Month: December 2000

The name of FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith — thanks wholly or in part to Tennessee Gov. Don Sundquist — has surfaced as a possible cabinet nominee of President-elect George W. Bush‘s; in particular, the legendary Memphis entrepreneur may be under consideration for the job of Secretary of Defense.

“I think he’d make a fine Secretary of Defense,” said U.S. Senator Bill Frist, acknowledging the possibility in a conference call with Tennessee reporters Monday. Frist, Senate liaison with the Bush campaign organization and the newly named chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, was fresh from a meeting on Capitol Hill between Bush and congressional leaders of both parties.

Frist’s statement came in response to a reporter’s suggestion that Governor Sundquist, chairman of Bush’s Tennessee campaign, had urged Smith’s name upon the president-elect.

FedEx spokesperson Jess Bunn said he had fielded several press inquiries about the prospect Monday morning but that, to his knowledge, Smith — who has recently had heart-bypass surgery — was not interested in taking a cabinet job, nor had he been offered one.

“That could change as I get more information, but as of now I can’t confirm that there’s anything to it,” said Bunn, when first asked about the speculation.

Later, Bunn supplied this as the company’s formal statement on the matter: “Mr. Smith would be honored to be considered for a cabinet position. However, he is completely focused on the growth and success of FedEx and has a passion for continuing to lead one of the premiere companies in the world.”

First Tennessee chairman Ralph Horn says his company had a typical buttoned-down approach to banking before shifting their focus to empowering employees. During the early 1990s, company executives were encouraging their employees to get involved in the community, but soon discovered, “we weren’t practicing what we were preaching,” says Horn. “Internally, we had all these strict rules and regulations for attendance, which hindered workers taking care of personal business on company time.”

So in 1993, the top executives at First Tennessee set out to reshape their corporate culture, something akin to making a U-turn in a battleship. Horn and his senior staff were convinced that by putting employees first – rather than stockholders – and making their company a great place to work, they’d be better able to tackle nagging problems like employee absenteeism and retention.

Making Changes from the Top Down

The executive staff met with several thousand employees during 1993, training managers on how to create a flexible work environment, and

spreading the word. “Training to change the culture of the company . . . got great buy-in from the majority of our employees,” notes Horn. “It showed them that we were serious about it, and it wasn’t just some new flavor of the month – we were going to put our money where our mouth was.”

But it wasn’t easy, says Horn, particularly since some new policies were a radical departure from the way the company had traditionally been

managed. For example, the adoption of flex-time, which gave employees more control over their work hours. “People were afraid to try it at first,” observes Horn, “because it was so different from the way we’d always operated.” But within the first year of its implementation, absenteeism began to drop, as did the use of sick time. Now 90 percent of employees are on flexible schedules.

“We saw a lot of companies offering flex-time, but not a lot of companies getting great utilization. Maybe about five to 10 percent of their employees were using it,” notes Pat Brown, senior vice president of performance development. “The fact that we have 90-plus percent is really record setting, according to Working Mother magazine. A lot of that comes back to the fact that I think we’ve made it okay, that’s it’s not a career-limiting move if you use flextime, [rather] it’s a tool and a resource for our employees.”

Not to mention a recruiting tool as well.

Family-friendly benefits like flex-time are what prompted Gwen Clark to come to work for First Tennessee. A corporate trainer, Clark opts to

work a compressed 40-hour week, freeing up Fridays to spend time with her two children. “My husband loves it because I come home happy from

work, like I’m appreciated, and I’m going someplace with this company,” she says.

Through their “Prime Time” program, First Tennessee also allows full-time employees to reduce their hours to as low as 20 hours a week while retaining full benefits. Brown says many working mothers take advantage of the program, enabling them to be home with their children

after school.

Listening to Employees

Perhaps most importantly, the company listens to employees to find out what they need to make the balancing act easier. Staff are randomly surveyed once a quarter to determine how they feel about the company and what prevents them from taking care of customers. “We’ll pick up family issues there,” notes Brown, “workplace stress, new benefits needed. And we have a history of taking action based on what our employees have said.”

From that feedback has come such benefits as assistance for dependent care, Sniffles ‘n’ Snuggles, a sick child care program available to workers at a reduced rate and run through Baptist Childcare Services, as well as family counseling support. Staffing specialist Amy Jenkins likens the employee assistance and referral program, to “my own Yellow Pages.” Jenkins used the referral service to shop for an MBA program, and found it particularly helpful when she needed ways of reducing stress.

These types of work/life benefits not only make good sense managerially, they make good sense economically. Early in the process, bank executives recognized a correlation between employee retention and customer retention. Since becoming more employee-focused, Brown says customer retention has jumped from 92 to 97 percent and employee retention is up from 77 percent to 83 percent.

