Season 2, Episode 14: The Art Of The Deal

"OK, I want you to know that I look really sexy right now and it's not an accident."

"I am fully aware of that, Amber. Unfortunately I'm kind of a lost cause right now."

"But you've been working on that report since before I got home from work! I practically had to force-feed you dinner and you've been glued to your laptop all night."

"I know. I'm sorry. But this might actually be the most important work project of my life. It could affect, like, thousands of people's careers. So I have to get it right."

She gave an unsatisfied little squeak and then settled back down next to me on the bed.

I was almost at a stopping point. I looked down at her and smiled, which seemed to placate her. And then I went back to the report.

Lester had come back with some preliminary results of his forensic audit of Stafford Oil. He said was barely scratching the surface in terms of his findings. And what he'd already uncovered was pretty terrible.

Stafford Oil was, in short, a red hot mess.

There was too much debt and it was structured sloppily, and there were some pretty glaring liability issues, but those weren't the big problems.

Waste was the real problem at Stafford Oil.

Money was running out of every door in that company. The management and staff were just throwing cash away on frivolities, sweetheart vendor contracts, entertainment and other classic management mistakes.

Keegan had gotten me access to the company email server and I'd been going through Jim Stafford's correspondence, and it was clear that Jim knew exactly what a mess he'd made. He kept making exhortations to the management and staff to find efficiencies and run a tighter ship, but he'd refused to bring in outside experts to back those exhortations.

And he'd also refused to fire anybody.

Stafford was more of a fraternity house than an oil company. Jim hired roughnecks and promoted them through the ranks, and what he got was a lot of loyal employees who loved him, but not a lot of professionalism. Stafford was always a step behind on oilfield technology, on management techniques, on finance - on everything, really.

Except on the geology. They were among the best at hunting leases and striking oil once they'd started poking holes in the ground. That had been the saving grace of Jim Stafford.

For a while, at least. At the end, his correspondence made it sound like he was a broken man, dying of cancer and out of time to save his company - and guilty as hell for the mess he was leaving his wife and oldest son.

Now that he was gone, the big boys were busy trying to poach his geologists and landmen. So far most had stayed loyal to Michael. But it was a touchy situation and there were factors making for some real urgency in getting Stafford turned around.

"So, what? You're going to turn in this report and it's going to say they need to fire half the people and start over?" Amber was asking me, trying desperately to earn my attention.

"Normally I'd do pretty much exactly that," I said, "but with this I'm going to have to be careful."

"Oh, you don't want to hurt Erica's feelings."

"There is that, but she says she's going to get out of the way. No, what I'm really worried about is Harlan Voss."

"That's the bad guy on the board, right?"

"Well, Erica and Michael think he is, and that relationship is pretty toxic, but honestly I don't think he's a bad guy at all. He's basically the father of the shale revolution. There is nobody better in the oil and gas business. And from his perspective the Staffords are setting tens of millions of dollars of his money on fire. I don't think he's wrong."

"So if you present this report and it shows how badly run the company is, that helps Voss to take it over?"

"What Voss wants to do is dump Stafford Oil on whoever will buy it. He just wants out. And if my report says it's a hopeless mess, the board will agree with him."

"OK, but isn't that what ought to happen anyway?"

"Maybe. The company is one pretty good sized dip in the price of oil from going under, so you could look at that as hopeless. But what I'm working on is making the case for reforming Stafford Oil, making it a more efficient operation, squeezing some profitability out of every section we can and then either it'll sell for a lot more than it would sell for now, because the buyer won't just be buying component parts but a functional organization, or it could maybe even grow into a bigger player in the industry."

"That sounds sort of optimistic."

"Well, I'm trying to thread the needle here. This thing is going to point out how badly run the company is but present that as an opportunity rather than a problem. Fix the management deficiencies and the underlying profitability resurfaces."

"And if you can convince Erica and her faction on the board of the need to do that, then you can calm Voss down, too."

"Hopefully. But it's even more complicated than that."

