The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 43

Flira THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Sunday, June 12, 1994; MEN mm i '7 iviessage Gene Marlowe -Jlf 4 I I I Your call is important to Digital Message Systems, which provides businesses with messages that play 1 over the telephone to customers on hold. By JANET CROSSON Tribune Staff Writer tampa; J. B. Seligman rode the mechanical bull craze of the 1980s all the way to his first $2 million by age 27. Then he fell off.

The fad died and the Texan's $2 million went almost as fast as it had come, in a patent suit with a competitor. But, falling off that horse, he got right back on another, working at and then running a recording studio. His background in broadcasting led him to another mechanical invention which hasn't proved to be as short-lived as the barroom bulls he once i manufactured and sold. His company, Digital Message Systems provides i businesses with messages that play over the telephone to customers on hold. Seligman, now 40, along with his partner Byron Lancaster, 33," are riding the wave of the digital message-on-hold industry and it doesn't seem that the wave is in danger of crashing anytime soon.

"There are 10 million business telephone systems in this country," Seligman said. "With all the message-on-hold companies put together, there are only about 100,000 accounts right now. That leaves 99 percent of the market wide open. It's going to be extremely good for the next few years." Seligman came up with the concept about 11 years ago during a telephone call to his bank. He was put on hold, and as he listened to the radio station being played over the telephone, he heard a commercial for one of his bank's competitors.

It started him thinking, and the product of that thought was a cassette loop that played a message over and over to people on hold. He brought the business to Tampa from Houston five years ago and hooked up with Lancaster, a former Navy air-traffic controller, who was working with technicians perfecting a digital telephone-message system. Now, instead of a cassette tape, a tiny I computer microchip delivers the message. The result of the collaboration was DMS, with Seligman as president and Lancaster as chief executive officer. The first year 1 the company's sales were about $100,000.

In 1993 the company had sales of $5 million and anticipates between $7.5 million and $10 million for 1994, which the partners say makes them the biggest, See DMS, Page 10 Book tells of presidential rage, naivete WASHINGTON Yes, Bill Clinton does throw tantrums. And no, he did not know until three months after becoming president that there was a limit to what he could spend. Those details were reported in Bob Woodward's new book, "Agenda, Inside the Clinton White House," and acknowledged last week by two top aides in the White House. At a staff meeting in April 1993, Clinton startled his aides by exploding into a rage when they told him that Congress had cut to ribbons his proposed "investments" in education, worker training, roads, etc. Clinton had not known until then that his spending would be subject to limits, or caps, put on federal spending in 1990 by then-President Bush and Congress.

The House slashed $231 billion proposed over five years to less than $1 billion for 1994 and less than $6 billion for '95. Clinton "let loose a torrent of rage and frustration," charging that he'd been blind-sided, that no one had told him about the caps, Woodward wrote. No names named The book is based on hundreds of not-for-attribution interviews. Robert Rubin, director of the National. Economic Council in the White House, and Gene Sperling, his deputy, were both there.

At lunch with reporters last week, Rubin confirmed that Clinton does have a temper and also apparently did not grasp "budget arcana" like spending caps when elected. "He really does know an enormous amount," but a Washington outsider could hardly be expected to know about spending caps, Rubin said. "I spent years on Wall Street and spent an awful lot of time thinking about the economy. And I never thought of budget caps. It is not a broadly debated issue in the land." The spending limits were the key of the 1990 deficit-reduction deal, a law that also included the tax increase that Bush later repudiated.

Budget director Leon Panetta, who as a congressman had helped write that law, should have warned Clinton that the caps would cause trouble. Sperling insisted last week that the spending caps weren't that important, considering that Congress was intent on cutting spending below what the caps required. There have been few reports of Clinton's temper. In Woodward's book, he is portrayed as going into rages so intense that his staff would fall into shell-shocked silence. What about the temper? Rubin was asked.

"There were certainly times when he was frustrated if you're asking whether he was frustrated, the answer is yes." He blew his top when told about the spending caps? Rubin couldn't recall exactly. "He loses his temper once in a while. I'll tell you, I lose my temper once in a while. He also went through endless meetings on the economy and made decisions under tremendous pressures. He probably made more big decisions on economic issues than any president since Franklin Roosevelt." Occasional anger, yes, Rubin said, but Clinton basically operates in "a good-humored kind of way." JAY CONNERTribune photo Digital Message Systems Chief Executive Off i-1 years ago.

DMS provides businesses with mes-cer Byron Lancaster, left, and President J.B. -sages that play over the telephone to custom-Seligman brought their company to Tampa five ers on hold. Workplace violence serious, growing worry for companies mtiCj r-rks 'M MK By LISA GENASCI of The Associated Press NEW YORK An executive at a high-tech firm who helped plan layoffs at several company plants started receiving threats via untraceable electronic mail messages. In the notes, the harasser indicated he or she was watching the woman at home, where she lived alone. She spent a Sunday working in her garden.

