Smooth Sailing (31 page)

Laurie looked at him sharply. “Anything else?”

He stared at her for just a moment. “Yeah. I’d offer something to the guests who complain.” He caught the attention of the hotel manager. “What’s an inexpensive perk?”

“A photo with Teddy Bear? A free movie?”

“Good. I’d offer either of those things, and have one phone operator take all complaints about water temperature. He or she can make sure the guest gets the perk they want and that the dedicated maintenance worker gets the call.” He looked directly at Laurie, waiting for her verdict.

She winked at him as she started out of the room. “Make it happen.”

*

They got onto a passenger elevator to go to the lobby. “Was that a test?” Kaatje asked.

“Of Aaron? Yeah. I want him to start taking over. I think he’s ready.”

“He seems it. But he looks pretty young.”

Laurie bumped her with her shoulder. “He’s your age. Old enough to sleep with—old enough to make decisions.”

*

At 11:40 they stood at the Jungle Safari ride, seven sets of eyes trained on people entering and exiting the boats. “The engineer says the boats are performing exactly like they did during testing,” Michiko related.

“That might be, but the line snaking all the way to Tokyo is a big, big problem.” Laurie stared at the families slowly boarding the eight passenger boats. She clicked her stopwatch, then clicked it again. “Kunio, what was the clock during testing?”

Michiko asked the question, her walkie-talkie squawking in Japanese the whole time. Laurie continued to time each group as they got on.

“Ten seconds,” Michiko related.

“It’s taking between fifteen and twenty,” Laurie said. “That’s unacceptable.”

Kaatje cleared her throat and asked, “Uhm, is there a difference in how long it takes families with kids?”

Laurie shot her a look, then started timing again. After a few minutes she said, “Yes. With small kids it’s taking twenty seconds. With bigger kids, eight to ten.”

“The kids have to step down too far,” Kaatje said. “They look tentative.”

Laurie moved to where Kaatje was standing, now able to see how many of the kids looked frightened. “How young were the kids in our testing?”

A few bouts of translation gave the answer, “All ages. Ten seconds was the average.”

“Is there a tide?” Kaatje asked, wrinkling her nose. “Or is this all fake.”

Laurie gave her a sharp look. “It’s all
engineered
. Everything is static.” She whirled and glared at the engineer. “It
is
the same, right? Everything is exactly the same as it was during testing?”

Michiko translated her question and the engineer scrambled to the edge of the walkway and stuck his tape measure into the water. He was pale when he returned. He spoke, looking like he wished the ground would open up and swallow him. Michiko gave him a stern look when she translated, “The water is three inches lower than it was during testing.”

Laurie didn’t say a word. She just glared at the man, turned and headed back to the golf cart with Kaatje scampering after her.

Laurie jumped into the cart, mumbling, “When a visitor can guess the problem long before the experts, you’re fucked.” Hearing how harsh that sounded, she consciously put a smile on and kissed Kaatje on the cheek. “Thanks. You saved me untold thousands of dollars. Figuring out the problem in something like that is the hard part.”

“Does ten extra seconds make that big a difference?”

“Yep. A one hundred percent increase in loading screws everything up. Makes people mad too. You can’t afford that.” The more she spoke the madder she felt. “The engineer thinks I can’t understand him, but I heard him admit he didn’t test water levels yesterday. He didn’t think it was necessary.” She looked like she was going to get out of the cart and strangle him. “And I’m going to have to slap Michiko around for not translating that. But I’ll do that in private.” She was still fuming when Aaron and Michiko joined them. “Idiot,” she growled. “How can you call yourself an engineer and not test that conditions are identical. Does he know why it’s low?”

Aaron shook his head. “Probably a leak. We’re going to waste a lot of water until they can find it and seal it.”

“Make sure the company that built the lagoon is involved in the troubleshooting. We’re not eating that cost.”

“Already did,” Aaron said, looking pleased with himself.

Michiko tentatively spoke up. “The engineer didn’t test the water levels before opening.”

“Why didn’t you say that then?” Laurie asked, peevishly.

“He would lose all respect,” she said quietly. “His mistake was very bad.”

“Right, right. I’m sorry for snapping.” Michiko nodded and she and Aaron spoke quietly while they started up.

Laurie whispered, “One of my biggest faults is not being culturally sensitive enough. I’ve gotta work on that. Calling somebody out in front of other people is really harsh.”

“It’s best not to do that in St. Maarten either. You’re not wasting your time in working on that.”

*

Lunch was steamed anpan with Teddy Bear’s head imprinted in the dough and an apple ice block, a frozen fruit ice with the same imprint. Everything was obtained by Michiko, who jumped out of the cart as they passed a snack stand and caught up with them at the next attraction. Still trying to down their lunch, they stopped at a ride where a number of children had fallen getting out of the car the day before. When the very contrite supervisor went into an elaborate explanation of his view of the situation, Laurie interrupted to ask, “What’s the height requirement? That sign looks wrong.”

They had to wait for Michiko’s translation again, and Laurie took the delay to make a phone call, knocking another one off her list which was now down to twenty. “Thirty-six inches,” Michiko announced.

Laurie met Kaatje’s gaze.

“No way,” Kaatje said.

Laurie took the tape measure off the ride engineer’s belt and headed over to the sign. It stood at thirty-nine inches. She tossed the tape measure back at him, growling, “Fix it, and check every other sign in the park. Send me a memo by the end of the day telling me you personally guarantee that every sign is at the stated height.” Then they were off again to sort out the next small but significant problem.

*

“I think you were being culturally insensitive,” Kaatje said quietly. “I can’t imagine it’s a good idea to yank things off people’s belts and then throw them back at them.”

