Chapter 25

It was summer before Jerry returned to the store. He used a cane to walk and moved with the kind of care associated with old men. His left arm and half his upper body was in a cast to allow his shoulder blade heal. His bullet wounds had healed, but on occasion the scar tissue pulled when he moved. Despite the fact that he had lost body mass, he remained a big powerful looking man.

Entering through the back door, he was greeted by everyone and welcomed back to the shop with coffee and donuts. It was a bittersweet occasion for him. Looking around the room, he could see that a number of improvements had been made in the store. Mike was standing to the side looking proud of the store.

Jerry looked over at Mike and said, “The store looks great. You’ve done a wonderful job running it in my absence.”

“Thanks, Jerry.” Mike beamed at the praise.

Relying upon the support of his cane, Jerry slowly walked down the length of the store. His eyes picked out the changes that had been made around the store. He paused about halfway down the aisle and commented, “You moved the faster moving stock up towards the front of the store. Smart.”

Mike said, “Well, we looked at the sales figures generated by Karen and established that we could do that without any difficulty.”

“I had thought about doing that, but couldn’t figure out a way to do it without impacting business,” remarked Jerry.

“We stayed an hour late a couple nights a week and made the changes.”

“Very smart,” replied Jerry thinking that he wouldn’t have been able to motivate people to work overtime like that, particularly when they were short staffed. Mike was turning out to be a better manager than he was.

He made his way to the front of the store and looked around at the sales desk. A computer terminal had been added to the counter. He watched as Martin took an order. The young man typed the part numbers into the computer, printed up the order, and then handed it off to be pulled. Carlos picked up the order and headed to the back. Karen said, “It prints the bill, updates the inventory, and flags parts that need to be ordered. We have a complete record of what each customer orders.”

“Nice,” said Jerry as he watched the system work. Although he had read all of the manuals, he was very concerned that it was beyond him. He hoped that his understanding of the programs was sufficient to use them. He asked, “Do you think I can learn how to use it?”

Karen laughed and answered, “I know you can. I tested it out on my husband and I’ve determined that it is idiot proof.”

Jerry laughed at the obvious joke about her husband and looked around at the lobby. The coffeepot was still in its place. Pictures of the truck were on the wall, along with the trophy it had won. Looking out in the parking lot, he stared at the truck sitting there on blocks. Martin and Mike had parked it there to act as an advertisement. It was gorgeous and he would go out later to visit it. The sight of the truck reminded him that he had to pick up the Camaro.

Martin was smiling at him when he turned to look at the store. He said, “It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

Jerry answered, “Yes, it is. I’ll visit with it later.”

Carlos entered the room and said, “Hello, Mr. Smith.”

“Hello, Carlos. Please call me Jerry. I’m sorry that I wasn’t here for your first day at work,” replied Jerry.

Carlos smiled and said, “Don’t be sorry. I have enjoyed working here.”

“That’s good. How’s school going?”

Carlos broke out in a big grin and answered, “Very well, sir. My grades are good and I’m making progress on earning the degree.”

“That’s great,” replied Jerry. He was pleased that the work arrangement was serving its purpose.

Mike asked, “Would you like to go into the office and catch up on some paperwork?”

Groaning at the thought of walking all the way to the back of the store rather than at having to work on paperwork, Jerry said, “I guess.”

Walking with a slow and careful pace, he headed to the office followed by Mike and Karen. Opening the door, he was surprised to find that his desk had a computer on it. He frowned as he hobbled over to his desk and looked at the computer. This was the computer that he dreaded meeting.

Looking up at Karen, he said, “Let me guess, you’ve computerized everything.”

She smiled and said, “You’ll like this. Most of your paperwork will be done in an hour rather than two days.”

Jerry wondered if the business had passed him by since he was shot. He had read the manuals and studied them with due diligence, but he had never touched a computer. Had the time spent studying the manuals allow him to use the machine? It was time to find out.

Sitting down in his chair, he said, “Okay, I guess I should have you show me what I need to know.”

For the next hour, Karen explained how to use the computer. Jerry listened carefully and tried it using hunt and peck typing with one finger. The keyboard threw him for a loop, as he found that he had to search for the keys. After ten minutes, he knew that he was going to have to practice typing before he would become comfortable using a keyboard. After a while, she stopped talking while he experimented with using the computer. Before long, he was pulling up views on the business that surprised both Karen and Mike.

Looking up after displaying a graph of sales by part categories, he said, “This is amazing.”

“So you like?” asked Karen.

“I like it a lot,” answered Jerry as he pounded on the keys for a minute while mentally cursing the fact that it was difficult to find the proper keys. Another graph came up on the screen.

Pointing to it, he said, “These three places have been reducing their orders from us over the past few months. The money amount is about the same, but the number of actual orders is down. It might be time to make a sales call and find out if there is a problem.”

Mike looked at the chart and said, “I didn’t notice that.”

Karen looked at the chart with a puzzled expression trying to figure out how he had displayed that information. After a minute, she realized that it wasn’t one of the canned charts that she had programmed. Shocked, she said, “You’ve been studying the manuals that I sent over.”

Winking at her, Jerry replied, “Yes, I studied them in quite a bit of detail. You have to remember that I didn’t have anything else to do.”

“So you taught yourself how to write queries without a computer?”

“Yes,” replied Jerry.

For several months, he had laid in bed with nothing to do except read and study the manuals. For the first month, the manuals had been unintelligible, but his stubborn persistence had finally paid off. He had spent the last month identifying the kind of information that he would like to explore. He was happy that his understanding of the material was correct.

Mike looked over at Karen and shook his head. Here he had thought that he would be ahead of Jerry on this, but the big man had done his homework.

