Rather than pleasing her, their enthusiasm troubled Lee. If they liked school that much, they’d be more susceptible to any cult material they were exposed to.
At one o’clock she reported to the receptionist, who walked her to the office of Anne Whistler, the operations chief. Whistler was a graying, 50-ish woman, four inches shorter and thirty pounds heavier than Lee. “Call me Anne,” Whistler said when they were introduced. After buzzing her immediate staff, the woman led Lee to a conference room to meet with them. Each department head had brought not only her current departmental organization chart, but had prepared a detailed flow chart to acquaint Lee with their operations.
“Just getting ready for you has helped,” one of them told her. Anne Whistler, in turn, had prepared a master flow chart that pretty much tied all the others together. She described how the situation had developed: as the operation had expanded, things initially done off the cuff came to require differentiation and organization.
Meanwhile, Millennium had continued to expand, and experience had grown. New procedures had evolved and old ones changed. At first the changes had simply been superposed on the original OC, then computerized generic systems had been adapted and tried, but hadn’t worked well.
Service delivery, accounting, and quality control were the best-organized areas in the operation.
Lee asked basic questions, starting with what the services were that they delivered. Their answers were concise. They had a good grasp of what they did, and how, which was going to make her job easier than it might have been.
She’d anticipated resentment at her being brought in to change how they did things. In her experience, that had been invariable. Her job was to horn in on people’s bailiwicks and make them do things differently than they were used to. It usually ended up with divisions and departments changed, some personnel demoted, moved, or lopped off like deadwood. Resentment was expected. But surprisingly, these people showed none of it.
They would though, in time, she had no doubt. Because she’d have to make a lot of changes. She was surprised the organization functioned as well as it did, presumably a result of individual good sense and good will.
Their system of quality control was remarkable, both in the delivery of seemingly sensitive services, and in employee performance. Besides dealing with the usual quality problems, their program undertook to identify and correct personality difficulties, learning difficulties—anything that might cause operation and delivery problems.
Whistler concluded the meeting at 4:30. When the others had returned to their separate offices, she told Lee she was to recommend any changes she felt necessary, regardless of whom they affected. She was not to feel constrained in any way by the status quo. “I’ll want to review your progress each Friday,” she added. “Meanwhile, feel free to talk with me whenever necessary.”
The woman paused, but Lee sensed she wasn’t done yet. “It will help,” Whistler said, “if you become personally familiar with our services. Some of them, certainly. I suggest the basic Abilities Release series—what we call Life Healing.”
Aha! Lee knew a bit about Life Healing: it was the hook, the beginning of Millennium brainwashing. She never blinked. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll talk about it with my husband this evening. But to be honest with you, I probably won’t try it. I’m uncomfortable with psychotherapies.”
“I understand,” Whistler replied.
Lee hoped the woman didn’t. She also wondered, as she left Whistler’s office, whether this would cause difficulties. She’d discovered she really wanted to do this job. She wanted the money—they needed it—but she also wanted to do the job. It looked really interesting. Challenging and interesting.
* * *
As she walked home, it occurred to her that Ben was probably somewhere in the admin building, working, and no one had been at home for the girls after school. She should, she told herself, have instructed them about that. So she hurried, but found no one there, and assumed they were playing with new friends. After using the bathroom, she’d go to the Kleins and check. But Ben arrived before she left, and moments later the girls came in.