Chapter 4
Sebastian
“Thanks, Rena.” I take the file she hands to me and give it a quick review. “And, did you hear back from Clark about the bicycle drive?”
“I did.” She flips through her notepad and slides her glasses onto her nose. “We’re scheduled for the build on Wednesday from ten to four. And they would like you to speak on behalf of James Lighting at the presentation next Saturday. Are you able to do that?”
“Is my calendar open on that day?”
She nods enthusiastically. “It is. I already put a tentative placeholder in, just in case.”
I’m not surprised. She’s more efficient than any employee in the company. “Yeah, I’ll be there. And make sure the staff gets a reminder about Wednesday so we have as many people there as possible.” I turn to leave before remembering the reason I stopped by in the first place. “Are we providing lunch?”
Rena scrunches up her nose, making a worried face. “I think it would be nice if we offer. They said they can do a sandwich bar, but everyone has been raving about the burrito truck that we had at the last all-hands meeting. Maybe we can get them out there for an hour or two. What do you think?”
“I love it. Let’s do that. And make sure the staff at Philanthrateer knows lunch will be provided for everyone that day.”
“Got it.” She jots some notes down on her pad. “They’ll appreciate that. Thanks, Sebastian.”
“Yeah, and, what about our nightlight project? Have we gotten the operations team to commit to a date yet?”
“Not yet.” Rena hits a few keys on her keyboard then pulls up an email. “Martin still thinks we should hold off another year and send them to retail outlets first. Recoup some of our R&D costs.”
I shake my head and hold up my hand to stop her. “No. We’ve been through this, and he knows that’s too late. I want these in place for a summer rollout.”
She gives me a slight grin. “He’s not going to be happy about delivering in four months.”
I shrug. “Don’t care. Maybe my dad let him get away with making his own rules, but I won’t. There’s only a six-week lead time, so sixteen weeks should be no problem. If he still pushing back, I’ll go directly to Charles.”
“I’ll let him know.” Rena’s grin is even wider now. “Oh, are you going out for lunch?”
I glance at my watch, surprised it’s already 1:15. “No, can you have something brought in? Something light. Maybe sushi.”
“I’m on it.” She turns to her computer to bring up the delivery site. “It’ll be about thirty minutes.”
“Thanks, Rena.” As soon as I get back to my desk, I pull up all of Martin’s recent emails. He’s old-school and worked for my dad for a very long time. Although I’m not trying to take my father’s place, and I know I don’t have any kind of real experience running a business like this, it pisses me the fuck off when these old-timers disregard my projects.
But it’s not entirely their fault. They’re not used to doing any philanthropic work with the company. Mom and Dad made a point of donating only what was necessary to save face and play the parts of concerned citizens in front of their peers, but they hated to give anything away. And the few times when Dad did set up corporate donation programs, it was only for tax benefits.
That’s why I’ve started up several charitable programs in the six months I’ve been working here. I’m not going to pretend to know how to grow revenue or expand market share in a lighting company, but I do know how to make very small differences in the lives of others.
I learned a long time ago that even the smallest acts of kindness can go a long way. And though no one in the public knows it, I’m one of the co-founders of Philanthrateer, a charity set up to raise money for various causes in the state of Tennessee, but it also launders money brought in by some of our less-than-legal enterprises.
Growing up, my parents were assholes.
They provided financial support in the form of hired staff to take care of me. But beyond the basics of food, shelter, and education, I was on my own a lot as a kid. And when the staff wasn’t around to witness, my parents beat the shit out of me and locked me in a dark closet. Once when I was twelve, I got suspended from school for getting in a fight. My parents gave the staff the weekend off and left me in that closet from three o’clock on Friday afternoon until six o’clock on Monday morning. I had a couple bottles of water, a box of granola bars, and a bucket. It was the scariest sixty-three hours of my life.
That’s why I set up a nightlight program with the county foster care agency. Even though I wasn’t part of the system, I often wished to be put into a home with lots of other kids and parents who actually wanted to take care of children. I knew there were bad foster families, but they still sounded so much better than the blood family I had.
I can’t take in kids who need families, but I can provide free solar nightlights to every child in the system. The lights aren’t fancy, but they are cheap and reusable, and they work. Each light is just an inflatable plastic square that kids can leave in the window during the day or keep on their backpack to get sun exposure, and then as soon as it gets dark, they can inflate the plastic square and turn it into a lantern so they never have to be in the dark.
We aren’t the first company to make these solar lamps, but it’s a project I want to expand nationally, and so we’re using this as a small test market to see how people like it.
That’s why Martin, our head of operations, is pissed at me. His team has been working on this technology for two years now, and he wants the glory of taking it to market. As far as I’m concerned, he’ll still get the glory and a ridiculous bonus as a result of his work in getting us there. But that’s not good enough for that old twit. If we aren’t using it as a revenue stream, he won’t have the bragging rights to make the rest of his cronies jealous.
But that’s not my problem, and at the moment, all I care about is getting those lanterns into production and helping out kids who are afraid to go to sleep at night.
If he keeps this shit up, I’ll escalate to his management and call out the fact that he’s a selfish bastard. I don’t want to run the company that way, but I will if I’m pushed. The management team and I have an unspoken agreement that I’ll sit quietly and not draw any unnecessary attention to myself while at the helm, but I refuse to stay idle. I need some kind of project at all times, and this is what I’ve chosen for now.
If anyone doesn’t like it, they can retire early. I would happily sign that paperwork to get rid of all the assholes who care more about upgrading their yachts than about the community we’re serving.