around here, yet."

As they walked through the building, Sandy pointed out the executive 
dining room. They stopped and he looked inside. It was really quite 
elegant, paneled floor to ceiling in oak. There were a number of tables 
and what was obviously a head table placed across the end of the room. 

"Your place is at the center of the head table as you probably guessed," 
she said blandly.

"Who operates the dining room? Company employees?" he asked.

"No, sir. There's an outside caterer who is supposed to be quite good. 
His people operate the whole thing. The company people who used to run 
it before the renovation - the ones who are left from Mr. Murphy's time 
- are now down in the employees' cafeteria. That's where we're headed."

They entered the cafeteria which was off the factory floor. The first 
thing Cliff noticed was all the noise from the plant spilling through 
the paper-thin walls. The second was how rundown everything looked. Some 
of the people were valiantly trying to clean but without great success. 
Sandy introduced him to Janet Simmons, the manager. Mrs. Simmons was a 
strikingly handsome woman who seemed out of place in the cafeteria. She 
shook hands and welcomed him to Murphy.

Sandy seemed a bit embarrassed to have Cliff with her. "I'm sorry, 
Janet, but Mr. Fitzpatrick insisted on coming with me. I didn't have a 
chance to warn you we were on our way."

Cliff didn't say anything but was puzzled by the comment. He bought four 
coffees and insisted on carrying them back upstairs while Sandy opened 
doors. When they returned to his office and closed the door, he looked 
at the girl and said, "I did something wrong, didn't I? I can see it in 
your eyes. What was it?"

"Cliff, that wasn't nice to Janet. You embarrassed her."

"I'm sorry. But what did I do?" he asked contritely.

Sandy smiled at him and grimaced. "You didn't do anything. I did 
something. I had promised that I would warn Janet if any execu tives 
headed towards the cafeteria. You see, she managed the executive dining 
room before the caterer came in. She's still more than a little upset 
about meeting you under these condi tions." She looked at him steadily 
and then continued, "While we're on the subject, you have just seen a 
union grievance. The union doesn't think it's right for the executives 
to eat subsi dized meals while the workers who make much less than they 
do have to pay full price."

"I don't think it's right either. Is it true?"

Her eyes were downcast, but he saw her head briefly nod. Her head came 
up, she looked up at him and replied, "Actually, its truer than they 
know. The executives pay one dollar for their lunch. I think the 
company's direct subsidy is about ten dollars apiece, and that doesn't 
cover the maintenance of the dining room it self."

Cliff again noticed how tall she was. He was used to towering over 
women, but wearing her pumps she was only a few inches shorter than he 
was. "Sandy, I said at the beginning I wanted to use you as a sounding 
board. Here comes the first idea: This company is in tough shape. But 
working here, I'm sure you already know that?"

Sandy looked like she was about to protest, but then merely nodded. 
"Things are not too good," she agreed reluctantly.

"We're agreed on that, anyway. Now, if we're going to get this company 
turned around at all, let alone within the six-month period I agreed to 
in my contract, everybody has got to pull his weight. We can't afford 
grievances, and frankly, I can't afford prima donnas in the executive 
suite. I gathered from your comment that executives are rare on the 
factory floor?"

"Rare!" she exclaimed. "I'm not sure how many of them could *find* the 
factory floor. As far as the cafeteria is concerned, forget it! That's 
strictly for the peons."

"Do you eat there, Sandy?" he asked quietly.

Her chin came up and she looked right at him. "Yes, I do. I used to 
bring my lunch and most of the other secretaries on this floor still do. 
But when Janet was kicked out of the dining room and booted downstairs, 
I started eating there. The food's surpris ingly good, by the way."

"Great! Tell Mrs. Simmons I'll be eating lunch there today."

"You're going to do *what*!?" she exclaimed.

"I'm eating in the cafeteria. What's the big deal? Since we're closing 
the executive dining room as soon as the contract can be canceled, 
there's no sense in getting used to the food. Who looks after the 
contract, by the way?"

"Mr. Purcell. That's Charles Purcell, the treasurer," she re plied, 
trying vainly to choke off a giggle.

"What's so funny?" he asked, puzzled.

"I was just wondering what he is going to do all day without the dining 
room to fuss over. The secretaries joke about him living on the phone 
with the caterer planning menus. The joke among the girls is the reason 
we're charged so much for the executive meals is Purcell takes so much 
of the caterer's time, the poor man can't get any other work done." She 
stopped giggling, and tried to look repentant. "I'm sorry. That was a 
very nasty thing to say."

"Probably true, though." He grinned at her and she smiled back. "Now, 
the second thing: Who takes care of the parking lot and space 
assignments?"

"Plant operations, I think." She suddenly looked horrified. "Is there a 
problem with your space? They didn't misspell your name did they? I 
typed it in all capital letters so they would be sure to get it right!"