He asked, “So when were you going to tell us?”

“Once I knew that I could handle it,” replied Jerry as he looked at the chart. He looked up and asked, “Can I print this?”

Karen leaned over and showed him how to print the document. She smiled and said, “I take it you are going to want the data in hardcopy most of the time.”

“What does that mean?” asked Jerry exposing the fact that he had major gaps in his understanding of the computer.

“It means that you’ll want to print it out to use it,” answered Karen. Jerry had surprised her by figuring out the system from the manuals. This was particularly surprising since he hadn’t known what half of the terms meant when she had explained to him the software that she was planning on purchasing.

“I don’t really need it, but I want to put it on paper to show others,” replied Jerry. He looked at the printed copy and smiled. Handing it to Mike, he winked and said, “You have some sales calls to make.”

“Okay,” replied Mike, as he looked at the sheet uncertain that he knew what to do with it. He had no idea what he was supposed to do when on a sales call.

“You’ve never made a sales call, have you?”

“No,” replied Mike.

“We’ll make a couple of them together this week,” said Jerry. He didn’t know what the future held for him, but his recent brush with death forced him to realize that he hadn’t done Mike any favors by not training him to take him over. He added, “You might consider training Martin on some of your job duties.”

“Why?”

Shifting to get more comfortable in the chair, Jerry said, “I did a great disservice to you. I should have trained you how to do my job. You had to learn a lot to take over the daily operation of the store and that shouldn’t have been necessary. Mr. Sinclair came down here to help out the first few weeks. You’d have really impressed him if you had known how to take over in my place without his help. I apologize for that.”

Mike hadn’t thought about it, but Jerry was right. For quite a while he was trying to do two jobs when he could have trained Martin to do parts of his job. He had fallen into the same trap.

Embarrassed, he said, “I didn’t think of it that way. I should have turned to Martin to help me out.”

“Hey, it’s hard to remember you’re draining the swamp, when you’re up to your ass in alligators. I imagine that you saw quite a few alligators over the past couple of months.” Jerry gave him a friendly grin and a wink when he finished.

Mike laughed and replied, “That’s true. I was lucky that Mr. Sinclair came down to help out.”

Jerry sat back in his chair, his cast getting in the way of relaxing. His shoulder was beginning to bother him. He said, “You did a good job. Both of you did a good job.”

Mike stood up a little straighter and put his arm around his wife. He said, “Well, I better get out front and relieve Carlos so that he can get an early lunch.”

Jerry said, “I’ll be out there in a minute. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to sit at the counter for a little while.”

Mike chuckled as he left the room. Once the door had closed, Karen said, “He was so worried that you wouldn’t like some of the changes around here.”

“I’ll admit that it is a little disconcerting to return to work and find that it has changed in your absence, but I couldn’t expect things to stay as they were,” answered Jerry. Undoubtedly, there were some things that he wouldn’t like but he’d give them a chance. He had made changes in the past and had to undo them when they hadn’t worked out.

Jerry rose out of his chair and grabbed his cane. His leg was stiffening up on him from sitting too long. He had just about reached the door when the office phone rang. Karen answered it and then handed the phone to Jerry.

Jerry picked it up and said, “Hello. This is Jerry.”

“Hello, Jerry. This is Al,” replied Mr. Sinclair.

“Ah, Mr. Sinclair. How are things going?”

“I called to see if you were still there,” replied Al, “and to find out how things were going on your first day back.”

“Karen just filled me in on the computer system.” Jerry looked up for a moment and then asked, “Could you hold on a moment?”

“Sure.”

“Karen, could you help out Mike in the front so that Carlos and Martin can get lunch?”

“Sure,” replied Karen knowing that his request was just an excuse to get her out of the office.

When she had left, Jerry said, “Sorry, I just wanted to get Karen out of the room so that we could talk about business.”

Mr. Sinclair was surprised and said, “You’ve been there for three hours and already have some business comments.”

“Yes. First of all, I think Mike has done a really good job of running the shop in my absence.”

“I agree.”

“I’d like to give him a bonus,” replied Jerry.

“I’ve already got one ready for him,” said Mr. Sinclair pleased that Jerry had thought about it as one of his first actions.

“Oh, that’s good. I hope it’s a good one,” remarked Jerry.

“It is.”

“Second, Karen has done an outstanding job computerizing the store. I’d like to give her a bonus,” said Jerry.

Mr. Sinclair didn’t say anything immediately as he thought about it. Instead of answering directly, he asked, “It’s rather new. Don’t you think you might want to wait on that?”

Jerry worked his way back to his chair and answered, “I’ve already used it to identify three stores where our sales are lagging. I can tell you just about anything that you want to know about our sales and inventory.”

“You sound pretty confident,” replied Mr. Sinclair.

“I’ll tell you what. I am so sure of it, that I’ll bet I can find enough ways to improve our business in a week, that the system will pay for itself,” replied Jerry. It was a sure bet as he had already identified a couple of areas of improvement that would improve the profitability of the shop. He wondered why they hadn’t gone to computers long before.

“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” replied Mr. Sinclair. He hadn’t considered Jerry to be the kind of guy that would support computerization of the store with such intensity. Usually that was a trait of a younger employee.

“I am very sure of it,” replied Jerry.

“I’ll tell you what. You send me some information that you got out of the computer at the end of the week and I’ll decide if she gets the bonus then.”

“That’s reasonable.” Jerry had identified a brand of parts that sold at a faster pace than all other brands. If they could negotiate the price down on that line of parts, then the profitability of the shop would increase. He couldn’t compare the sales figures of the past with the current figures except manually.