"Oh my God! Come on."

"Oh, yeah. So Jim Stafford wouldn't fire anybody and when he'd try to get serious about fixing the waste over there it was always like a tree falling in a forest. And he knew it. So a few years ago when the natural gas market had sort of petered out for a while, he went and signed a bunch of gas leases in the Haynesville Shale, up in northwest Louisiana and East Texas. But, and I don't want to drag you too far into the weeds here, he took them out in Erica's and Michael's names rather than in Stafford Oil's. I think he was trying to insure that if the company went under they would still have something super valuable."

"And Voss is mad about that."

"Very much so. So much that he's demanding those leases be moved under Stafford Oil and packaged for sale along with the company."

"But then if it sold they'd all get paid a ton of money, right?"

"There's a bunch of debt. When it's all said and done, they'd still be well off, but I imagine Erica would need to sell that big house and trim down her lifestyle."

"That makes Voss sound mean."

"Well, from reading the emails between him and Jim, it sounds like Voss got screwed out of those leases, and Voss thinks Erica and Michael were in on it."

"Were they?"

"They say no, but I don't think it really matters. Voss has to be convinced that Stafford can be turned around so that it makes him money. If that happens it buys Michael time to reform the place."

"But not a lot of time, because who knows when the price of oil is gonna drop again."

"Exactly. And the Friday after Christmas Michael and I are going to Midland and we're going to see Voss and try to pitch him on this plan that my report will outline. That and this other thing."

"What other thing?"

"Well, so there's a guy who's a field supervisor over there. His name is Chad Beckstrom. Michael thinks he's the kind of hardass they need running things and he wants to fire the head of Field Operations in the Permian Basin and promote Beckstrom to replace him. So we're going there to do some interviews with an eye toward seeing if Michael is right."

"I mean, is he right?"

"It's possible. There's a good story with this guy that got Michael's attention and I think he could be on to something."

"So now you have to tell it to me."

"Amber, I'm never gonna get this report done!"

"Oh, no. You leave me hanging on this and I'm gonna climb on top of you and make you do something other than that report."

"All right, fine, but then you're gonna have to leave me alone until I can get to a stopping point."

She settled back down and smiled at me.

"So - and this is a good example of how Stafford Oil is run - once a month in the spring, they would fly in thousands of pounds of crawfish and do these giant company crawfish boils in the parking lot of their headquarters in Midland. Pretty much the whole oil patch turned out for 'em."

"Sounds like fun."

"Yeah, until you see the price tag. Anyway, in sort of a no-good-deed-goes-unpunished thing, it turned out that Centennial Oil and Gas, which is one of Stafford's big competitors, would show up at these things and essentially recruit Stafford's people. They'd poached four or five of the best guys off crews that this guy Beckstrom was running. So he's up the line saying it's time to put a stop to the crawfish boils, or cut them back, make them invitation only, something."

"And that's why Michael wants to promote him?"

"Baby, I'm just getting to the good part. Anyway, they ignore him, so at the next crawfish boil he finds the manager from Centennial who was poaching his people and he cold-cocks the guy in front of the whole party. And this guy Chad is a gorilla. Like he played defensive end in college."

"So he's a mean guy."

"Well, yeah, but what happened was that he got arrested, they suspended him for two weeks, and then nobody really showed up at the next crawfish boil and they ended up canceling the last one of the season."

"Ohhhh. So the point is he knew what he was doing."

"Yeah. That's why Michael likes him."

"I think I want to go with you. Will they let me fly on the company plane?"

"I don't know why not. It isn't a commercial flight so I don't think you'd need an ID or anything. And I could use your help while we're there."

"We'll see if Stella lets me off work, though."

"The week after Christmas? Come on. Of course she will."

Amber gave me a doubtful look. Then she kissed me and told me to hurry up and finish the report.

----------------------------------------

The next morning, she came up with an idea that was pretty cool. But decidedly impractical, I thought.