"They got it absolutely right. That's not the problem. I want you to 
write a memo for my signature. You can bring copies in to the staff 
meeting. Effective at midnight tonight, there will be no assigned spaces 
for anyone. I want all of the executive signs removed by the end of the 
day today. There will be a number of handicapped spaces, but all the 
rest will be regular spaces. If an executive feels the need to have a 
space close to the en trance, he can arrive early enough to get one. It 
seems that the parking lot is far larger than the number of cars in it. 
There is no space shortage, is there?"

She looked at him quizzically. "You're serious, aren't you? You are 
really going to eliminate the reserved executive spaces? Except yours, 
of course." Sandy almost jumped at his reaction. She instantly saw 
steely overtones in his blue eyes. He's mad! she thought. Oops, I put my 
foot in it.

"There are *no* excepts! Particularly not me. Now, what do you think?"

"How important are the executives to making your plans work?" she asked, 
avoiding a direct answer to his question.

"Very important. Vital, in fact! However, I'm assuming that the guys who 
are focused on making the business work don't give a damn about parking 
spaces. The guys who do care have to be question marks."

He reflected for a moment and then continued, "I met the Chairman of a 
Fortune 100 corporation at his headquarters in New York. His office was 
up high - about the fortieth floor - with a view across to New Jersey 
and up to the George Washington Bridge. He said his problem was 'there 
are too damned many people in this organization looking inside, and not 
nearly enough looking outside.' To him, the inside-outside metaphor was 
simple: 'Out side' included the customers, competitors, and markets. 
'Inside' was the zingy memo, the pithy comment in the staff meeting... 
that sort of thing. Inside activities *cost* money, they don't make 
money. You don't make money inside. Did I answer your ques tion? The 
damned dining room and parking spaces are inside activities at their 
worst."

She smiled at him and pretended to size him up. Although she was 
playacting, she knew she liked what she saw, and had from the first time 
she saw him. Finally, she said, "I guess you're strong enough. Do you 
want me to see if I can borrow a hard hat for you to wear? There are 
going to be a few guys coming in here scream ing with blood in their 
eyes. Do you want me to get rid of them for you?"

Now it was his turn to regard her speculatively. "You would, wouldn't 
you? You would take all that heat? What in hell for?"

"Because," she said quietly, "It's my job. A good executive secretary is 
supposed to take heat off her boss, not add to it."

"Thank you." he said, simply. "I'm sure you could and would, and I 
certainly appreciate the thought. This time, though, I want to see how 
the guys who scream operate. I'll see them myself. One more thing: our 
working relationship. What time do you arrive and what time do you leave 
at night? I did hear 'Miss Donnell', didn't I?"

"It's Miss" she confirmed. "I try to arrive before you do so I can get 
things organized, and I normally leave just a little after you. What 
hours do you plan on working, Mr. Fitzpatrick?"

"It's Cliff, and now you're creating a problem for me. I normally get in 
early and stay until all hours. It's my consulting back ground, I guess. 
We used to say we were paid to work, not to sleep. Besides, the joke 
among the associates was that if you didn't work at least eighty hours, 
the firm couldn't make any money. You worked eighty, but only charged 
forty to clients. That was to ensure clients got their money's worth." 
He grinned and then continued, "Anyway, what are we going to do? Why 
don't you plan on leaving no later than five-thirty? How's that?"

"We'll see," she answered, smiling enigmatically. "Is there anything 
else?"

"Yes. Your steno pad," he said.

She looked at her pad, turned it over, looked puzzled and looked up at 
Cliff. "It's an ordinary steno pad. What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing at all if you like taking notes in it. But I have a problem 
with my dictation. Could we try some?" Sandy's pencil was poised over 
the pad as Cliff started to dictate a series of notes and short letters 
to friends telling them about his new job. He watched her pencil fly 
across the pad. Since one of his consult ing skills was his ability to 
read upside-down, he could see that Sandy was using a form of 
self-developed speedwriting and was barely keeping up with him. When he 
stopped dictating abruptly, she blew a stray strand of hair out of her 
eye and looked at him. He could see a faint look of chagrin in her eyes 
- and hurt.

"I apologize, Sandy. That was cruel and unkind. I think you're an 
outstanding secretary. How fast do you take shorthand? Honestly."

She grinned. "An apology is uncalled for. You caught me out. I guess I 
can manage 100 words a minute or so. I faked the test years ago at 140 
or something stupid like that."

"Do you know why you function so brilliantly as a secretary?" he asked. 
She just shook her head. "First, I'll bet you handle the important parts 
of your job very well. As for dictation, it divides basically into three 
groups: letters that should never be dictated at all, those that can't 
be dictated, and junk. I was just dictating junk. The first category are 
really form letters. The person dictating is saying essentially the same 
thing over and over. A smart secretary just notes down the variables and 
sticks them in her standard letter. If her words aren't exactly what her 
boss dictated, he doesn't know the difference. And hers are probably 
better, anyway.

"The material that shouldn't be dictated would be something like a plan 
document. Since so much thought is required, the biggest problem the 
secretary faces is trying to stay awake between words. Shorthand!? You 
could probably write that stuff in callig raphy, complete with 
curlicues. Do you, by the way?"

