"Ok I will see what I can do." Simon said hurriedly.
That afternoon Simon was planning on making a trip down to the shipyard to see the splendid and majestic ship being launched; he wanted to make sure that it was built to his specifications and that it would show no signs of weakness as it went through its first official shake down, one of many to come.
This was no ordinary ship though that was going to break all the records; Simon had come up with idea and for the most part the overall design which was a stroke of genius. It was over a mile long and about a half mile wide, the sheer size required the construction of a special ship yard and manufacturing plant to build this wonderful and exotic ship.
Simon had to get permission from the US government to even build this battlewagon which he planned to keep for himself until he was sure it was reliable and could prove its worth on the battle field. He was building this ship without any government funding using his own money and his company which was embarking on this endeavor. It was so expensive that he had to create another company under the parent which was used as a tax shield as a way of recovering some of the loss of revenue due to building this ship. As a matter of fact Simon remembered that while it was under construction the strain that it was causing on his company's hair thin budget and profit margins. But since he was the sole owner and controller of the company he completely ignored the board of advisors and continued with his aggressive ambitions. He knew the reward he could get so long as he could prove its worth on the battle field in the modern day world. There had never been another ship like her and certainly never one after her. He was planning on selling it to the US government; because he could make all of his money back and then some if he could get a contract for three or four of these. However there was a problem the navy rejected the idea saying that there is no need for a battleship anymore no matter how modern it is. But he was hell bent on proving them dead wrong! He would have the last laugh even if it ruined his company and forced him into bankruptcy.
Well now the day that he had been waiting for had finally come, he realized that it didn't have many of the main systems running or working on the ship. With that thought he flashed back to time when he was planning the project. Simon wanted to have a computer more powerful than all the super computers combined; the problem was that at this point in time it was impossible due to the inability of software limitations at that time. He had experienced this problem when his company switched to a program designed specifically for his company from Microsoft. He was so frustrated that Microsoft had completely failed because or the constant bottlenecks and slowdowns within his company's private server that allowed instant access and information sharing between each branch/area of his company. What made it worse is that he had a list of detail requirements for the minimum specifications. Microsoft was a company with a lot of experience. Yet the failed to meet the bare minimum requirements, it was mind boggling.
However Simon's "bare minimum requirements" were not easy to meet because he expected a job well done and a system that would be able to adapt to make it last for many years to come. It was supposed to be least three times better than what was currently available in the market.
He had very high expectations from the companies that he did business with. Simon was not stingy, stuck up or hypocritical holding him and his company to even higher standards than he demanded. He was of the opinion that the best way to get brand loyalty was to create the very best product that money could buy at a price point that would not bankrupt the common people buying his products. The company never had to issue a recall on any of its product lines which would never happen so long as he was in charge; and if he did heads would roll starting from the top down.
He needed to figure out what he was going to do about the server operating system. That being the case he decided that he would acquire small software companies and combine certain traits of each to create the best server operating system on the face of the earth. He needed a way to make sure that it was going to be stable at all levels of development which bothered him. It wasn't like he had a server that he could take offline and he couldn't afford to build another one.The cost of building another server would cost almost twice as much as acquiring the companies he had in mind to create the new operating system. Then it dawned on him, people were tired of using Microsoft's worn out and power hungry operating systems. So he would have the software companies use the exact same server platform and adapt it slightly for personal computers. If the user couldn't find anything wrong with it then he could sell it making some of his money back. After that stage he would then put it to the ultimate test by using it on one of his own servers.
Simon snapped out of it. As he heard someone calling to him; "Hello, I am scheduled for an appointment." Said a nicely dressed gentleman.
"Yes" he said somewhat dazed, "when was your appointment?"
The gentle man said "I was told to be here at 11 o'clock, and it is 15 minutes till eleven right now."
"Oh how cool, I am sorry that I did not respond promptly, it has been one of those days here at the office!" Simon said. Trying not to be rude.
The gentleman that was before Simon looked to be in his mid to late 20's, he had a very sharp looking black suit that looked expensive but was not a name brand. He looked a lot like Alvin all grown up, had a creamy looking face that had a forced smile on it and nervous looking eyes. His eyes were brown, but because they were constantly jumping around it gave the impression that he was shifty or shady.
Simon asked "So who are you supposed to be seeing today?"
The man answered nervously "I am here to see the man who owns and operates this company. To tell you the truth I am considering on canceling the appointment."
Simon asked "Why on earth would you want to do that? It is very rare that he allows people to get a direct interview with him from someone who is not high up in the company much less somebody who doesn't even work for the company! You must be one of the luckiest people in the world." He said with envy.
The man replied sheepishly "Well you see I have heard rumors that he is very mean, looks down on people and is so stuck up that the only thing people see is the bottom of his neck."
