My name is William T. Stout. I am a simple man with lots of dreams and a strong back. My mother always said that I got my body from my father's side of the family so the name of Stout seems to fit. The T. is for Tinker, that's from my mother's side. And just like the name from my father's side, I like to tinker with things so I guess it was the right name again. Funny how those things work out. Makes you wonder about the greater scheme of things. There I go again, dreaming and wondering about things.

My father always said that if I ever wanted to be able to support myself and a family I needed to work with my hands. Forget about being a college man, he would say, you need to work with your hands, and so I started out my life thinking that all those ideas in my head were just going to stay there. I never had a family, guess that I was just too busy dreaming to have any kind of a relationship, let alone children.

I always helped my mom do the work around the house because she was not all that well a lot. So it seemed kind of natural that after I graduated high school that I'd get a job as a janitor back in that same school I just graduated from.

John Johnson was the head janitor and my boss. He was a good guy to work for, at least he seemed to like me. He said I was the hardest worker he ever saw and wondered if I was after his job. It was sort of a joke between us until one day John got this job at Ace Janitorial Manufacturing and Supply. I'd worked for him almost six years at that point and he recommended me to take his old job as head broom pusher. I was a shoe-in mainly because there was no one else to ask.

First thing I did was to start looking for an assistant. In less than a year I had four assistants come and go. They all said that I was a slave driver. I don't think I was that hard on them, it's just that I wanted them to keep up with me. I soon realized that maybe I was asking too much and when Mike Gibbs hired on I knew he would work out. Four years later Mike was still pushing broom and I was still dreaming of how things could be better.

Most of my dreaming and ideas were how the simple things were just thrown together. You'd think that someone would build a better push broom, for example. One with a swivel head so you could get under the desks without reaching across an extra row. The list goes on of all the changes I would make in my daily tools I used, not to mention just about everything in my life.

Since John's leaving for greener pastures some years back, I had remained in touch with him. We sipped an occasional beer, watched a game on TV or just talked about the condition of the world. At those times he told me about his job at Ace. It seemed pretty good to me for he had no boss and was paid a lot of money plus he got a yearly bonus.

Ace is a small company that manufactures janitorial supplies. It is more like a family there according to John. So it was a pleasant surprise when he told me he was retiring and wondered if I wanted his job there. I asked him if he could make the decision about his replacement and he said that it was like our previous situation at the high school, this time even more so, he could choose his replacement. I accepted without hesitation.

About a month later I went to work for Ace. The folks there seemed real nice right from the get-go. I even had an office. I never had my own office before and wondered what I was going to do in there. My office at the school was part of the storage room where we kept our usables, you know, like cans of wax and paper supplies.

They even gave me a computer hooked up to the Internet. When I asked about it I was told that it would be a good idea to look up what other janitorial supply companies products were out there and see if there was anything that I thought I needed that Ace didn't make. So I did.

As part of my job I had monthly meetings with the department heads. I would go into this room where they were all sitting around the table and they would ask me questions. You see, I was the janitor at Ace, not the only one for I had two part time assistants but I was the one who got to try out all the new products that weren't even on the market yet. I think in computers they would call me a beta tester.

They would ask me what I thought about the products, how I would change them and if I had any ideas for new products. Well, I can tell you that my head was full of ideas so I told them and to my surprise, they listened. After working there for a while I started to see some of my ideas come back to me as new products for the testing. I got to tell you, the first time that happened, that made my day.

After a while I became just part of the family at Ace and I knew what John was talking about. One thing that I learned after being there for a while was that everyone was paid the same base salary. We all receive equal bonuses at the end of the year based upon how well the company did that year. Ace was known for the finest quality janitorial products on the market and after I went to work there they increased the number of products they made by a quite a bit, most from my ideas.

The first three years at Ace went by really fast. I was enjoying my work more than at any time in my life even though this was only my second full time job. Still, I wanted to do more so I started talking to some of the department heads about maybe doing something different. They said they understood but wondered why I would give up the most important job in the company. I really didn't understand what they meant by that and thought that they were just stroking me. Still, I kept hearing that from them and began to wonder what they meant by it.

Soon a position opened up for assistant manufacturing department head and I applied for it. The head of the department was a fellow by the name of Riley P. Michaels, RPM as he liked to be known for he was always on the run. He would never tell anyone what the P was for. I think it must have been one of those names that kids tease you about when you're young and it sticks with you and you don't want to be reminded.

Riley just could not understand why I wanted to take a demotion as he would put it. Here we go again, I thought, people just stroking me as always around here. Yet they didn't treat my like a lesser, quite the opposite, they treated me with great respect, which I just didn't understand. After all, I was just the janitor.

I insisted that I be considered for the job and Riley said that of course it was up to me. Again I didn't know exactly what he meant by "of course". So I got the job and for a while I had two jobs as I begin the search for my replacement as janitor. It was then that I begin to realize a little what that meant. This person was going to have to fill my shoes and, not to make myself sound too important, he was going to be in a key position to help the company in a big way.

Finally I found someone that I thought could do the job and hired Steve Dorsey to take my broom. Soon as I got him trained I took on the manufacturing position full time. It took me some time before I felt like I had the job in hand and could feel good about continuing to take home the same pay as I had as janitor. Then the year-end bonus came and that, as always, helped the life style and the retirement account for that is where much of mine went.

About two years after taking the manufacturing job, RPM, my boss, decided to retire and told me that if I wanted his job I could have it. Well, of course I said yes for I felt like I had been handling most of it all along. RPM always said that it was the first priority of business when getting a new job to train your replacement. He believed that what kept most folks from getting promoted was that there was no one to take their place so they would just be passed over for promotion.

In addition to now being a department head I would also be attending the board meetings. They weren't really board meetings, they were just called that for lack of a better name. I had asked Riley about them once and all he would say was that they got together and once the chairman had given his report and left the room they would talk among themselves as to how to proceed with the instructions.

I never met the chairman or even knew who he was so I guess I was a little excited to be going to my first board meeting. All the department heads went into the conference room that Wednesday morning just before 9am. I had not been in there since I was the janitor telling the board about the products and answering their questions. At that time I didn't know who was who and don't recall anyone in there that I later didn't know as a department head.

We all set down and I leaned over to Mike Bennett, the head of marketing who had settled in next to me and asked him where the chairman was. He gave me a curious look and said he would be in a few minutes. Well I guessed that he was going to be a little late for the meeting was getting started and someone asked the secretary to ask the janitor to come in. Steve, the man I had hired and trained several years before walked into the room and after a few pleasantries he begin to talk about the products and his ideas of the improvements that needed to be made. Before leaving he gave some ideas on what new products we could be manufacturing. We all questioned him as I had been questioned years before and then he left the room.

After Steve left, we all sat around for another hour or so discussing what Steve had talked about. At that point someone suggested we adjourn for the month and we set a time the following month for the next meeting. As we were getting up, I asked Mike if the chairman wasn't going to show up that day. Mike gave me another curious look and after realizing that I was serious, said that he had already come and gone. Mike said, "it was Steve, the man you hired to replace you when you stepped down, don't you remember?"

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