Chapter 3- The Free Sample
“You’re early.”
“Traffic,” Lizzie said. Force of habit had her making excuses for being late, not even realizing she was early. “And Abuela made me pray over the sugar.”
“I thought I told you I take mine black.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have time to answer and tell you that Abuela considers it sacrilege to not add sugar to coffee. An Orisha could ask her to make a colada without sugar, and she still wouldn’t do it.” Lizzie said this matter-of-factly.
As she handed him the cup, she gestured toward his tattoo. “What’s the story there?”
“Oh, just some coordinates that are meaningful to me.”
“I figured as much,” Lizzie said, sipping her colada. “It’s just that I looked them up, and I didn’t think East Hialeah would be your part of town.”
East Hialeah was an area of Miami known for its large Cuban population, and most tourists felt they needed a passport to visit.
You know you’re there by its characteristic broken-down cars on the front lawns, and the loud music competing with the loud voices.
Sometimes in Spanish, people without manners, or those new to the country, or those who were poor, were considered low class or riffraff, and Cuban’s would call them Chusmas.
Lizzie disliked that word because she felt it was thrown around way too often and used more to separate affluent Hispanics from lower-income ones, similar to how she had observed some of her non-Hispanic friends use terms like “redneck” or “ghetto” to refer to people who were maybe just lower income.
But Lizzie had cousins who lived there, and sometimes even she felt there were a little too many chusmas for her.
Will tilted his head slightly and looked at her quizzically. “You looked them up?”
Lizzie froze for a minute. Was it not normal for someone to memorize numbers and research them randomly out of curiosity? Should she not have said anything? “I, uh…” she began, suddenly self-conscious. “I noticed it yesterday at the meeting.”
Will lifted his wrist to his eyes, as if he hadn’t realized it was visible to everyone. “What part of town would you consider to be my part of town?”
Lizzie shrugged. “I guess like Coral Gables or Key Biscayne.”
Will chuckled slightly. “I think you’d be surprised to know my background.”
“Oh? When was the last time you visited Hialeah?” Lizzie asked, feigning naivete, knowing he likely hadn’t gone in a while.
“Touché,” he said and led her into the warehouse.
Lizzie had been to the distribution center, or DC, before, so she wasn’t surprised by the layout or the large amount of inventory held within.
She was a bit surprised to see much of the warehouse staff standing around, looking grumpy, and the warehouse manager, with his arms crossed, looking furious.
Lizzie surmised that her “pallet Tetris” comment had made its way back to them.
“Well, Lizzie, I think you know everyone here. What I’d like you to do is show me how you can save us those millions.” Will stood by her—not in solidarity, but as a challenge. He was testing her.
She took a deep breath and said, “No.”
“No?” Will said as if he’d never heard the word.
“Mr. Pemberley,” Lizzie began, but Will cut her off.
“Will. Please.”
“Will,” Lizzie began again. “I will tell you my plan more or less—I will give you the time estimates and labor needed and the analysis I did—but we have no contract, no understanding, and no commitment that my work for you will be compensated accordingly. So without that—without an agreement in place—no, I will not show you how I can save you millions.” Rule one in sales: never give anything away for free.
Will looked as if he’d never heard anything so ludicrous in his life. “You don’t trust me to pay you for your work?”
“If you don’t trust me to do what I say I can do enough to put it in a contract, why should I trust you to pay me when I do?”
“Fair enough,” Will said. “But this still leaves us with the issue of I’m skeptical that you will be able to deliver these results, and you’re not exactly offering me a guarantee or giving me any proof.
And these guys,”—he gestured to the warehouse staff—“they say you’re full of it.
” He had a mischievous smirk. He’s enjoying this, Lizzie thought.
“Would you feel more comfortable if I showed you a solution that they may have overlooked? Shall we call it a free sample?” It was Lizzie’s turn to feel mischievous.
The warehouse staff squirmed slightly at the implication that there was something they had overlooked. “By all means,” Will said and gestured to the crowd for her to take the floor.
Lizzie had thought about wearing pink just to spite Will’s request, but she had opted for a black pair of slacks and a gray polo, and she was glad she did, as she felt more utilitarian and less prissy in this group.
“Ignacio,” she said, addressing the grumpy warehouse manager.
“Can you explain to me how your team picks the pallets from the aisles and moves them to be staged to ship out?”
Ignacio became animated. “I don’t need to explain—I can show you.” Then he turned to the group behind him and said, “Julio, forklift!”