Her head was down, but he saw her nod vigorously while she went back 
through the pages of her steno pad. With her head still down, she held 
up a page of beautiful calligraphy.

"Finally, Sandy, there's the junk I just gave you. If I ever do send out 
such drivel, we'll either set up a form letter, or I'll just give you a 
list of names and addresses and ask you to compose one. Dictating is a 
colossal waste of time! Does what I've been saying make any sense to 
you?"

Sandy raised her head, and Cliff laughed. It was obvious that she had 
been giggling and then laughing hard, while trying to control herself. 
"That was unfair!" she said with a grin. "It's absolute ly true, but 
unfair. Bosses aren't supposed to know things like that!"

"Sandy, there are two people I would like to see quickly. The first is 
whoever runs our systems unit. Who is he, and is he any good?"

"His name is Kevin O'Rourke. He's young, but I think he's very good. 
He's one of the guys who isn't listened to much around here but I think 
he's got a real contribution to make. Why?"

"Can you get him in here? Now?"

"Just a moment. I'm sure I can." She picked up the phone on Cliff's desk 
and dialed a number from memory. When it was an swered, she told the 
other party that Mr. Fitzpatrick wanted to see Mr. O'Rourke in his 
office at once. A few moments later there was a knock on the door. Sandy 
opened it, intending to leave the two men alone, but Fitzpatrick called 
her back saying she was involved in the meeting.

"Hi, Kevin, I'm Cliff Fitzpatrick. I'm delighted to meet another 
Irishman. But then the place seems to be lousy with them. On the other 
hand, with the name, Murphy Manufacturing, I guess it comes with the 
territory."

They shook hands, and Cliff told Kevin he wanted one personal computer 
installed in his office and one for Sandy. If they shared a processor, 
it was okay, but not essential. He wanted a system in which they could 
each access and work on the same set of files. "I do my own 
correspondence in my own inimitable style. With this system, when Miss 
Donnell reads what I wrote and tries to translate it into English, I 
won't have to listen to her laugh at me from across the desk. Can you 
get a big IBM system with lots of hard disk storage and RAM?"

Kevin nodded. "Can do. They have several very good systems. I assume you 
know how to use it from consulting days. But what about software?"

Cliff told him what he wanted, and then asked Sandy, "Do you have 
experience with computers, Miss Donnell?"

"Yes, and I need WordPerfect software for word processing, and I think 
we ought to have a laser printer if we're going for a powerful system. 
Can we do that, Mr. Fitzpatrick?"

The deal was set, and O'Rourke said he would try to have it installed in 
the afternoon. He would check with suppliers, but thought the units 
would be available from stock.

"Now, who else did you want to see?" Sandy asked. "You only have a few 
minutes until the staff meeting."

"Murphy is a union company. Who's the president of the union local, and 
how long would it take to get him up here? I would like to meet him 
before the staff meeting, if it's possible."

The union president, Max Kaufman, appeared within a few minutes, still 
wiping his hands with a rag after coming up from the shop floor. Cliff 
introduced himself and told Kaufman about closing the executive dining 
room and eliminating assigned parking spaces. Finally, he said that he 
hoped they would be able to work together.

However, he indicated one concern: "Mr. Kaufman, the most impor tant 
problem we may have to face is work rules. I don't care very much about 
the hourly wage rate, or some other things like hours, vacations and so 
forth. But I care a great deal about work rules. I need the flexibility 
to reassign and realign jobs if we're going to get this company moving 
again. I'll want to meet with you and your people to discuss ideas 
before any changes are made, of course. And with your knowledge of what 
really happens on the shop floor, I'm sure you and your people can 
improve on our ideas. Can we work together?"

Kaufman, a burly man who appeared to be in his middle fifties, looked at 
Fitzpatrick carefully. "Mr. Fitzpatrick, I certainly hope so. We had 
great relations with Mr. Murphy, but since he died things have really 
gone downhill." Then, changing the subject, he asked, "Do you have any 
plans for the cafeteria?"

"Yes, I do, Mr. Kaufman. Renovations will begin as soon as possible, 
possibly as soon as this afternoon. The first thing to do is to put 
sound insulation in so we're not eating in a machine shop. And could I 
meet you for lunch today, by the way? I can eat whenever it's convenient 
for you."

Kaufman stuck out his hand. "You sure can, Mr. Fitzpatrick! I eat at one 
o'clock, if that's okay with you?" They agreed on the time, and Cliff 
looked at his watch. Kaufman went back to work, leaving Cliff and his 
secretary alone again.

"Sandy, there's one more thing. I hate to admit it, but I have the 
world's lousiest memory for names. It's a hell of a thing for an 
ex-consultant to say. I would like you to join me in the staff meeting 
and make a little chart for me with the names of the people matching 
where they're seated. Also, I would like you to keep your eyes open for 
reactions. Will you do that?"

She agreed with a little grin on her face and they walked to gether 
towards the board room.



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