28 May 2004

Open After Church

I'm in the South. You would think that Virginia would qualify, but it doesn't.

I love south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but Northern Virginia is as much the North as parts of Florida, and of course as alien as parts of Somalia and the Hindu Kush and Guatamala or any of the other major ethnic groups that have migrated from around the world.

I enjoyed the meal at George K's last night after the meetings. George himself is a thin Greek with gray hair and large spectacles. He no longer chain-smokes Marlboros. He has cut down to one pack a day from three. The restaurant business is a hard one, with lots of stress.

He came to Greensboro from a village in Greece called Sparta.

His little village made a mark on history that has lasted a couple thousand years, and we talked Greek politics and drank fiery brandy after dinner. So there is a story, of hard work and dedication. George has spent 44 years in America, so here he is, and here he stays.

I was fumbling this morning with the laptop. We were here to pay a visit to the sprawling campus where my new company once operated an enormous operation. We don't, now. We have a couple hundred people left on the job. We are trying to turn that around.

I am in Greensboro this morning. I came down with the Corporate VP who was tasked to turn the government business around. He sat in the back and my partner drove the rental car down the interstate, I-95 south to I-85 West to I-40 and into Greater Greensboro.

Traffic wasn't bad, considering.

We stayed in what is called The World's Largest Sheraton Hotel. It is pretty nice, not that we were in the rooms for long. We probably spent as much time with George K as I did with the Sheraton mattress.

Our enterprise here had once done billions in sales to the Department of Defense. After the court-ordered break up of the Phone Company the management of the day decided to get out of the government sector, and billing declined to $3 million and fifteen people down here in a building that once employed 4,000.

It was a little spooky, visiting the complex in the middle of vast lawns, manicured grounds and ponds with fountains. Once it had all been the Phone Company. The campus was sold years ago, and our little work force now only occupies a small sector of the vast brick building, dreaming in time of the 1970s under skies of Carolina blue.

The people here are still a little spooked, not completely convinced that the layoffs won't start again.

I don't know if we convinced them or not. I have suddenly realized that there is a corporate culture of vulture-ism. Some people made careers in harvesting savings by targeting people to be laid off, harvesting savings, selling off chunks of the old phone company for short-term profit and personal advancement.

I'm listening with half an ear to the local news. Schools are getting ready to close, and the excitement is about the NASCAR races in Winston-Salem and the Indy 500.

One car dealer wants me to “Come down on Sunday, after Church,” and purchase a new Chevrolet.

I blinked at that, and both concepts rolled into one. I am in the South. Appomattox Courthouse is north of here, and this is where the tired North Carolina kids were trying to escape to when the War of Northern Aggression finally petered out. We could see gun-emplacements in green fields, slumbering 139 years after they were last used.

When I get home for the long weekend, I think I am going to sleep in on Sunday. My bed at Big Pink may be in Virginia, but I will be sleeping in the North.