TRANSITIONING... to Autumn (Part 141i)

TRANSITIONING... to Autumn (Part 141i)

With lobby traffic slow I got Bret and we went up to the Board room. I brought him up to date and told him what we had to do in a very short time. I won’t bore you with the details (and there were a lot) but we worked almost non stop until 6pm. One of the things that came up was in deciding which teller should be the leader during the actual inputting of data. We’d barely started on that when Bret stated, unequivocally, it should be Gina. I didn’t even have a chance to speak. As I’ve previously written, Gina was my choice as well but I was the only one who knew she’d be leaving. I knew I couldn’t compromise her position so decided to agree with Bret and went forward in our planning with her in that position. However, I knew I had to meet with her soon to let her know what was coming.

I was totally consumed by the project and had completely forgotten about Barbara and her clothes... until I walked into the kitchen that evening and saw them still sitting on the end of the counter. There was no point in bringing them up so ate my warmed up dinner and went back to the planning exercise even though I tried not to bring my work home with me. The next morning I was out of the house before 8am and Bret was waiting for me when I got to work. After another intense day we met with Hobie around 4pm and didn’t leave the bank until almost 7pm. I was pleased with what we’d come up with and, for the most part, so was Hobie. His main concern was in our choosing Gina as the leader. His choice was Lorie which, based upon his affinity for her, made sense. However, it was Bret who spoke up to defend our choice. He brought up the fact that Lorie wouldn’t be able to devote all her time to inputting the data as she would still be processing every day transaction on our existing equipment. Once reminded of that he backed off and told us he’d call Bruce and Albie at the service bureau the first thing in the morning. Since this change would be something new for them to consider he wasn’t sure how they’d react. He told us he’d try to get at least a tentative acceptance for our latest change request. I also reminded him about the concern over equipment availability and his retort was “first things, first”.

My failure to call Elle about getting home late created the usual response... silence. I did notice Barbara’s clothes were no longer on the counter. In my mind it triggered the thought of just which panties Elle had loaned her to wear on Saturday. I was hoping to find Elle’s clothes lying on the bed when I walked into our bedroom but there was nothing there. My very next stop was Elle’s panty drawer. As explained in past posts, one whole drawer of the dresser was devoted to her panties. I’d carefully segregated the nylon from the cotton. The majority of the cotton ones were the well worn and stained Carter’s Spanky Pants that she primarily wore at night in her “package”. The nylon ones were separated by manufacturer except for those that Elle had deemed to be “fancy panties” and which she hardly ever wore. She had a mind set not to “ruin” them with pee stains so had me set them apart. Once I opened the drawer I could see one pair of nylon panties that wasn’t folded like the others and determined that they had to be the one that Barbara had worn. I picked them up and was pleased to see that they were, indeed, fancy with lace appliques, lace inserts over the leg openings and were made with nylon satin to boot. My memory told me they were a pair of Gotham Gold Stripe panties and a quick glance at the label proved I was right. My memory also told me that they were fairly old and one of the first of the really lacy panties I’d bought for Elle. That made me wonder how she’d come to pick them out as they should've been on the bottom. With her current mood...  being mad at me... I knew it’d be impossible to find out. Putting the panties safely back in the drawer I got to wondering what Barbara had thought of them being they were so radically different than the cotton Lollipop band leg ones she wore.

Once back downstairs I was faced with no supper at all. Whatever it had been it was no longer. A check in the refrigerator showed nothing resembling a dinner plate waiting to be warmed up. In fact, I didn’t see anything appetizing at all. In a way, I was mad too. I had a perfectly legitimate excuse and she wouldn’t listen to it. I had a brief thought of getting in my car and heading out to get a pizza (pizza delivery hadn’t been started way back then) but ended up settling for warming up a can of soup along with toast. If there was one good thing it was that my “offense” wasn’t so egregious that I was being banned from my bed.

My desk was located right in front of Hobie’s so I was in position to hear his part of his telephone conversation with the service bureau the next morning. He did a good “sell job” when making the request and, to my surprise, he wasn’t on the phone all that long. He knew I’d been listening so when he hung the phone up he got up and came over to my desk. Bret’s desk was directly in front of mine so I asked if he could be included. The short version was that they could accommodate us. However, because of other banks who were also converting to their service at the same time they wouldn’t be able to devote as many of their personnel to us as originally discussed. That meant they’d thrown the ball back to us.

A piece that had “fallen through the cracks” in my original plan to move the conversion date up to December was in getting the names and addresses of all our depositors on file. Doing the conversion after the first of the year didn’t require that information until deeper into the calendar year. Having the service bureau provide the IRS forms was the primary reason for moving to December and they had to have the names and addresses in their files to be able to do it.  I remember sitting there feeling embarrassed. In the original proposal made by the service bureau they’d agreed to input our name and address file at no cost to us, doing it at their convenience. Now, it would cost us money to have it done. Hobie told us we’d have to get the “numbers” of what it cost us to produce the forms ourselves the last time in order to be able to make that decision. That meant going upstairs to the accounting department to gather the figures. Bette, the department head sent me to Moira, the last lady I’d hired for the department. I hadn’t talked with her in a quite a while and felt badly for not having followed up with her.

To be continued...