Sorry to take a quotation from Forest Gump, but he was right. Life is uncertain and roads in life can take many detours. It seems that since I joined KLM, my progress had been a little rocky and was about to take another detour.
After several months of waiting for the transfer to Miami, I was asked to come into New York for a meeting with Luke Asjes. I was informed that Jack Bussian, the Miami Manager, had refused the transfer to Los Angles. He and the company could not come to an agreement over transfer benefits. I knew Jack pretty well; we had attended many company meetings and had participated in training session and outings together. He was a great guy and I know KLM considered him a valuable employee. The proof of this is that they kept him on as Miami Manager.
So, what was my future at this point? KLM was uncertain as to who was now going where? In my case they decided that I would become "Assistant Regional Manager for the Eastern Region that was comprised of the following areas, Hartford, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Charlotte and Atlanta. Each office covered the whole state or more. The Eastern Regional Manager was Peter Silton. I would have to work out of the New York office at 609 5th Ave. Mr. Asjes was very apologetic and told me that this was just a temporary position until they got everything sorted out, and it was still possible that I would be sent to Miami as District Manager. He went on to say, they considered me an excellent manager and despite these problems, I had a good future with the Company. I was happy to learn that.
After the meeting with Luke Asjes, I went to the Regional office to speak with Peter Silton. During the conversation he asked how quickly I could find a place to live and move the family. I referred to my conversation with Luke Asjes that this was just a temporary position and therefore, I had no intention of moving the family to New York. This didn't sit too well with Peter Silton, I suggested that we go back up to Mr. Asjes office and come to some understanding as to exactly what my position entailed. Luke Asjes agreed with me that I would not have to move. I could come to New York on Monday and the company would accommodate me at the Edison Hotel, where KLM had a contract for accommodating crew members. Peter had indicated that he wanted me to undertake the supervision of those stations under the Regional office, and that this was going to require me to visit those stations and assist them with sales. Asjes agreed that as an executive of KLM I would be entitled to "Annual Passes" on domestic airlines. (There was an agreement between airlines to provide "space available" annual passes to management staff that had to travel on airline business.). After everything was agreed to, including expenses etc. I was driving back to Hartford dreading exactly how my wife was going to accept this new news?
Helen took the news pretty well. She didn't like the fact that I would be away from home all week, leaving her with 3 children to take care of, all by herself, and how long this "temporary" position was going to take. She was hoping it would still be Miami.
I had to wait until someone was appointed to take over the Hartford District. In about a week, I was informed that George Emory would be coming from Philadelphia as my replacement. When I closed the ticket office in Hartford I had rented a small two room office downtown on Asylum Ave. One room was my office and the other room was for storage of brochures and other promotional material. When George arrived, I turned over the office keys and turned over the company car. (All salesmen and District Managers were provided with a company car) George Emory was a good person; I had also known him from company events prior to this appointment. He was very competent and I felt good about the Company choice.
It was October, 1994 when I reported to Peter Silton. The Regional office was very large and in addition to Peter, his, soon to be our, secretary had a desk and a desk for me. We were on the fourth floor of the KLM building at 609 5th Ave. The main floor was a beautiful ticket office staffed with uniformed staff in KLM royal blue. The 5th floor was the reservations office where the staff sat in front of computers, headsets on, taking flight reservations from all over the USA. The Charter Department was also on this floor where all the charter flights were handled by a staff of six. Both the Reservations Manager and the Charter Sales Manager had private offices here as well. The accounting dept. was also on this floor. The 6th and 7th floor was rented by Martinair, another Dutch air carrier. The 8th floor was rented out to The Netherlands Tourist office. The 9th floor was our Executive offices and their staffs. The top floor was a large room that was used for company parties, large meetings etc.
Peter was a man of few words. His instructions to me were to visit our assigned districts on a very frequent basis, provide assistance to the local managers, work with them on their annual budgets, review and approve their expense accounts. Join them in visiting their local travel agents and commercial accounts. I was also to do an annual review on each manager, review it with them and submit it to him for their files. As far as he was concerned he would like to see me every Monday morning and a weekly report to him on Friday afternoons. Peter did not like to travel, and as I found out later, the local managers were happy with this.
Little did I know how long I would be in this job and how many other things I was going to be asked to do?
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