Your lab tests are coming back dead on, but none of your staff feel like they’re getting high?” Remy’s voice questions the universe through our wooden-planked, second story. His provoked, now almost green eyes catch me as I enter his office, “Well that’s a first. Yeah, a conference call with your manufacturing team, is probably a good idea.” He rolls his eyes. The implied sarcasm is my cue.
“Hey, Gary, it’s Stephanie. If you can have your team on the line in an hour, we’ll be available. Please forward all the lab tests in the meantime so we can run them through analytics.”
“Sure, Stephanie. Will do.”
Once I’m sure the call is terminated, I sit down. “Is this the first time Nevada has told you about testing issues?”
Remy nods without looking up.
“I just got off the phone with Laure. She told me that California is failing all their potency tests as well.”
He sits back in his chair letting that soak in as Danielle walks through the doorway. Our silence stops her cold, “I was wondering why I was receiving lab test results.” She looks at both of us, her eyebrows raised, “Now I know.”
“Give us a minute, Danielle, please,” I request, and without discussion, she closes the door behind her. A familiar feeling of dread overcomes me as I ask the question, we’re both thinking, “What are the odds that two of our territories go from dead on testing to one hundred percent fails at exactly the same time?”
Shaking his head side to side, my spouse stands up, revealing a row of newly tacked paperwork on the corkboard behind him. Pinned in a column, only three inches or so of the blank bottom of each page is showing as they overlap each other. It’s notable because Remy is a random collector.
“This doesn’t make any fucking sense at all!” he explodes, jumping into a pace moving around his desk towards me, “Both California and Nevada are fully automated. We’ve taken all of the human factor out.”
“Except, the math,” I add.
“It’s not rocket science, Steph. Both guys running these facilities know what they’re doing. They do it, ALL FUCKING DAY LONG!” He bangs his desk. “Why is there no profit in peace?”
I bite my lip.
Reluctantly directing himself back into his swivel chair, it creaks under the strain.
“Let’s see what they have to say in an hour,” I offer. “In the meantime, we’ll run through the lab tests, maybe we’ll find something.” As I get up to move back into my office, he takes my hand. Exhausted, I confess, “I’m so tired of feeling like a Roxy Music album cover.”
Laughing, he pulls me in, “Which one? The one with the javelins, or the one with the two gals in their panties?”
My fingers find their way down his back as I inhale, “You smell good.”
The door opens, and Danielle enters with a stack of paperwork for each of us. Remy immediately untwines, without so much as a word.
Walking back into my office dejected, I compare the results between California and Nevada and the actual printouts of every test. Both states are testing at various degrees over or under the allotted ten percent variance for efficacy; our fifty-milligram dose coffee is testing out at over ninety-milligram, and our one-hundred milligram tea is testing out at twenty-five milligrams. It’s all over the boards.
By the end of the hour, I have no new information to add. and by the looks on their faces as I enter, neither do Remy or Danielle as I take a seat in his office prompting, “What’s our tactic for the call?”
“Remy will go over the standard operating procedures with them first,” Danielle, irritatingly responds with efficiency. “Then he’ll go over the math of the last oil batch so we can see if there are any holes in the production line.” She literally ticks two items off a checklist.
“May I suggest that you let them tell you what they’re doing first? Let them run through our standard operating procedures, and don’t offer any information until they’ve finished,” I state directly to Remy, before reluctantly inquiring, “What if they’ve done everything correctly?”
“It’s not possible. If they followed the SOPs there shouldn’t be a problem,” Danielle intercedes like I’m questioning Remy’s intellectual property.
The phone rings. Gary is guarded but professional as he walks us through his operations and the standard operating procedures they legally must abide by. Two grueling hours later we run through the mathematic equations for infusion, double-checking the original lab tests for the cannabis oil they used. His manufacturing team is solid and defensive.
Careful not to judge or point fingers, Remy and I catch each other’s eyes before he states, “Okay, we’re headed to California the day after tomorrow. We’ll be in Sacramento for five days then Stephanie and I will fly out to your facility, and I will re-blend myself; we will test it and see what happens. We won’t leave until you’re up and running.” Apparent relief waves through the Nevada team. Their decompression is almost audible as Remy ends the call and leaves the room.
An hour later, we’re on with Laure and the California team, following the same procedures, attempting to analyze any state lab errors. But their in-house lab tests are all dead on, and, they’ve gone from confused, to angry.
“Remy, you realize we’ve just spent two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on this blend, and it has to be destroyed. All of it!”
“Let me get this straight, Scott,” Remy zeroes in, “you blended all of the product before you got your results back from the state laboratory?”
“We tested out perfectly in-house; our lab results are dead on, but the state lab results are all fails!”
“And that’s my problem?” Remy fires back. “Last month, when we manufactured the first blend, what was your protocol for testing?”
There’s a pause before Scott replies, “We tested the original oil in-house, to be sure it matched the state lab; then you trained the team with that oil, and we tested one of each product in-house with a pass, before sending one of each product out to the state for final testing. Once they all passed the state, we blended the entire batch.” Scott’s statement hovers for a moment before I arbitrate.
“So, what do you think, Scott? What’s your gut feeling about why this isn’t working?”
“I don’t know. We followed the SOPs to the letter. Our math is right! The only variance in the equation is that you weren’t here. Remy, my ass is on the line here.”
“Have you packaged everything yet?” I inquire gently.
“No.”
Silently relieved, I respond, “Okay, we’ll be there in forty-eight hours. We’ll have five days to work this out.” I’m careful not to say anything about Nevada.
“Thanks, guys.”
Remy hangs up, “Followed the SOPs to the letter? Not if he didn’t test everything out first! What the fuck is wrong with these guys? Why are we spending our time and money figuring out their dysfunction?” He glares at me. “Seriously, Steph, we need to renegotiate our contracts. We need to control what these morons do to our products. It’s the same old bullshit! God, damn it!”
There isn’t anything else to say. He has a point, a rhetorical point. Engulfed in thought, I realize I have five minutes to get to the interview with Galax. “I’ve gotta go.” Planting a kiss on his rigid cheek, I walk to the door. “There’s nothing else we can do about any of this right now.”
Remy nods, spinning his chair around to face his wall board.
Walking out the door to his office, I catch Danielle’s gaze from her doorway momentarily, she ominously draws her eyes to the floor. At the top of the landing, I hesitate, hoping the descension of the stairs is not the metaphor it implies.