Comment on After mass shooting, Minn. company carries on

After mass shooting, Minn. company carries on Associated Press Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Published 12:05 am, Saturday, March 9, 2013 MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Reuven Rahamim built Minneapolis-based Accent Signage Systems off his patented Raster method for installing Braille onto signs. [...] in mid-2012, he had a new technology to sell: a proprietary design for incorporating energy efficient light-emitting diode (LED) arrays in sign fixtures. [...] the reason appears to be what Rahamim already had in place: a trusted network of friends and advisers — and skilled, cross-trained and dedicated workers who firmly believed in Rahamim's vision, Finance & Commerce reported (http://bit.ly/13ucdjK). Most of the surviving employees were back to work 11 days after the shooting, filling orders for hundreds of sign displays — on time. Sanford Stein, a friend and business partner of the Rahamims, thinks Reuven Rahamim's excitement about his business lives on in the surviving workers: The determination to carry on helped answer a nagging question on the minds of the surviving 17 employees at Accent as they gathered for grief counseling and funerals of co-workers. Grandner, the company's chief financial officer and human resources manager, was visiting his mother on the day of the shooting. The first week after was about arranging grief counseling through the company's health insurer (Minnetonka-based Medica), making sure messages got picked up, mail was received and there were no projects ready to implode. Everything we did after the event, we did as a team — from the next day when we got everyone together to go through the grief counseling, to five funerals we went to, to walking back into the building for the first time, and then ultimately to start production again. A piece of advice that Shereen Rahamim chose not to follow was to bring in consultants and other outsiders to help manage the business. Along with Rahamim, the victims included Rami Cooks, described as Rahamim's right-hand man, employees Ron Edberg and Jacob Beneke, and UPS driver Keith Basinski, who happened to be at the company's loading dock. There were even workers such as Christie Cutter, a recent college graduate who joined the company as a marketing specialist months before the shooting. Parizek noticed that institutional memory was lost because key people were no longer there. The family of one of the slain workers, Jacob Beneke, has also sued Accent Signage in Hennepin County District Court, accusing the company of improperly handling security and Engeldinger's firing. [...] Souter is not back, and the executive offices where the shootings occurred have not been used — save for the construction workers now renovating them.