Porn Valley- Tony Santoro, Metro’s sales manager who walked out on the company yesterday afternoon, was at Porn Star Karaoke Tuesday night. Santoro was talking about how quickly the news of his departure made it on adultfyi.com and how it’sbecome a finger-pointing guessing game at Metro to name the source of information. Meanwhile Mr. Metrosexual gives me a few more interesting items.
Gene: Rumor has it over at Metro that you’re Skip, the warehouse guy.
Mr. Metro: That’s pretty funny.
Gene: I’m told Skip runs the warehouse and if anything happens in the building he generally knows about it.
Mr. Metro: Obviously not everything. But I will say this. If Theresa Alves gives her notice at 10. By 12 it’s all over the building. If Gustavo gets dinged on overtime, pretty soon everyone will know it.
Gene: Tell me about Gustavo.
Mr. Metro: Another great guy. Very hard working, very loyal. Everyone loves him. He’s in the art department. He’s the cornerstone over there. Metro keeps all its information on discs, and Gustavo is the only one who knows where everything’s at. Gustavo goes, Metro’s fucked. Metro doesn’t store its data on hardrive. They keep it all on about 4500 CDs. Each job is sorted on a CD, all indexed by year and title. Gustavo knows how to decipher the system. But that was the system to begin with. It’s nothing he personally engineered. I had dinner with Charley Lynch the other night and Lynch was telling me it’s amazing what this guy knows. It’s almost tantamount to knowing where all the bodies are buried.
Gene: I imagine Gustavo’s pretty well compensated.
Mr. Metro: That’s just it. He’s not. Lynch told me that Gustavo wasn’t getting paid all that much in the first place and needed to have some extra money to support the little apartment in Glendale where he could raise his kid. Metro promised him an hour’s worth of overtime a day to keep the rent going then rescinded it. That was Neil’s idea. They took the overtime away and Gustavo had to move somewhere near Compton. That’s a fucked up situation.
Gene: I’m hearing that Metro’s a very healthy organization, financially speaking.
Mr. Metro: The numbers are coming in and the talk in Vegas in January was about how Metro was really coming up. It’s a bicoastal empire but being penny-wise and pound-foolish, Metro’s recent decisions are taking it down. I hope Kenny pulls through and lives a long life. But on the other hand, he made this bed. He turned the reins over to someone who doesn’t know the adult business. But I have to respect Tony’s decision to leave. I don’t know anyone who would have been comfortable in the position he was put in, having to take over Joey Wilson’s job.
Gene: What was the story on Theresa.
Mr. Metro: She bailed because she was told to take over the production director’s position without a raise in pay. She said not for the same amount of money she was working now. They weren’t willing to give her a raise.