"Now who on earth told you all of those things" inquired Simon intrigued by this hilarious news.
"Well I heard it from one of the people standing outside of the doors to this building" He said feeling a little guilty that he had passed on the rumor.
Simon said with a smirk, "Well the only way to find out if any of that is true is to go to the top floor, and you will be in the front office where you will check in at the secretary's desk."
"Oh ok, I would like to thank you for all of your help, and for giving me a boost in my confidence as well." He said feeling a little better about himself.
When the man had entered the elevator Simon ducked out of the front desk and made a mad dash to an extremely special elevator at the back of the building on the first floor. The strangest thing about it was an out of order sign on it, and nobody ever gave it a second thought. Simon went up to it and passed a card over the top of the arrow keys next to the elevator. Within an instant the doors opened and he jumped into the elevator lest anyone try and jump in as well. Once inside he pressed the button to the top floor and it accelerated quickly. In the meantime he was rushing to change out of his uniform and change into his business clothes which he kept in there. He decided to go splendid blue dress shirt with a dark blue pants and jacket. He was looking at himself in the mirror to make sure that he looked as professional as possible. Simon was never one to make a good fashion statement; if he hadn't had a professional personal stylist he would be wearing mismatching clothes. He didn't really care how he looked to people because he thought that if people judge a person by how they look before getting to know them then he didn't want to do business with them. Well after he had finished dressing the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
It wasn't that the elevator was slow it was the fact that Simon had done this routine on a regular basis, and had gotten very good at it. Just then he got a page from his secretary from over the intercom telling him that his 11 o'clock was here.
He said "Let him in."
As the huge oak doors began to slowly open up to a huge room which was dominated by an extremely large desk that was about as long as the room.
"Wow this is a very impressive sight!" the man from down stairs said awe struck, as he looked to the right he saw the windows and what an impressive view there was. "My name is Alvin Seville, you wanted to see me?" he said nearly chocking as he said it.
"Yes I was the one who requested to see you." Simon said coolly. "You may call me Benjamin."
"Well Benjamin I am confused and quite alarmed that you would want to talk to me, I mean after all I am practically a nobody." He said with a hint of sorrow.
"I am looking for a group of people who can sing. I was wondering if there was any chance I could have you and your small group perform for me and my coworkers at the company's annual picnic?" Simon/Benjamin said feeling satisfied.
"I would love to take you up on your offer but the problem is that the group split up a couple of years ago," he said in a fit of indecency, "we were young and we started having trouble, there was another singer, named Brittany and she had an ego the size of your company and wanted to do things her way. Well one day I grew tired of it and I said to her that the chipmunks are going solo, and that the Chipette's needed to get lost. Well apparently this idea wasn't shared amongst my other brothers, and we broke up because I 'was controlling and selfish' as if! I never heard back from Simon; Theodore was always a little softy and within a few weeks he came crawling back." As he was saying this he took a seat near Benjamin because he was tired of standing and was using a tone of indecency.
"Well I just wanted to know if you could get everyone back together just for one day," Simon said with a hidden smirk, "but I guess you all wouldn't be interested in the pay because you all broke up, I was going be paying you guys 10million dollars but…."
Alvin cut him off "We'll take it!" he said practically yelling.
He was so forceful and loud that his secretary came in to make sure everything was ok. When she saw that nothing was a rye she closed the door and went back to her work.
"listen I don't want any excuses, if you cannot get everyone from both of the groups together for one day within the next week then the deal is off you got it!" Benjamin/Simon said with a stern and very menacing voice all the while enjoying every minute of it.
Then Simon shifted his tone to a more pleasant one, "I will give you half now as a good faith jester on my part showing you that I trust you and will deliver the other half after the picnic. If you cannot get the group back together within one week you will need to repay me the money. Oh one other thing I will be providing the sound equipment, here is my personal cell phone number so that you can get a hold of me whenever you get the group back together. I need to go to an important meeting halfway around the world!" he said starting to gather up his things and pointing Alvin to the door.
It was 12:15 when Simon finally got done with the meeting, and they were going to launch his ship around one that afternoon. He took his private elevator down to the parking garage that was below the building. He pulled out his keys and fumbled around with his remote which allowed him to unlock and open the doors as well as start the engine. Which he did. He threw in a small briefcase, he had brought down from his office, into his car. He was going to drive like a maniac to get to the helicopter pad to hop on to his private chopper which would take him to the shipyard that was building his ship.
