Grand Romantic Delusions Chapter 08: The Connection

     Katie McEllern drove back to her hotel. There was no sense in making further contact with O'Keefe just now—he'd only get suspicious. Besides, she was beginning to think there was something more to this case—something she wasn't being told.

     The way Katie saw it, she could take one of three possible courses of action from here. She could continue shadowing O'Keefe and maybe do some independent background research on him. She could track down the woman from the BMV that O'Keefe seemed to be searching for and hope that he would come to her. Or she could find out more about LaBelle Labs and see if her hunch was correct. Of course, there was always the option to do any combination of—or even all of these.

     After parking in the hotel garage she took the stairs up 16 flights to her room. Katie did her best to keep in shape—sometimes to a fault. It was important to her line of work, though. You never knew when you might have to chase someone down. You also never knew when you might have to flee a scene on foot. This kind of thinking had been labeled "paranoia" by her superiors at the Agency—and that was just one of the many reasons why she worked independently now.

Dear Corporate America: Stop it! Just … Fucking … STOP IT!

As the company continues to evolve its branding identity, we are making proactive structural adjustments in order to allow the management team to be better positioned for leveraging anticipated growth sectors while taking a more strategic role in driving the company forward.  

Our current structure has served us well to date, but it is not ideally suited to optimize additional new methods for business inter-operations. As such, we will be moving to a more strategically functional structure in this area, which is similar to the current structures in other areas of our business model. 

The newly created group will also evolve as we bring everyone involved in the core business needs of the department together within this group. We expect to be able to leverage synergies between the various roles while allowing greater strategic flexibility, thus allowing us to react to ever changing and increasingly complex business needs within the core competencies of  this departmental function. This new group will become primarily responsible for forecasting needs while managing expectations and logistics and ensuring that the overall solutions utilized to support the businesses are optimized across all sectors. We will finalize and communicate the specific structure and roles within this group at a future date, while the organizational structure of the business division will remain poised to support the growth needs of the business as they arise.

In terms of addressing the question of open positions in the organization, these new positions will provide us with anticipated resources needed to not only support long-term strategic growth but to also take a more active role in driving the business forward in the short term.

We sincerely hope you share our excitement as we continue to the next chapter our company's future. Our team looks ahead with an unyielding sense of commitment and the deepest dedication to what we hope to accomplish through this forward-looking evolutionary phase of growth.  We are embracing a heightened sense of enthusiasm and urgency for scalable improvement and continuous excellence moving forward.

The Ballad of Arthur Workroom

(Inspired by a nameplate sign hanging outside an office in my place of work.)

Long ago there was a man,
Known now only in tales,
He conquered beasts and Layout files,
And even helped with Sales.


He came to work here one fine day,
In chambray shirt and tie,
A stack of proofs before him stood,
Near unto a mile high.


He did not blink nor flinch nor fail,
Confronted with this work,
He got right down to bus'ness,
Correcting with a smirk


He worked his way right down the pile,
Because he took a vow,
In Punctuation or grammar,
No error to allow.


He checked all offers, prices, codes,
And Postal he checked twice,
To the relief of the artist,
His notes were all concise.


At last he stood, he stretch'd his arms
And rubb'd his aching back,
For he had finally come to,
The bottom of the stack


"That was a job of work, no doubt,"
He was then heard to say,
"But now my work is all done here."
And then he walked away


A man, a legend in his time,
None know from whence he came,
A hero, some say, from beyond,
Art Workroom was his name.