The next day, her e-mail read: "Watch out for the flower you didn't pick:" The terrified woman left her home and job. A year and a half later she still hasn't returned to work. In another case, a young woman worked a blue-collar job alongside a young man who repeatedly asked her out. She told him she wasn't interested and when he persisted, she filed a harassment claim. When he still didn't stop, she wrote a letter to the plant manager saying she feared for her safety.

While the manager procrastinated, the man shot and killed the woman in front of 125 other employees, then turned the gun on himself. 4 -M'Z'f 1 PAT Workplace violence, PREVENTION There are steps a company can take to deter on-the-job violencePage 7 whether it involves harassment, threats or a physical attack, is a serious and growing problem for companies. PHIL SHEFFIELDTribune photos Melinda May, above, and Lee Anne Foster, below, taste test samples of Nestea at Coca-Cola Nestle Refreshments in Tampa. Growth in ready-to-drink tea leads to steep competition In high dudgeon The lack of attention to the issue means lost lives, discontent and fear among employees, as well as tremendous cost to companies involved, researchers say. "Only in the last couple of years have people begun to realize this is an issue they needed to worry about," said Mary Pigatti, a consultant who through United HealthCare Corp.

helps companies assess and reduce their risks. "No one is safe, whether you are a bank teller or a supervisor in corporate America." In an American Management Association survey released In April, more than half of 311 companies said at least one of their workers had been attacked, threatened or killed on the Job over the past four years. Still, only one-quarter of employers offered formal training to employees in coping with workplace violence and 11 percent offered training to all employees, the AMA said. Hoping to alert companies to the Issue, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health urged "immediate action to prevent workplace homicides," which It identified as a serious public health hazard. Indeed, Labor Department research shows violence Is now the No.

1 cause of death on the Job for women and the second for men, behind transportation accidents. In 1992, the last year for which data is available, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said 1,004 workers were killed on the job, or more than 19 per week and one-third more than the annual average in the 1980s. Among those, 177 were In managerial and professional occupations, 335 were In sales, 225 were in the service Industry and 202 were drivers or factory workers. And that's only homicides. The Bureau of Labor Statistics hasn't kept track of violent Incidents or threats in which no one dies.

The Northwestern National Life Insurance however, said he expects sales growth of tea to increase as the major brands continue to coax consumers into buying ready-to-serve teas instead of brewing their own. "We think there will be a huge source of future business from con- -verting people who might make their own today but want more convenience," said Cathelin, whose company had $31.9 million in U.S. tea sales in 1993. Cathelin said improvements in tastes and a retail cost that makes ready-to-serve teas priced between soft drinks and fruit drinks are aided by a growing distribution net-work, In Chicago, Phil Johnson, president of Leo Shapiro and Associates, a consulting firm, said tea sales have been buoyed by a "trendy" tm-. ooe pcnorlnllv nmnnc vounc nennle.

According to, Woodward, Clinton spent the day fuming, and at a later meeting, brought up his shredded program again. "Where are all the Democrats?" Clinton reportedly bellowed. "I hope you're all aware we're all Eisenhower Republicans. We're Eisenhower Republicans here, and we're fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market.

Isn't that great?" Met with silence, Clinton erupted again. "I don't have a Democratic budget until 1996. None of the investments, none of the things I campaigned on." Clinton, however, set the Republican tone of his administration himself when he insisted on bringing the deficit down by $140 billion by 199.7. His staff was puzzled as to why Clinton wanted exactly $140 billion not $125 billion or $130 billion, which still would have been Impressive. Woodward writes that $140 billion secretly had been recommended by the man who wields much of the real power in Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan a Republican.

Greenspan had suggested that without a deficit cut of at least $140 billion, Interest rates would rise. Clinton may not have known about spending caps, but he did know that without Greenspan on his side, he was in real trou- iJ By PAUL POWER JR. Tribune Staff Writer TAMPA The folks at Coca-Cola Nestle Refreshments are looking forward to a hot summer, the kind of weather to add sizzle to the already torrid sales pace of iced tea products. National sales of ready-to-drink teas reached $208.7 million in 1993, market surveys show, almost doubling In size in one year. Coca-Cola Nestle, headquartered In Tampa, Is In the middle of a marketing blitz with a $30 million advertising campaign touting its Nestea products.

The company, which was formed In 1991 as a joint venture between the Coca-Cola Co. and Nestle S.A., also Is trying to expand its share in quenching the nation's sudden thirst for teas by giving away 6 million cans of its products at beach volleyball games, Major League Baseball venues, theme parks and other outdoor locales in 60 U.S. cit- as well as benefiting from place- les. Such product giveaways may not be unusual, but analysts say the tea category growth has been extraordinary. Herve Cathelin, vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola Nestle, ment tn ubiquitous vending ma-See GROWTH, Page 7 1- -r ble.

See VIOLENCE, Page 7 i.