Ann: A Love Story Ch. 70

"Aw...that's sweet," she said as she finished putting on the jacket, covering up her tits. "There...that feels so much sexier. My nipples are so hard they hurt."

"Yeah...I know how you feel," I said, nodding toward my crotch. "But, I don't want you to just feel sexy. I want you to feel safe too...so, buckle up!"

"We're almost there," Carol said, pointing again through the windshield.

"I don't care. Five feet, of five hundred miles, you need to have your seatbelt on, okay?"

She didn't argue, snapping the tab of the shoulder harness into the buckle, letting the red strap fall across her chest securely. "There, is that better?" she laughed.

"Not trying to be some kind of nut about it, Carol. But I care, and I don't want to see you get hurt. You never know. Besides, it's not like I can't get distracted with those big beautiful tits out in the open like that."

Carol giggled and said; "No...you're right. Thanks for thinking about me."

"That's what friends are supposed to do," I winked.

~*~*~*~*~*~

As the car crested over a yet another hill, it appeared, on what looked like a big flat plateau between the rolling hills. Hell, it was so damn big it WAS a plateau. Our destination was the new Armada Manufacturing plant where I'd be working, and it was ridiculously huge. It looked like an aircraft carrier sitting there, waiting to be deployed.

"What are we doing here?" I asked.

"I have a surprise for you," Carol said, practically hopping up and down in her seat.

"Really...what?"

"Well, I don't want to spoil it. But, I will tell you that I've made some arrangements for you. It's going to take a couple of hours, but I promise I'll make it up to you later. Are you up for it?"

"Up to you making it up to me...sure!"

"No...are you up for trusting me on the. Like I said, it will only take a couple of hours."

"Sure, Carol. I've got nowhere else to be anyway. Anything I do with you beats sitting along in a hotel room on a rainy day."

"Good...pull around to the back of the plant...I don't what anyone to drive by and see your car in the parking lot."

"Anything you say, my lady," I said as I pulled into the far entrance.

Calling it a parking lot wasn't really correct. First, there were technically three of them. There was a little one in the center for guests' right in front of the main entrance, and two other ones to either side of that, for the employees. There were enough spaces for what seemed like a thousand cars. All together, the lots were more like something you'd find at a mall.

But we skipped all of those empty spaces, instead driving down an access road next to the loading docks, around to the back of the building. As we made our way down the road, I was a little stunned that I had to cross over railroad tracks again. This place was so gargantuan they had their own set of railroad tracks shooting off from the main ones.

"What the hell are those for?" I asked, showing my naivete.

"Shipping and receiving. We have the ability to bring in freight and make shipments on rail."

"You're kidding," I said.

"Nope...it's a pretty big place, Neil."

"Yeah. I can see that. I'm starting to think I'm in over my head again," I said in a little panic.

"Don't worry...you're going to do fine. Besides, that's why we're here." I was a little puzzled by Carol's comment, but she just pointed towards a silver sedan and said, "Park next to that car. We can go in there."

Shaking off what Carol said, I decided to just let it go. She'd done so much for me, and while I'm not sure why, I was getting a vibe from her that told me I needed to just shut up and trust her. She said she saw me as a friend, and I needed to act like one.

We went through a door that was surprisingly unlocked. Closing it behind us, Carol turned on a flashlight that I didn't even know she had in her hand, and she handed it to me. "Hold this while I button up," she said.

I used the beam of the light, looking around to see where we were standing. We were in a huge, empty warehouse. It seemed like the inside of a stadium, the roof at least 5 stories above us. I turned to look at Carol, who was fastening most of the buttons of her jacket, leaving a couple undone at the top to show off her huge cleavage. Then she took the light from me, and told me to follow her. Carol's heels echoed off the walls of the cavernous room, and she led me towards a large garage door that was closing off the rest of the plant. Next to that door, was a regular door, and she opened it, motioning me to walk through.

