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I was still unhappy about changes that had taken place so I decided to talk to Arnold Cline. Arnold was receptive, listened and then sympathized by saying it was difficult on a person when he didn't know where he stood. He said it with such understanding that I got the feeling my predicament was definitely deliberate. As we concluded our conversation, I mentioned something about maybe things would be better now that Ravi was fired.

With that Arnold said, “See what we had in mind?” The he paused as though he had something wrong and continued. “Not that we had it planned or anything.”

Of course it had been planned, but I didn't know why he didn't want me to think that. The only thing I could think of was the image of a fly-by-night outfit we were presenting to the courts did not entail planning strategies, but surely he was aware that I knew better that that! I left his office feeling the same way I felt after one of my futile conversations with Darth.

January 1977, began the new year much the same way the previous months had been. It was decided that the new “Rapid Set” needed a formal quality control sheet with instructions to be available to the customer for use of the product, Since I was responsible for the development of the product, I felt I should draw up the information on the Quality Control Sheet since it contained product specifications. Instead, Darth decided Jay Wells should do it. Jay had a copy of the Better
Supplies “Fast Set” specifications from which he copied the form and then put Gamma Supplies's name and logo on it.

I was then given the job to test the directions to see how reproducible the test results were. To do this I requested each member of the laboratory to try out the new instructions and I would collect the data. John, Jeff and Buzz responded by attacking me for writing such poor instructions. Then they questioned, bickered, and argued over every little point. It took two weeks of fighting and hassling to get done what should have been done in a couple of days. Lost in all the confrontation was the fact that Jay, not I, had copied the Better Supplies document and had decided what to include in it. And since Darth had to approve everything, Darth had to have given his OK.

Darth's involvement and presence in the laboratory suddenly became noticeably less conspicuous. In fact, the only time I saw him was when he told me that he, Ravi and I were scheduled to give depositions on January 19.20. and 21 concerning the litigation with Better Supplies. When he told me, I thought it was pretty stupid to have Ravi give sworn testimony a month after he had been fired. And I really did not want to testify for Gamma Supplies at that point because I was not happy with the changes that had been made and the pay raise I had been told I would be getting at the beginning of the year had not materialized. The latter point was quickly explained away by accountant Ralph Sampson, who said Carl was handling all the raises in the lab except mine. Mine was being handled by my arch nemeses Darth. He explained that Darth had handled all raises the previous year, and he had been tardy then too. As had become a standard practice at Gamma Supplies, I was given the explanation that this occurrence too was a normal practice. And, as usual I was not happy.

In late January, I was told by Carl what Jeff and Buzz's raises were to be and that I would tell them of their increases. He also explained that Darth would handle my raisewhen he got around to it. I dutifully told Jeff about his salary increase and then I told Buzz. Both were less that happy and I was left in a position of defending salary increases that I had no say in determining. In my previous job, I gave evaluations of the technicians that worked for me, then their salaries were determined by upper level management based in part on my evaluation and then I informed the employee of their pay raise. I was also told in general the procedure which was used to arrive at the pay raises. At Gamma Supplies I had to face Buzz's hostility and questions for which I had no answers since I had no input in how the raises were determined. Again I was put in a position of being on the defensive. This time I had a basis for comparison in the procedure used to give raises.

I also had no way of evaluating Buzz's performance, but the fact that I knew nothing about what he was doing was enough to convince me that he was not doing a satisfactory job. Another irritating factor which indicated that Buzz was not doing a satisfactory performer was the amount of time he spent talking on the phone. He would get calls from his wife at least three times a day, and frequently someone would have to scurry around the lab to find him. He spent on the average one to two hours a day talking on the phone! When I discussed this problem with Darth, he acted unconcerned and casually asked, “I wonder whom he talks to?”

I tried to get copies of the phone call records from the people in the business office, but I was told such records were not kept.

I said to Ralph Sampson, “then anyone can pick up the lab phones and call Hong Kong and no on will know?!”

The answer was affirmative! Buzz could be talking to someone in Iran and it would be fine. I knew that couldn't be true, but I had no way of getting the phone records.