Secretary Office (3)

At the age of 12, Howard got his first job. First, he sold newspapers and then worked in a local cafe. The boy faced a rather challenging experience when he turned 16. He was working at the fur store, where he had to deal with stretching the leather. This exhausting job only made Howard stronger and firmed his wish to succeed in the future. Being physically strong, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University in 1971, where he received his Bachelor's degree in Communications in 1975.

Howard was currently still living in Brooklyn at his parent's residence because the start of his college career was still a few months away.

Simon didn't want to go through school or university to contact Howard for the first time, because he knew from later news that Howard Schulz would not be close to any of his schools he went to. As he was living in Brooklyn, he wanted to create a "surprise meeting" between the two.

Before taking his trip to gather John Chambers and Sergio Marchionne he asked his secretary to find reliable personal which would gather information on Howard. They informed him during the trip that every Thursday Howard would play basketball on the court near his home in Brooklyn. As it was a rather poor neighborhood the court was mostly visited by their community.

His next expected sighting at the court would be on Thursday, March 17th, exactly three days after Simon would return to New York. This left him with enough time to spend his first evening and even the next day with his girlfriend, Sarah. After not seeing each other for a week the lovebirds were very enthusiastic. All his appointments were pushed to Wednesday and the young couple spent all Tuesday just shopping together in New York. They finished their day with a romantic candlelight dinner at one of New York's finest French restaurants before disappearing together in Simon's apartment.

Unfortunately, Sarah had to wake up very early the next day to go to New York University, where she was currently studying at the department of Chemistry. She always wanted to create her own perfume since she was a little girl. But studying Chemistry at the NYU is really an arduous task for her. Simon tried to support her as much as possible, but he really didn't know anything about the subject. He could only wake up with her, have a nice breakfast together and wish her goodbye with a long kiss, before closing the door to his apartment.

Shortly after he left his own home under the protection of Dennis Miller and his bodyguard team of 5 and went on his way to the Atari headquarters in Staten Island. Due to his increasing wealth and more frequent travels his mother Lisa Smith insisted to improve his security, which he didn't mind.

He used this opportunity to do an unannounced check of the factory. Fortunately, the quality department of Gunpei Yokoi didn't disappoint him in the slightest. Everything was clean and orderly. Tanja Crawford was out on a business trip trying to improve their sales channels abroad, while Dennis Watson, the acting CEO when Simon was gone, sat down at the headquarters. When he got the message that Simon was inspecting the factory building without prior noticed he a little troubled at first, because this happened for the first time. There was no apparent reason for this change which caused him some concerns.

After joining Simon on his visit, he was relieved again, because his boss didn't seem to find any apparent problems that needed immediate correction. Surely, a new company like Atari always had some potential for improvement, but overall, the quality of the employees and the management was fully capable of supporting the current progress of Atari. Not being embarrassed in front of the boss while Tanja travelled abroad really relieved him of a great burden. This was probably Dennis' most stressful day at work yet.

Afterwards Simon stayed in his office all afternoon to handle the paperwork again. Even though he was only absent for a week, there are still many decisions for him to decide. After not expanding the production capacity in February, which led to a profit of nearly 48 million US dollars last month, there was a plan to increase production by 5000 in April, to up to 28500 arcades per month. This last improvement in capacity was supposed to prepare Atari for the release of Space Invaders. The cost for this investment was about 5 million US dollars. At the current pace and profit per arcade, Atari wouldn't even need more than 2 weeks to earn back this investment. Truthfully, Atari's potential to absorb money was truly frightening. Releasing those financial statements to the outside world would probably frighten Wall Street to death.

Of course, Simon would approve the investment, but he already set boundaries to not increase the capacity in 1971 anymore. He didn't want to oversaturate the market for arcades too early. Increase in production not only needed initial investment, but also increase in the number of employees and the overall structure. Atari should develop step by step while holding up the quality standards set by the Japanese managers hired by Gunpei Yokoi.

After finishing his day at the office, he went home without stop, because he just needed to relax and spend some alone time. His girlfriend was going to stay at her parent's home for today and Simon just spent the evening at home. It sounds like work, but most of the evening he spent writing down some code for future games or writing scripts and game plans to develop in the future. This is his current hobby and the biggest passion of his previous life.

After changing from a game developer to a business leader he was really missing the times where he could do hands on work on a game. He was already working on games for the late second half of 1971 and 1972.