"What we need to do is throw a Christmas Party! Let's invite all the Les Servantes people, your golf buddies, Ashley and Ted, Keegan and Cara, Erica, and, like, whoever else wants to come. Don't you think that would be fun?"

"It would, but Amber - how are we going to fit all those people in this house?"

"You're saying no?"

I just hugged her and told her she was the cutest thing ever.

Then I went to see Virgil Smith, because we had a breakfast meeting set up to talk about some additional work he wanted us to take on.

Then Keegan and I had lunch, and while he was very excited about his November consulting paycheck - it was the highest he'd gotten since we began working together - he was a bit miffed at me nonetheless.

"Hey, I thought you said you were going to get us some more Factory Girls we can put on my upload-download service? It's all set to scale up. The whole thing is AI-coded at this point. Totally fire and forget other than me coming up with upgrades for the girls. But it's wasted effort if it's only for Amber and Cara."

"OK, hang on," I said. "What I said was that I agreed with you that it's a viable business model. I don't remember signing on as the sales guy for this operation. Besides, I have a grand total of two other Factory Girls that I'm acquainted with and then I've exhausted the potential market I can bring you."

"Well, then at least get me the other two. Oh, by the way, my boy Levi says he's got Amber's old body fixed. Bluetooth receptors he installed on her hips means it bypasses the damaged wiring. He says you can run in that body. This afternoon I'm gonna test that with Cara. Then we just have to figure what to do with it."

"Yeah, cool," I said, not having any particular ideas about that.

And after lunch, I stopped in at Stella's house, because I had texted her and said Amber wasn't going to be available on the Friday after Christmas, and her response was to say that was unacceptable.

I didn't think this was going to be a problem, and found it weird that it was. But when I sat down with Stella it was pretty clear she didn't want to budge.

"Look, I'm already in a bind here, because the lease I made with Z Company was for six months, and I'm letting Amber out of it after just three months. And now you're trying to cut back even on that."

"Stella, you changed the terms of that so you could get two Factory Girls for the price of one. And that's working out pretty well, you know."

"Yeah, but you're telling me I'm losing one of them. So I won't have a full crew for Equipe Blonde, and I've got clients to serve."

"You just need to replace her. It's no big deal. Find some pretty blonde girl and hire her."

"But that's more expensive!"

"Stella, it's the same cost you would have already taken on if you hadn't gotten Katie. Now you've at least gotten your business off the ground before you need to take on an extra employee."

She just looked at me. I'm not sure Stella understood the basic concept I was trying to get across, and I was beginning to get frustrated at the idea that she was sitting on an apparent gold mine with this stupid maid service despite having not the faintest clue what she was doing.

And I could sense we were headed for a fight.

So I decided to change directions.

"Anyway, how's Millie doing? She's not here, is she?"

"Yeah, she's getting ready for work. Equipe Brunette is doing an afternoon session at Cole's place, so..."

"Y'all doing all right?"

"Sure. I mean, she's great, and I love her. But, y'know..."

"What does that mean?"

"Well, I don't think she loves me like Amber loves you, and I'm a bit disappointed that she's really taken to Dan like she has."

"That's too bad. She's yours. She's not Cole's. She knows that, right?"

"I'm not sure. Cole has this strange thing with Factory Girls. I mean, with women, too. But he's... persuasive."

"You're talking about this sex cult thing he does?"

"It's not a sex cult. It's just - he has a lot of pop psychology, I guess, and he's working it out with our girls."

"It's not working on Amber, that much I can tell you."

"What about Katie, though?"

I scoffed.

"You know better than I do."

"Well, Millie has probably fallen harder than anybody for... whatever it is he's doing."

"Stella, why are you putting up with that?"

"Because I wouldn't have the business without Cole. He's a third of our revenues and he was the capital behind us."

"So you're a front for his sex cult."

"It's not a sex cult!"

"OK, OK."

Just then, Millie came in.

"Mistress Stella, do you need anything before I go? Sheila will be here in a couple of minutes."

"Wait, stop," I said. "That's not a French maid uniform. What's going on here?"