On the other side of that big wall was the production part of the plant. Ann flashed the beam down along the wall, and it went forever before hitting anything. The room was at least three football fields long, and there were all kinds of machines everywhere.

"Come on, Neil...I can see Ivan's light from here," she said, pointing at a spotlight at the far end of the plant.

"Who's Ivan?"

"He's the guy that's we're here to see," she said with an impish smile.

It seemed to take forever to get there, what with the vast number of obstacles in our way. Most of the machinery was being installed, and so there wasn't a straight shot there...not like there would be once production was up and rolling. When we finally got to the light, we saw a man in blue overalls, on his knees next to an open electrical cabinet full of thousands of multicolored wires.

"Ah hem," Carol grunted, pretending to clear her throat to get his attention.

He turned his head, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. "Carol!" he exclaimed in what sounded like a German accent. He spoke excellent English, but his dialect was thick, and his voice was deep, obviously affected by years of smoking. His leathery face was weathered, his narrow blue eyes piercing from under his long, stringy gray hair.

He got up and gave Carol a hug, which Carol enthusiastically gave back. "Ivan...this is Neil, the guy I was telling you about. Neil, this is Ivan...he's one of the technicians installing the production lines in your department."

I stuck out my hand and said, "Nice to meet you, Ivan."

"Yah...nice to meet you too, Neil," he said as his hand slapped into mine. His handshake proved he was much stronger than his thin, wiry frame belied.

"If you don't mind my asking...where are you from, originally?" I asked.

"Salzburg," he said proudly.

"Where's that, exactly?"

"Austria, along the German border."

"Oh..." I said, my voice trailing off. "I was kind of hoping you were from Germany."

"Yah...why?"

"Because, I have this burning question that's been gnawing at me, and I thought I'd finally get it answered."

"Go on," he said, motioning with his hands that I should go ahead and ask.

"Well, I was actually wondering...what the hell does 'Fahrvergnugen' mean?"

He burst out laughing, his hand actually slapping me on the shoulder. "Ah...the Volkswagen advertisement. Yah...it means a smooth, comfortable ride."

"Wow...thanks Ivan," I said with a smile. "Okay, Carol, I learned what I needed to know...I guess we can go now."

"I think you're going to want to stay," she said as she nodded towards Ivan.

"Oh yeah...why's that?" I asked.

"Patience, Neil. You're about to find out," she smiled.

~*~*~*~*~*~

From a career standpoint, it was probably the most intense three hours I'd ever spent. But they were also the most invaluable. And I was hoping they were going to prove to be the most rewarding.

Ivan was the LEAD technician, in charge of the installation of the three production lines that I was going to be in charge of...or at least, partially in charge of. I was going to be one of six supervisors, two on each shift once we reached full production. But we wouldn't be running three shifts for over a year. We were going to start with one shift, and then quickly move to two. Then, we would eventually bring a third shift into the rotation, and we would literally rotate the shifts.

I was the fourth supervisor hired. The company wasn't going to waste money hiring the last two until they needed them, which would be about six to eight months after start up. But, the first three supervisors where hired before me, and they had been on the job for a couple of months each. In fact, two of them were helping the technicians install the equipment, because they were already familiar with it. In those cases, they had actually been operators, albeit on older, more unsophisticated production lines. The other supervisor they hired was a woman; and Carol told me she was currently in charge of writing all of the job descriptions and work instructions for the department.

While I had experience in managing people, and I had been in the industry for a long time, this was all new to me. And that was my biggest worry going into my new job...that I'd be overwhelmed by the enormity of the place, and the differences of the type of production I'd be overseeing compared to the slower, more hands on type of work I'd been used to. The lines that Ivan and his crew were installing were state of the art, highly automated systems that placed a premium on quickness of set up, and the overseeing of quality at high speeds. I was used to what might be considered a craft, and this was going to be high octane assembly.

Carol was well aware of my concerns, with the biggest being that I wasn't going to have the technical expertise that my peers in the supervisory ranks would have. She'd said all along that my fears were unfounded. She'd said, in all seriousness, that she felt I'd end up being the shining star of the department, because the skills that I had in leading people weren't skills that the other supervisors had, and they weren't capable of learning them...they were operators, masquerading as managers.

