Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [80]
Besides getting married, not much was happening on the base. The only noteworthy event was that Dave Miscavige had been playing basketball with some other guys and broke his leg. He was PTS! Now there were different rumors about what happened. Some said Dave broke his leg playing basketball with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Must have been a short man’s league on a seven-foot basket. Throw in a few flying monkeys as mascots and you could have had the Lollipop league from The Wizard of Oz. That one went over real good. The girl in Religious Technology Center who was responsible for Dave’s handlings promptly disappeared. She went to a doctor’s appointment in town and never came back. Smart girl if that is really what happened.
Anyway, Dave Miscavige had been buried in some major legal proceedings and we didn’t see him much. We liked it that way. If he was occupied, then the base staff could get on with their work. It was a pure nightmare when he was around. People would blow, would get sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force and would exist in a constant state of terror. When Miscavige was at the base, it was like the place had frozen over and nothing would get done. It was weird because when he was there, the big push was always to get MORE done. It never worked out that way. So it was fine with us that he was off in Washington D.C. and Florida dealing with legal situations.
I was bored as hell being in tapes and any chance I got, I would help in the Audio Visual Systems department. They had these two old crusty technicians who worked in there and needed help badly. I loved making cassette decks and projection systems so they let me help whenever it was slow in tapes. Systems was another department in Manufacturing so the Manufacturing Secretary would pressure my senior to let me help. It worked out really good for me; my division head would go to bat for me to work in another area! I had gotten so good that I had even gone out to some organizations to install audio visual systems. One of the systems included two cameras and microphones that were installed in every single auditing room. All the cameras were fed to central locations where auditing sessions were watched and recorded.
Anyway, one day the guy who was over all quality control in Gold came to see me. I held one of three quality control posts in Gold. Well this guy was responsible for quality control of everything produced at Gold. He could walk into any area of the organization and do a spot check inspection of a product and if it was low quality or had any fault with it, he could shut down the entire area until it was sorted out to his satisfaction. He was a god. Even though he was quality control for Gold, Dave Miscavige had to approve all film rushes, videos and final film prints.
Well, this quality control guy, Randall, really wanted to be a mixer and had been in training for that before he was assigned the quality control position. He still wanted to be a mixer and if he could get himself replaced, he could become a mixer. He wanted me to replace him.
I liked the idea. In fact, I loved the idea. I could finally get out of tapes and I would be posted in the Executive division of Gold! My senior however hated the idea. My senior was Lynnea Baker. Before working in tapes, Lynnea had been in Religious Technology Center. She worked for Greg Wilhere and had been dismissed from Religious Technology Center by Dave Miscavige. After the Gauss line was cleaned out of all people and needed more, she was posted in tapes. This girl had risen all the way to the top and now she was as low as you could go. And here I was getting promoted out of there. There was no question that she was the better staff member, that she was more dedicated than I was, that she was more in-ethics most of the time. None of these weighed in on the decision. It was purely the fact that I had experience with systems which made me more qualified to do the job! So because I was bored with my assigned job and loved messing around in another area, I was more qualified!