"It's... what Dan wants the girls to wear now," said Stella.

"All of the girls? Amber and Katie are wearing this, too? This is why Amber's changing here every morning?"

"Oscar, don't get angry. It's not a..."

I held up my hand.

"Millie," I said, "I have a question for you. If it came down to it and you could only choose one, who would it be? Stella or Dan Cole?"

"Well, I, ummm..."

"Come on, Millie. You can tell me."

"Well, Master Cole says his good girls are all loyal to him. And I'm his best girl. I can't be his best girl if I'm not loyal to him, so I, ummm..."

Just then there was a honk from a car horn outside, so Millie hustled out to join her teammates.

And Stella was crestfallen.

"OK," I said. "This is no good. You can't keep going with Cole owning you like this and grooming all your girls nonstop every day."

"Well, what am I supposed to do, Oscar?"

"Tell you what," I said. "I'll make you a deal. You ready?"

"Sure."

"We can fix Millie so that not only will she choose you but she'll want to, because I know part of your problem is that your Factory Girl doesn't like girls and you didn't get her coded to. But all of that can go away, and what's more she'll be like Amber. She'll actually love you, and Cole's shit won't work on her anymore."

"But how would I handle him if he notices Millie reacts differently to things he says?"

"You shrug. You don't know how any of this stuff works, right? So you have no clue why Millie's acting differently."

"OK."

"What's more, we'll get Millie set up so that when she does her upload-download thing it doesn't go to Z Company's servers but instead it'll go to the one we built for Amber, and that way she isn't getting any of that weird programming."

"Wow, OK, that's really cool. Millie keeps telling me I've got to order our cleaning products off Alibaba, and I have no idea why she'd say that stuff. She knows I have a vendor arrangement for all our supplies. You think that's Z Company programming her?"

"Of course it is. All of that goes away when we get her recoded and set up with my guy Keegan's system."

"This is great. What do you want for it, though?"

"The recode is free. The upload-download system will cost you a couple hundred bucks a month, but with that you'll get access to all kinds of upgrades Keegan is coming up with all the time."

"OK. But for the free recode I know you want something."

"Yeah, I do. First, don't bust my balls over Amber missing work on the 30th. I need to bring her on a business trip and it's more important than having her play slave-girl at Cole's house. OK? And also, come the third week of January, she's out and you've got to replace her. Period."

"But this takes us back to the beginning. What am I going to do for a replacement?"

"Hire someone, Stella."

"It's very difficult. Paula does the training and she... washes most of the girls out."

"Then have a word with Paula, honey. Or go back to Z Company and have them lease you a new Factory Girl."

"I checked on that. Lease-to-own only, and it's 36 months at $2600 a month now, with $10,000 down."

"Damn," I said. "That's steep. Hey, do you know how much they're selling heads for?"

"It's like $18,000 for a head. Checked on that when Millie started going over to Dan. I'd spring for it, but I can't really justify having a home Millie and a work Millie."

"Get the head. I have a body I can lease you for, say, $800 a month. And then you can replace Amber. And we'll put your new girl on Keegan's recode and file-archive system."

"Oh, wow. That would solve, like, everything. And in a year this will come close to paying for itself."

"Plus, pay Amber $500 a month and she'll be your office manager, and you can use our business app that will fix your scheduling and supply chain problems I keep hearing about. Deal?"

"Yeah. OK. Definitely. You've got a deal."

So I called Keegan and hooked him up with Stella, and they set up a recoding session for Millie when she got back from work.

And Keegan told me later that Millie was adorable when she opened her eyes after the recode. “I chose you, Stella," she said, according to Keegan. "For real this time.”

"Awww, that's sweet," I said.

"Yeah," Keegan sighed. "Did my good deed for the day. I'm not even gonna complain that it was free."

"It wasn't free. We're getting two Factory Girl clients out of this for your file archive thing."

"Yeah, well, good," he said. "So what's the story with Stella? I didn't see a ring on her finger..."