As one of the gentlemen went to get the forklift, Lizzie said, “Even better! Will, do you mind timing how long he takes to recover the pallet and bring it down the aisle?”
Ignacio chimed in again. “I can tell you: on average, we take 42 seconds to recover a pallet, and we do approximately 1,000 picks a day between the two forklifts.”
Lizzie smiled, nodding appreciatively as she sipped her colada.
Julio appeared on the forklift and waited for further instructions. “Julio, can you go down to the end of the aisle and grab the pallet in B24 and bring it here?” Julio looked at Lizzie as if this were a trick question.
“Just like I do usually?”
“Yes, please,” Lizzie said.
Julio, still doubtful, looked over to Ignacio for final approval. Once Ignacio confirmed with a nod, Julio shrugged and went down the aisle.
Will kept his eye on his watch as Julio expertly drove the forklift feet under the pallet, lifted it, pulled the pallet out at a slight angle, then pulled forward and back again in a three-point turn before returning to the group with the pallet.
Lizzie looked at Will, who announced, “41 seconds.” Ignacio crossed his arms smugly.
Lizzie smiled and grabbed a roll of red duct tape out of her bag. “Awesome, Julio! Above average! Can you walk with me?”
“Okay,” Julio said, jumping off the forklift and following Lizzie down the aisle.
Once they got to the space where the pallet had been retrieved, she taped a red V at 90 degrees on the floor. “When you return the pallet, can you put it back so that the corner is like this?”
Julio looked at her oddly. “So like the corner faces the aisle?” He held his arms out to make sure he was understanding the instructions correctly.
“Yup, exactly.”
Again, Julio shrugged, and they went back to the forklift. Julio returned the pallet as instructed, then rejoined the group. “Okay,” Lizzie said. “Julio, please go retrieve the pallet again—and Will, if you’d do us the honor of timing it again?”
Will nodded, and Julio jumped in the forklift and went down the aisle.
With the pallet at 90 degrees, the forklift feet slid in easily, lifted, and backed up.
Without needing to do a three-point turn in the aisle, everyone knew—without hearing the time—that this was much faster.
When Julio came back, Will said, “11 seconds.”
“?Pero nadie me dijo! But no one ever said to put them like that!” Ignacio bellowed.
Lizzie sipped her colada. “Exactly. That’s why you hire me.”
Then she turned to Will. “By my calculation, I’m saving you about 30 seconds a pick. At 1,000 picks a day, that’s more than 8 hours, or 4 hours per forklift. What’s that, like $300k in annual savings? That’s one heck of a sample.” Lizzie looked victoriously at Will.
A rueful smile crossed Will’s face.
He grabbed his phone—never breaking eye contact.
“Hey, it’s me. Get the contract ready for Lizzie. Pay whatever she asks…”
Lizzie could hear muffled protest from the other end.
“Yeah. She’s worth every penny.”
He hung up.
Lizzie grabbed the tape roll.
“After saving you $300k, I’d say, breakfast’s on you.”
She walked out—colada in hand, Will watching her, amused.
Will let Lizzie pick the restaurant for breakfast, and she picked a nearby La Carreta.
La Carreta is a Miami staple: a chain of Cuban spots with consistently good food that, as they claimed, was made with amor.
It was also a good value. Lizzie felt Cuban food was best when it was cheap.
It used humble ingredients, off-cuts, and preparations that lent themselves to maximizing flavor and fullness.
It is where Lizzie liked to do business, celebrate birthdays, or get a quick coffee.
True to his word, Will asked the company lawyer, Carolina Molina, to meet with them to finalize the contract.
She didn’t seem happy to have to rush to review the contract to be signed with Lizzie, and to be subjected to stepping into a place as low-brow as some considered a La Carreta.
Still, she arrived relatively quickly, albeit with a scowl firmly affixed to her face.
Carolina shook Lizzie’s hand with a smile that looked like a grimace and said “pleasure” with all the warmth of someone describing a wound. She slid in next to Will, looking like she was attempting to avoid touching anything—except her boss.
From her cardigan draped over her shoulder to her immaculately coiffed hair and pearl earrings—and capped off by her order of hot tea with lemon—Carolina looked completely out of place in La Carreta, and she wasn’t making any attempt to fit in.
Lizzie thought she could picture Carolina in sterile rooms with modern furniture or maybe a country club.
But among the loud conversations, overly familiar servers, and family-friendly interior of the restaurant, she might as well be a different species.