The traffic was worse than usual, due to the fact that TX dot never had any foresight and were always redoing the roads just a year or so after they had already finished upgrading them. Simon was not in the mood to wait around stuck in traffic while they were launching his pride and joy. He deiced to take the back roads in order to make up for lost time they would cause him he decided to drive like a bat out of hell. He had the cars 500 horse power engine going all out; it looked like a speeding red bullet. His Porsche was the best and most expensive models to date, although he almost never sped due to the concerns of being caught by the media. He was not worried about the police. He had done some deft maneuvering by donating a lot of money to the police and in turn was given special allowance allowed him to blow through stoplights, stop signs and speed. The only catch was that if he did anything more than that he would get in trouble which was fine with him since he never drove recklessly. Making really good time it looked like the chopper might make in time to the shipyard to see his new ship launched. He could see the chopper up ahead and as soon as the pilot spotted the car he began the check list as he started preparing to take off. Simon pulled into the parking area, and bounded toward the chopper ducking low as the blades were starting to spin up. He hopped into the chopper and they began to head for the docks.
He let his mind drift back to the building of the monstrous ship. He remembered where he had left off, and picked up from there. The operating system was what was bothering him to no end, by this time he had acquired Linux and android. He chose them because Linux ran practically bug free and extremely fast while being able to manage its resources extremely well. Android because it was used in mobile touch screen devices known as smart phones; since a lot of the systems on this new state of the art ship would be using touch screens he wanted to make sure that they would function with the greatest of ease. Now the problem he had was he needed an extremely intelligent leader to organize and keep up with the deadline. After forty interviews over a two week period, no one matched the skills and quality that he was looking for. Then one day as he was making his routine tour checking on the progress he over heard some one talking and decided to look in on them without making his presence know.
There was this six foot tall woman who was taking charge of a situation that was erupting between the two sides. They were fighting over how to make the two operating systems function between Linux and android without having to completely convert the languages of either software. The thing that caught Simons attention was that this lady was a natural born leader and that didn't mind working hands on with her coworkers. This was just one of the many qualities that he had been looking for in a good project leader. After pondering for a few minutes she said why cant you make it like a process that has a high priority and just create a decoder the will convert commands from Linux language to android and vice versa. They all agreed and began to hammer out the minor details as to how they would accomplish that. After seeing all of that Simon knew who he wanted to hire but the problem was that he needed to know her name and test her to make sure she was all that he thought she was. So he went to the group that she had just helped out and they said her name was Jeanette Miller.
Now Simon really wanted to hire Jeanette Miller but he wanted to she how well she worked under pressure, so he decided to rattle her. He went to the main office that was located in front of the building. There he HHhhhhkhkhjhf;ajsf
requested Jeanette's presence immediately saying that if she wasn't there within five minutes that he would fire her when she showed up.
When Jeanette showed up Simon said harshly "You're late!, your FIRED!"
Jeanette fired back icily "I got here with a minute to spare! You cannot fire me! I Quit!" She said in an extremely high pitched voice of anger and discuss.
"Good you passed the first test with flying colors!" Simon said hastily "I wanted to see how you would respond to a situation when someone was calling you a liar."
"Why would you do that to me?" She asked with a puzzled look on her face.
"I wish I could tell you but you still have more tests to pass or fail." Simon said as he was getting ready to play the bad guy again. "I called you up here because I am infuriated at the lack of work and progress that is being made on this project, as a matter of fact I want you to decide who you think should be fired, one from each team." He said in an irritated voice to give the impression that he really was pissed off.
Jeanette said defensively "I cannot and will not tell you anyone to fire except for me! If anyone should be blamed it should be me since I am the one that the mediator between the two groups." Jeanette said in an instant with rage in her face.
"Well I suppose I should have expected that," Simon said, thinking this is the kind of quality he was looking for in a supervisor; loyalty to coworkers. "Well I suppose you are right, since this is going to be your last day here you are doing to dinner with me." Simon said matter of factly.
Jeanette said frustrated "And what right do you have to boss me around like that?"
"I just figured you would want to hang out in high society if you had the chance?" Simon said egging her on.
"As a matter of fact I would rather give out food to the less fortunate people rather than be your entertainment for the NIGHT!" She exclaimed, extremely mad and frustrated.
"I am afraid I have some bad news for you, Jeanette." Simon said as coldly as possible, "You just got promoted to the head supervisor of the server project, and once completed you will manage this branch of my company!" Simon said very warmly.
"W.. What just happened, you're not my boss?" Jeanette said very confused.
"No I am the owner and operator of this company, I needed a good project supervisor for the server project but I never could find somebody like you and I was testing you," Simon said very proud of how she handled the situations. "However there is one draw back to this promotion, and that is you must let me take you out to dinner."
"Well I guess it is ok, but please don't make it too expensive." She said somewhat in a daze.
"Good you have the rest of the day off, there is a limo waiting outside with a wardrobe planner, you will go to the store and she will help you pick out something nice, don't worry about costs!" Simon said.
"I don't even know your name?" Jeanette remarked.
"My name is Benjamin." Simon said.