Brown says she typically receives calls from other corporate peers who are looking for the silver bullet when it comes to work/life issues, but she always advises, “Lead with the power of your people.” It’s that kind of thinking that has put First Tennessee out front.

Tracking the Work/Life Trend at Schering-Plough

The notion of becoming more “family friendly” began percolating among the nation’s largest companies during the early ’90s, with the growing demand for quality child care. Executives at Schering-Plough Healthcare Products were aware of the need from their workers as well and decided to make child care a top priority. In 1993, they opened the doors to A Children’s Place at Schering-Plough HealthCare Products. It remains one of the only on-site child care centers in the city and one of seven day cares in Memphis accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Nationwide, only 10 percent of U.S. companies offer on- site or near-site child care, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. But Pam Criddle believes the creation of the center was simply a logical extension for a company that’s long been employee-focused.

“There has always been an awareness and emphasis on human resources and what matters in the workplace,” notes Criddle, manager of human

resources at Schering-Plough. “We constantly evaluate programs we make available to make certain they’re still on target and still add value.” For Marcia Shea, having child care so near by “was very comforting to me, as a new mother.” All three of Shea’s children have been cared for at the center (which is subsidized by the company, but also open to the public), and she likens the staff to “extended family.” Having just returned from a six-month maternity leave (the company offers up to 28 weeks), Shea says Schering-Plough has been “extremely supportive” throughout her pregnancies. But Shea also did her part to ensure smooth transitions.

“I provided the company with a comprehensive plan that outlined who was going to do my job while I was away,” points out Shea, the director of customer support. When working mothers return to work, the company also allows them to phase back if needed, something Shea took advantage of with her second child.

“We learned several years ago that it’s not the money that’s keeping people here, it’s the day care center, the other things that create the

work/life balance that motivates them,” says senior communications specialist Gina Kamler.

Like First Tennessee, Schering-Plough has a corporate task force that discusses issues like work/life policies and employee retention on a

regular basis to stay abreast of what’s going on with employees. The company offers up to $3,000 in adoption assistance, an employee assistance program, and emphasizes wellness prevention with programs coordinated by a full-time nurse practitioner and an R.N. Included are on-site mammography and prostrate screenings, as well as a lactation program, complete with breast pumps, storage facilities for milk, and a private room for nursing mothers. Criddle says her department targets expectant mothers to make sure they know such benefits exist before going out on maternity.

“A company can duplicate anything we have,” says Criddle. “But the one thing they can’t duplicate are human resources and our corporate values.

So it’s really important that we stay focused on that – that employees recognize not only that the company values them but respects them.”

[This story was first published in Memphis Parent]

The Wednesday morning ice nicely complemented my anger. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling(s) reflected a vote of 7-2 or 5-4 against Al Gore,

depending on which side of the bed they were trying to crawl into late on Tuesday night. My frustration is no longer hot. It is now frosty cold.

Convoluted. Confusing. Technical. These seem to be the buzzwords from the early morning TV pundits and hastily written news analyses pulled

from Internet.

In other words, Democrats lost on a technicality (Democrats, not Gore . . . this is about us, not him).

Sorry, sir, it looks like you are innocent, but we’re still sentencing your party to 4-8 years for stupidity. You could appeal, sir, but since you were executed ten minutes ago it’s kind of useless now. And anyway, it didn’t appear that King George had any interest in staying the execution, even if he had agreed to hear your appeal personally. So, please go away and leave us alone. We need to get our beauty sleep for the coronation in January.

In best Repugnant Party form, they chanted the mantra over and over for weeks. “We’ve counted three times already.” Say anything loudly and sarcastically enough, it becomes a truth. Republicans are good at it. Democrats are not. That’s because truths are seldom simple, and our genetic predisposition to actually, God forbid, delve into the details of trivial subjects, such as economics, bores the public to death. Good lord, the NFL playoffs are looming, we better wrap this up now.

We tried to simplify. Count the vote. That’s not complicated. The only votes counted “three times” were the ones run through the machines. The

40,000 uncounted, uninspected, unchecked, unwanted ballots that the “machines” said were non-votes were never counted, except in West Palm

Beach and Broward Counties, and that was more a matter of luck than anything else. Even yesterday morning, as free lunch tickets were being handed out to the faithful who made it to work in a mild ice storm (who said there is no such thing as a free lunch), one of the office young Republicans in-waiting is arguing with my party committeeman (who also happens to be a neighbor and coworker) that Al Baby was “manufacturing” votes in South Florida with the hand recounts. Even though he watched it on TV himself, saw the Republican monitors, saw the TV cameras recording every move. Despite all the attention and oversight, he was certain that alchemy was being performed: ballots were being created out of whiteout and toilet paper.