When she'd said that, Howard, my former assistant, came to mind. When my father asked me when I was leaving my position if Howard was the right man to take my place, I told him no...emphatically. I told him that Howard was a classic case of taking an amazing operator, and ruining him by making him a production lead. And that would only be worse if they made him the head of the department. And the description Carol had given me regarding my new co-workers sounded exactly like that.

But that didn't stop me from being nervous about not knowing what I was doing regarding my new job. It was bad enough that the other supervisors had a couple of month head start on me in the company. They also had a leg up when it came to the actual type of production Armada would be doing, and that was a big, big advantage in my view.

Carol knew that...and she decided to take it upon herself to even the playing field. In her own persuasive way, she'd talked to Ivan, telling him that the company needed me to have a feel for the job the production operators would be doing. After all, I was going to be in charge of hiring all the employees in the department. It was something that I really hadn't thought about, but Carol was right. How could I possibly hire for specific positions, when I didn't know the skill sets that each one of them would need?

Yet Carol was thinking deeper than that. She was thinking big picture. She wanted me to be successful, because if I was successful, it was going to make the company successful. And if the company succeeded, that meant that Andy Evans, the corporate VP that was in charge of this new facility, would succeed. And since Andy was Carol's direct boss, it came down to the fact that if Andy was successful, he'd also be happy, and that would make her life a whole lot simpler.

And then there was the personal angle. Carol didn't really like the other three supervisors all that much. She felt the two guys that were helping with the installations were jerks. She said one was a chauvinistic pig, while the other one was simply arrogant beyond belief. And she had no problem saying that my female counterpart could be a manipulative bitch from time to time. So, Carol said she was going out of her way to make sure I got every opportunity to start out my career at Armada with on level ground with the other three supervisors. While she couldn't do anything about the two month head start the others got, she felt she could do something to give me a bit of an edge when it came to the production lines I was going to be overseeing.

That edge...was Ivan.

Ivan gave me an incredible crash course on the ins and outs of the lines, including showing me little nuances and tricks of the equipment that he wasn't sharing, and wasn't GOING to share, with the other supervisors. He'd met them, and he had a similar distaste for their attitudes that Carol had. They'd made the mistake of getting on his bad side, by ignoring things he was trying to teach them. They felt because they were seasoned operators with years of experience, they didn't need to be tutored by someone that had never actually run the equipment under production conditions. What they didn't know, was that Ivan was part of the design team from Europe that developed the new technology that was built into the line.

So, first he showed me the proper way to set up the production line...all four operator positions, and what they needed to know. Then, we went back through and he taught me all the special fine tune adjustments and added features that the engineers had built in. Things that weren't readily apparent, even to those with experience. After that, he went through a whole host of troubleshooting scenarios, and provided the first, second and third most likely causes, and their solutions. All the while, Carol was there by our side, taking detailed notes for me, so I could concentrate on the hands on training that Ivan was giving me.

And that was the key. I was pretty good at being able to read and figure out how to do something...but I was exceptional at learning a task when someone actually took the time and showed me. It allowed me to ask questions, and then follow up with other questions. I went into sponge mode, soaking up everything that Ivan showed me. And the more I picked his brain, the more he was eating it up. He loved that I was enthusiastic, and that I was actively soliciting his knowledge of the machinery, especially with it being what I'm sure he perceived as his 'baby'. I knew from the moment Carol explained why we were really there that I was being given a golden opportunity, and I was doing everything I could think of to take advantage of it.

When we'd finished, Ivan commended me on being a good student, and he said he had no doubt that I'd be able to more than hold my own amongst my peers.

"The things that I've showed you, only you are going to know. But they will make more sense with these," he said as he walked over and grabbed a box off of a work bench.

"What's this?" I said as he handed it to me.

