Managing a company, I recently realized, is much harder than it seems. Even with Natalie and some other assistants doing mostly everything, all of the questions, updates, and things that needed my approval from the various people in the fortress quickly became a headache.
I rub my temples as one of the scientists leaves my office after I had answered one of his questions.
"Having everyone come to me when they need to ask me something is so troublesome," I mutter, lying back in my chair. "I really need to improve this. What can I do to keep meetings at a minimum?"
After thinking about this for more than an hour, I could rip my hair out from frustration when I hear another knock on the office door. I reel in my emotions, regaining a calm demeanor,"You may enter."
Natalie comes in, a clipboard in hand, her usual bubbly personality subdued at the moment as she dawns her business face.
"Natasha, here are the sales reports that you have asked for. Would you like me to read it off?"
Thankful that I had Natalie to manage all of the actual business stuff, I respond,"Please just give me a summary."
Not even looking down, she responds,"Over the past week, sales have gone up marginally, unlike the week before, where profits had suddenly climbed, reaching total profits of 4.5 million in this week alone."
"Thank you." I thank her.
Turning my thoughts back to my management problem here at the base, I decide to ask Natalie if she knows of anyway that it could be improved.
Telling her the problem that I face, she smiles knowingly at me. "Even you, Natasha, who was so smart in collage and was always top of the class, can't see the simple solution?" Natalie says, jokingly questioning me.
"No! I can't, but by tone of your voice I can tell that you do."
Smiling even wider, she says,"Just give someone a management position for each group of people. Like for the scientists, make someone the head of the scientists to which everyone would give their questions to and then that person would come to you with all the questions. It would make it so you only have to meet with one person instead of meeting with everyone individually throughout the day."
I smack myself in the face. "Why didn't I think of that! It was such a simple fix! I can have so much more time to do other things with this. Thanks Natalie."
"It was nothing." She says, still smiling happily. I could tell that her business face was melting away and that her bubbly self was about to come out. Seeing this, I quickly sent her on her way, getting back to brainstorming.
'Ok, I have a plan for what I am going to do before the apocalypse, but what am I going to do after?' With this topic in my mind, I continued thinking.
'I've already prepared some things for what I am going to do, but scouting out spots to pick up the families of my employees isn't enough. I need to think about solutions to survivors' main problems.'
Listing out the problems on a piece of paper, it comes down to a few main ones. The first would be surviving against zombies, which we are prepared against by being well equipped. The next would be finding food and resources. I have mainly taken care of the food problem by having the farms, which would be even more effective once we get mutated plants, but I don't really have anything planned for the resources other than buying them from my system.
Thinking more into this, I would have to have a different type of income other than dollar bills. This is dollar bills won't have any value when all people care about is surviving and getting resources. If this were to happen, the system, most likely, wouldn't value dollars as a single credit anymore, taking thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars to equal one credit. Food, on the other hand, would have a much higher value, but I couldn't just sell all my food to the system or I wouldn't be able to feed everyone.
The currency of the apocalypse is defiantly going to be a pain until three years into it, when zombies started forming evolution crystals, which would be the most sought after resource because you could trade them for almost anything to Espers.
'Since I don't want to wait that long,' I thought to myself,'I'll just make my own currency. But how would I be able to do that?'
To me, the easiest way I could make this possible is if I made some sort of bank. With another hour of thinking, I finally drew up a plan that could possibly work.
First off, the bank would request certain materials or items which would be useless to survivors, but could be exchanged to credits for me. In return for the materials/items, the survivors would get a specially shaped coin, which I will just call tokens, which they can use to buy food and resources from a shop next to the bank. After the value of these tokens are known to enough people, they would then use it as normal currency, trading it with other people and things like that.
I'm delighted that I could come up with such a plan. The tokens can't fabricated without the use of very specialized machines which I can buy from the system, so counterfeits can't be used without people knowing. If all goes to plan, this currency will be used instead of regular dollars.
As I was just finishing writing down all my plans, another person knocked on my door.
'That's right, I need to assign managers.' Almost hitting myself for the second time today, I open the door to find one of the two botanists, Winston, standing there.
"Hello Winston, do you have a question about anything?" I ask, still in a happy mood from coming up with the banking plan.
"No, I'm just here to tell you that the project you gave us is going well. Laura and I are building up a database of as much scientific knowledge as we can. I still don't know why you want us to be doing this though."
That's right, I had assigned him and his wife, Laura, to save as much scientific knowledge that they could onto a USB I had bought from the system which could hold one zettabyte, or one billion terabytes, worth of information. This should be sufficient to hold all the scientific information in the world.
Looking at Winston closer, I couldn't help but think that he would be perfect as the head of the scientists. He had that scientific look, almost always in a white lab coat, spectacles resting on the bridge of his nose, and a grayish short beard and mustache.
"What do you think about becoming the head of the science department?" I ask him.
He's startled for a second, but quickly regains his calm look,"It would be an honor, Ms. Parker."
"Stop talking in such a formal tone, just call me Natasha." I blush a little at his words.
Continuing on, I say,"I need someone who will manage all the scientists for me. I can't have everyone coming to me individually each time they have a question, so I will have you bring me all their questions in one trip. You will also tell them what they are supposed to do, with more important decisions coming from me. Do you understand?"
He nodded his head, responding in the affirmative. He just took his new position as the head of the scientists in stride. I admired this trait of his, being so calm and collected. I could feel that I hadn't made a bad choice in making him the head.
In return for taking on this responsibility, I gave him the one of the suites that I had built on the top of the apartment building, which I had planned on giving to important people. Along with that, I also raised his paycheck, which wasn't much of a problem since money is going to be useless in less than two months.
Talking a little bit more after that, he then leaves the office to spread the news about his promotion, letting people know that they were to come to him if they had any questions. I lean back in my chair, looking back over the plan I had written down about the banking system.
Reading it over, it reminded me that I hadn't thought about how I was going to gather resources, but it only took me a moment to come up with the simplest and most logical answer. I would just send people out from the security in heavily armed teams. They would pick up any survivors on their trips while also gathering as many resources as they can get their hands on. This would let me gain large amounts of credits from things which other people would care about.
Speaking of security, I remembered about the report that Natalie sent me saying that 40 more people, hearing the great living conditions and pay, had signed up to join the security. I needed to ask Micheal how he is going to deal with the ever increasing amount of personnel.
I looked over at the clock placed on the wall, and seeing as it said it was 12:00, I knew that Micheal was free from training fro a little bit while the troops ate lunch.
Picking up the phone on my desk, I dial his number and waited for him to pick up.
"Hey Tes, what's up?" He says after picking up the phone.
"Noting much. I just wanted to know how you were going to deal with increasing amounts of troops?" I had already told him before that there would be more and more people for him to train, but I didn't know how he planned to deal with it.
"Oh, that's simple. I've just been training these first 20 people all the basics, and when the new batch comes, they can train them all the things I taught them. I will then pick the best ones out of those two batches and teach them how to be a squad leader, forming people into squads of 8, having the squad leader train their squad." Micheal explains to me. I could tell that he liked talking about this as his voice got more and more enthusiastic the longer her talked.
"Huh, I never would have thought to do that, but I see a flaw in your plan. Who would train the third batch, and batches after that? The groups after that will just be larger. You couldn't train them like you did the first group." I say, pointing out a problem I see in his plan.
"That's simple. I will distribute them throughout the squads, and when the next group comes in, I will choose the most promising people from the squads and make the leaders."
His plan sounded really good, and I couldn't see any problems that could occur at the moment. If I thought of one later, I would tell him.
With my curiosity sated, I said a few words and hung up the phone.