Excuse me, sir, is there any hope of you meeting reality on a face-to-face basis anytime in the near future?

I’m a little man. I don’t get to sit in on high-level political teas, where $5,000 contributors to both parties hash the details of sell-out sweetheart political deals in nice and polite double-talk. I do my work in the trenches where the rhetoric is hot, and it stinks down here.

Trust the machines. Trust a Republican to say that without laughing out loud. What a nice Germanic thought. Machines can’t be wrong. Machines don’t make mistakes. Ignore the fact that machines are made by humans, maintained by humans, operated by humans. GIGO: Garbage in, garbage out. Anyone who has seen the Windows operating system freeze and crash for no apparent reason understands the depth of human error, and why it can only be a human that can catch and fix it. If you are missing a $1,000 deposit on your bank statement, you better not count on an adding machine to discover the problem (see how tape keeps coming up the same every time!). You better direct your complaint to the customer service office, where a human being can actually view your deposit slip and say: “Sorry, we’ll fix the balance.”

We went to the courts, and we thought the courts were composed of human beings. But they were just machines, and the court machinery was rusty. . .it ground to a halt.

If Gore wants to leave a legacy, I would recommend that he found a non-profit organization to aggressively monitor voting irregularities, fight with vigor against minority voter intimidation and lobby endlessly for the complete removal of all mechanical, paper ballot voting machines in the entire United States of America.

I’ll even contribute.

Trying to find the point to this election “protest” reminds me of the movie Midnight Express, where the hero ends up in the prison insane asylum. Going to the “wheel” to take his exercise, the other prisoners all walk counter-clockwise. Our hero walks clockwise, and is assailed by wailing inmates. He is told he is in the asylum because he is a “bad machine.” In order to get better, he must become a “good machine” and walk in the right direction.

Al Gore conceded Tuesday night. He will become a good machine.

Me. . .I only walk to the left. I guess I’m still a bad machine.

The past seven days have shown just how crime-ridden Memphis can be. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the more violent cases:

* Admitted Gangster Disciple Marquez “Lowdown” Winters was convicted in Judge W. Fred Axley’s courtroom last Friday for aggravated kidnapping and attempted murder in the first degree. The trial lasted two days, with dramatic testimony from Natalie Bolton, another gang member who had offended Winters’ girlfriend, who acts as a sort of Gangster Disciple governess.

Winters and other gang members snatched Bolton from her Whitehaven apartment in May 1997. Bolton was then taken to a house nearby, beaten, and then cut with a broken glass when she refused to drink a mixture of bleach and ammonia. The gang then put Bolton in the trunk of a car and drove to Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Blvd., where they marched Bolton up a hill at gunpoint and shot her. Bolton feigned death and heard the members saying, “Yeah, she dead” as they walked away.

During her time on the stand, Bolton identified Winters as the man who tried to killed her. Used to seeing him “thugged out” in baggy clothes and gang colors, Bolton stared at Winters dressed in a suit, paused for a moment, and said, “That’s him, but it don’t look like him. I’ve never seen him in a suit.” Winters could face 37 years in prison. He will be sentenced on January 9th.

* In another criminal court decision Friday, Perdido Cook was found guilty on three counts of aggravated — meaning he had a weapon — burglary. Cook and co-defendant Henry Johnson wore masks when they entered the Memphis home of Sara Collier in 1999. The burglars struggled with Collier and another person at the home, David Shorter, who was shot in the back and remains permanently paralyzed from the waist down. The defendants will be sentenced January 5th and could receive 12 years in prison.

* Other shootings came to trial last week. William Garrett was pronounced guilty for shooting Carlis Parker in the elbow when he showed up at the victim’s home, pointed a cocked gun in Parker’s face, and demanded a $20 debt that Parker owed Garrett. Parker has lost the use of his arm. Garrett will be sentenced January 12th and is looking at up to 15 years behind bars. Last Wednesday, the district attorney’s office won another case — against Joe Scott, who had robbed April Herd at gunpoint. Both had known each other for years.

* Another corrupt Memphis cop was outed last week. Officer John Edmiston was indicted on 29 separate counts Friday involving 11 Hispanic victims whom he was assigned to serve and protect in the West Precinct. Those charges include five counts of robbery, nine counts of extortion, 11 counts of official oppression, three counts of misconduct, and one count of sexual battery stemming from accusations involving a Hispanic woman.

As is the policy of the Memphis Police Department, Edmiston was relieved with pay until an administrative hearing can be held to weigh the department charges of misconduct. He turned himself into authorities on Friday, but was released on $10,000 bond.