"These...are the manuals for the lines. They explain everything I've told you...in detail."

"Manuals? You mean operator's manuals?"

"Yah," he nodded.

I opened the box to find 4 separate three ring binders, each an inch or so thick. There was one for each major section of the production line. Based on my experience working with the manufacturing equipment I'd been around during my career, I knew that new pieces of equipment came with two sets of binders. One set was the electrical and mechanical schematics of how the machines were designed and put together, along with a spare parts inventory listing. The other set was the operator's manuals. The other thing I knew was that they were usually very expensive.

"So...these are for one of the lines?"

"Nah...they are for you...to keep."

Carol smiled and said, "I'll type up the notes tomorrow. With those, and the actual manuals, you'll be able to do some homework. By the time they actually start live production, you'll know more than the other three supervisors combined. AND, you'll be able to train your crew better than them, because you know the RIGHT way to run the lines."

"Yah...and there is a right way. Which means there's also a wrong way, which is what your compatriots are doing," Ivan said with a hearty laugh.

"Wow, Ivan...I don't know how to thank you," I said.

"Thank me by kicking their arrogant asses," he nodded.

He didn't mean me personally. He meant my crew, wanting them to out produce those of the other supervisors. The odd thing was...I was going to run just part of the department. I'd be paired up with one of the other supervisors, who would be in charge of other production areas. I was going to have a partner, so to speak. And based on what Carol had told me, no matter who I got as a partner, it sounded like I was going to have to be on my guard.

I wasn't worried about that any longer, though. I suddenly felt confident. It was great to have the manuals, and I'd certainly read them at some point. But I GOT what Ivan showed me...it stuck, and I knew it. The way he taught me fit my style of learning, and while I was sure there would be some things I may struggle with a little, I also knew I'd retain what he said. Carol's detailed notations would see to that. Whomever I was partnered with would work out, because we'd be a team. I wanted my shift to be the best, and that meant that my partner and his or her crews would need to be successful too. I just wanted to make sure that I held the upper hand, and now, I had the cards to do just that.

Ivan said he needed to get going...he was staying at a different hotel, and he said he needed to get some laundry done. Carol told him that we'd lock up...she wanted to take me on a little tour of the rest of the plant, since I hadn't been there before. He headed off with his flashlight, having turned off all the lights near where we'd been.

Carol had me set the carton of manuals down on a table, telling me we'd get it on the way out. Then she handed me her notepad while she held the flashlight, so she could take my hand. Pulling me along, she said, "Come on...let me show you around."

A couple of minutes later, after carefully navigating our way through the pitch black plant, Carol was opening the door to the main hallway that lead to the front entrance of the plant. I could see the gray slate tile on the floor of the hall, which was made a little easier from the light coming in through the windows of the pair of double doors of the entrance about 75 yards away at the other end.

We walked about halfway down that hall, and Carol stopped. "Wait here a second, Neil. I have to go to the bathroom, okay?"

"Uh...sure," I said as I stood still.

"There's a light switch panel down this wall, just around the corner where the front desk is. You can turn on the lights...no one's going to know we're here. I'll be out in just a minute. You can have look around the foyer if you want while you wait."

"Sure...okay," I smiled. The corridor that was the hallway was about 25 feet wide, and I walked down the center towards to entrance doors. The closer I got, the easier it was for me to see, even though it was a crappy day outside. Moving over toward the wall, I turned the corner and found the switch panel that Carol mentioned. There were five switches, and I flipped each one, lighting up the hallway, and the foyer area.

"Wow," I said to myself as I got my first glimpse of receptionist area. It was a big curved front desk, more along the lines of what you'd see in a hotel. It was chest high, so the chair behind the desk was more like a barstool height, but with a comfortable seat. The first thing I noticed was the closed circuit security screens hidden behind the desk itself. There were six of them, each with a little toggle switch, and a knob, so you could move the cameras manually, and zoom in and out. Obviously, there were cameras on the perimeter of the building, and I was sure many of them were zeroed in on the parking lot.