>> One Saturday night he called to tell me I should be in London at 8:00 sharp Monday morning and expect to be there for three months.
>That's a dream job for sure, no joking. You must be missing those time.

It was a memorable job, that's for sure. I was in my 20s and routinely sat in meetings with CEOs and other top managers -- and they wanted MY advice! They had paid half a million or more for the software, plus hefty hourly rates, and it had a significant impact on their operations. I just knew the software, that's all.

The part I do not remember so fondly is the software's payback was eliminating jobs in grocery warehouses. Those people were not making a lot of money in the first place and they were put out on the street. Before we came in they either did everything manually or used some crummy home grown system. When you've got a system that does things optimally -- finding the best location, keeping track of where everything is, telling you when to move it -- you don't need as many forklift drivers or order selectors. (Now it would probably be considered pretty primitive with so many warehouses run on an automated basis).

There was one funny event I was remembering just the other day. The inventory control manager at a client came into my office and said, "Uh, Mike, we got a problem." Their physical inventory count was coming up and his boss had told him he expected to pick up $200,000 after the count, as they were used to doing. They would find stuff in misfiled locations, out in the lot in trailers, and so on, and when they did a physical count that money went straight onto the balance sheet. I told him that really wasn't possible. You don't just have inventory, you have inventory in specific locations. If the computer doesn't know where it is you can't receive it, you can't ship it, you can't move it. You'll be lucky to pick up 20K. "That's not what Jim wants, he wants 200," he said. I said don't get me wrong, I am not recommending this and we did not have this conversation, but the only way I can think of is to lie to the system. "Lying, hmmm," Bill said. "That might work." He said he didn't like it, either, but if your boss tells you to find 200K, you find it. I saw him a couple of weeks later and asked if he had found the phantom 200K of inventory. Yup, he said. Have you put it all back in the system where it's supposed to be? I asked. "Yup. And now I don't have to worry about this for another six months."