* Though it received little play in The Commercial Appeal, published on the last page of the Metro section next to the obituaries, a story about children staying for days in their home with the body of a dead parent sounded similar to an incident that happened last year in Memphis. In December 1999, a friend found 10-year-old Travis Butler in a Memphis apartment with the body of his mother, Crystal Wells, who had died of natural causes. The boy told authorities he was afraid to let anyone know his mother was dead because he didn’t want to be put in a foster home. Travis lived for a month with the body, preparing his own meals, taking the bus to school, and living off money left in the house.

Sunday evening, authorities found three children, ages 5, 3, and 2 in their South Memphis home with the body of their 27-year-old diabetic mother Sybil Powell. It’s unclear how long the children, who are now with relatives, were in the house.

* Hip-hop night spot Club 2001 has experienced few altercations in the year it’s been open. But early Monday night, a shooting that resulted in the death of one young man has darkened the club’s clean reputation.

Another teen was seriously wounded when, at 2:30 a.m., 23-year-old Lorenzo Taylor was shot as he sat inside the club. A security guard was wounded, but the wounded teen’s name is not being released.

He was waiting at the reception desk when I came into work last Thursday. He wore dirty jeans, a rumpled sweatshirt, and a fisherman’s cap. He had a shaggy beard and as he shook my hand I noticed his fingernails were dirty.

The receptionist said he had a story for me. This is a line I hear often and it usually makes me duck for cover. But there was something about this guy, something that led me to usher him to my office to hear what he had to say.

“My English, she is not so good,” he began, sounding a bit like Inspector Clouseau. “But I have the story, maybe you would like to buy it?”

“A story you’ve written?” I asked.

“No. I am not the writer, but I tell you my story and maybe you pay me for it.” He set a weathered leather valise on my desk.

“We don’t really do that sort of thing,” I said, looking at the wall clock.

“Oh,” he said dejectedly, fingering the valise.

“Tell me the story,” I said.

And what a story it was.

Jean-Marie Malbranque left Paris on a bicycle in 1981 with 2,500 francs to his name. He cycled — with his dog in a pull-cart behind him — through Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Sudan, and then the length of Africa. After working in South Africa for several months, he caught a freighter to Argentina and then began cycling north through Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and into French Guiana, where he met a woman who would become his companion. They remained in Giuana for several years, where Jean-Marie worked as a gold miner and welder.

Jean-Marie laid photo after photo of his adventures on my desk, along with letters from those he had met along the way and articles from newspapers in Africa and South America. They told of crocodile attacks on the Nile, camping with Sudanese bandits, a 600-mile raft voyage on the Zaire River, and the death of his dog, bitten by a snake in Brazil. I began to understand the magnitude of his journey and the measure of the quiet little man who had wandered into my office.

But there was more. A few years later he and his girlfriend bought a sailboat in Guiana and sailed north. They visited nearly every Caribbean island, then proceeded up the coast of the United States, through the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the Great Lakes, and finally down the Mississippi River — to Memphis. When he arrived here, someone told him the Flyer might want to buy his story, so he bicycled to our office.

After an hour or so, I thanked him for sharing his adventures but told him again we couldn’t pay for such information. “I understand” he said, and turned to go.

“How much money do you need?” I asked. He looked at his shoes and said he had $14 and needed money to buy boat fuel.

Wait here,” I said. I went to a nearby ATM and got $50. When I got back and gave him the money, he embraced me. “I will put you in my book,” he said. “I will not forget this.”

“Godspeed,” I said, and meant it. Then I watched him bicycle up the trolley tracks and out of sight.

That night over a glass of wine I was telling a couple of friends about my encounter with the mad Frenchman. “Yeah, right,” one of them scoffed. “He probably bicycled down from Frayser.”

“No, I saw the photos,” I said. “He said his boat’s down at the harbor. It’s probably still there.”

“Let’s go find him,” he replied. “If this guy’s real, I want to meet him.” And so we grabbed another bottle of wine (the man’s a Frenchman, after all) and headed to the harbor.

“We’re looking for a Frenchman in a sailboat,” I said to the security guard. “I’m a friend.” He looked us up and down, decided we were harmless, and pointed to a weathered but sleek-looking sailboat at the end of the dock.

We knocked on the hull and after a long moment Jean-Marie emerged, looking confused. We suddenly felt like intruders, three slightly lit-up Americans standing in the dark with a bottle of wine. Then he recognized me. “BRUCE! Mon ami! Come aboard, come aboard.”

We sat in the galley for an hour or so, looking at more photos and souvenirs of Jean-Marie’s — and his girlfriend Beverly’s — travels. We drank more wine, toasted each other, and when Jean-Marie brought out some of his leatherwork to show us we bought barrettes and tool holsters and insisted on paying more than he asked for them.

“No, you are too generous,” he said. “You give me too much.”

But he was wrong. What Jean-Marie had given us was worth every cent. Besides, if you can’t pay for a story one way, you can always try another.

The next morning his boat was gone.