“I know.” Laurie dropped her head into her hands. “I’m just so short-tempered. These problems seem ridiculously simple to me, but I have to consider they’re working just as hard and doing things I don’t ever see.”

“By the way, you’ve never told me you understood Japanese. How much do you speak?”

“Just enough to understand numbers and their context perfectly. That’s all I care about,” she said, grinning unrepentantly.

*

They were on their way back to the conference room when Aaron said, “I don’t like the length of the lines at these food carts. None of the other ones were this long.”

Laurie looked up from furiously scribbling notes. “I haven’t been paying attention. How long were the others?”

“Half this length.”

“Michiko, get Kunio and an engineer over here ASAP.” They got out and watched people order. Laurie had her stopwatch out, timing how long it took for a gyoza to be delivered. When the manager and the engineer arrived, they spent twenty minutes going over every possible permutation in the gyoza ordering and delivery process. They had the entire thing timed to a variance of fifteen seconds, but the actual process was taking considerably longer. “What else could it be?” Laurie asked. She paced around the cart, her eyes like an eagle’s spotting a mouse from fifty yards. “The staff is doing it right, the cash register is working, the grill is working, the food is at the proper temperature…” She crossed her arms, staring blankly.

Kaatje said, “Ask the workers.”

Laurie signaled Michiko. “Ask them if they have any ideas why the line is this long.”

She returned in a minute. “They say the grill they trained on cooked the food faster.”

Aaron took over, asking the engineer, “What affects cooking speed?”

Michiko started to translate, but Aaron said, “Just tell him to troubleshoot it. I don’t need to hear what he’s going to do.”

They all stood there, with Laurie making another two phone calls while they waited. Finally Michiko had an answer. “The grill is only operating at a hundred and ten volts. They are supposed to be at two hundred and twenty volts.”

Laurie sighed and said, “Report by the end of the day. How many carts are affected, when they’ll be fixed, who’s responsible for the error, and who will pay for it if it wasn’t our fault.”

They were close by, so they walked ahead to the conference room while Michiko and Aaron gave Laurie’s instructions to the staff.

“Do you go at this rate every day?” Kaatje asked. “You haven’t even been to the bathroom.”

Laurie’s eyes lit up and she took off running, turning to call over her shoulder. “Thanks for reminding me!”

*

From five until six, the core staff met to eat a bite and discuss strategy for the next day. Everyone had his or her laptop out and each took notes as things popped up. There wasn’t one word of chit-chat. At six on the dot, Laurie looked at her watch and said, “That’s all the time we have for fun. Let’s get started on our status reports. All hands in the conference room.”

They started to walk from the private dining area to the Bee Hive. Kaatje said, “All hands means what?”

“Every division manager. The same group we met with this morning.”

“What kind of reports do you have to do?”

Laurie put her hand to her neck, acting like she was strangling herself. “The bane of my existence. Without the reports I could have left at five.”

“It sucks,” Aaron chimed in. “Worst part of the job—by far.”

“What’s in the reports?” Kaatje asked.

“I have to update LA on everything from attendance and hotel occupancy to overtime, injury reports, and more and more and more.”

“Every day?”

“Every day,” Aaron agreed. “The only good part of it is that no one is at the office in LA when we send the reports. If they were there, it would take twice as long because they’d have a million questions.”

“Small favors,” Laurie said, smiling tiredly.

*

The managers were grilled over the most minor of costs, expenses and problems. After an hour they were released and Laurie, Aaron, Andrea, Hiroshi and Toshi worked at their laptops for another hour. Then Laurie took all of their reports and went over each item, asking question after question. Finally, at eight thirty, she sent the entire batch of reports to the proper people at headquarters and slammed her laptop closed. She sat back in a chair and let her body relax for the first time all day. “Well, that was fun. Who wants to do it again tomorrow?”

*

As they were walking out of the building, Laurie asked, “Michiko, will you make a note that my niece’s birthday is next Wednesday? I’ve got to send something tomorrow or it’ll never get there.”

“Which niece?”

“The younger one.”

“I’ll have a selection of gifts for you to choose from. Clothes or books or games?”

“She likes books, but she’s still into toys. Might as well go with that. She’d love something Japanese.”

“It won’t be a problem.”

“Thanks.” Laurie patted her on the back. “You’ve saved my life more times than I can count. And thanks for reminding me that I come on too strong with the staff sometimes. I’ll try to be more sensitive.”

“I’m just doing my job.” The young woman waved goodbye and veered off to an employee parking lot. The three of them kept going, walking through throngs of people enjoying the new park.

“How long will you be in Osaka?” Aaron asked Kaatje.

“I have one more week. Then it’s back to St. Maarten.”

He looked at her with longing in his eyes. “I was there once. What a fantastic place to live.”

“I love it,” she agreed. “But I’m afraid it will take me a while to get back into the slower pace.”

“It is rocking tonight,” Laurie said. “Thank God. It’s nice to walk through the place and see people having fun, isn’t it?”

Aaron chimed in. “Yeah. It reminds you there’s an end product.”

“Besides taking all of the cash these people have in their pockets?”

“Now, now,” Aaron teased, “Check your cynicism at the gate. You make Teddy Bear cry when you say things like that.”

*

They walked into their hotel room and Kaatje fell, face first onto the sofa. “I don’t know how you do it,” she moaned into the fabric. Laurie sat on the edge of the cushion, chuckling. Kaatje rolled over and faced her. “I mean it. How do you run around like that? You were nonstop. And you’re going to do it tomorrow and the day after and…”