Company Man
A read an entire book over the weekend!
That rarely happens. Usually it takes me at least a few weeks to finish one, or, in the case of Steven King’s “The Cell,” I’m halfway through and have been reading it since January.
The way I found it only happens to me every now and then, but I wish it happened more. You go into a store to find something, then come out with something else you never heard of. That’s a big gamble–you either stop midway through because it’s terrible or it becomes your new favorite. The same thing happened in Blockbuster when I rented “Imaginary Heroes.” I thought: that’s a nice cover. Is that Sigourney Weaver and the guy from The Girl Next Door? Wait, Jeff Daniels is in it too? Why haven’t I heard of this?
Anyway, it’s called “Company.” It’s about a college graduate who gets a job at a company named Zephyr Holdings. The company’s mission statement is as follows:
leadership positions in its chosen markets,
forging profitable growth opportunities by
developing strong relationships between internal
and external business units and coordinating a
strategic, consolidated approach to achieve
maximum returns for its stakeholders.
You see, that’s FUNNY, because it makes no damn sense. And if you could see some of the departmental goals for where I work, they sound pretty much the same.
So, this employee realizes he has absolutely no idea what the company he works for actually does. When he asks, he finds that none of the other employees do either. So he goes on a journey to locate Senior Management and the CEO (who nobody has actually seen) in order to ask them what the company does.
[Not that you’d go out and read a book based on my recommendation, but in case you plan to: what follows will totally spoil the plot for you, so don’t read it.]
Eventually he gets so fed up with everything that he manages to break into the stairwell and walk up to the CEO’s office that is inaccessible by the elevator everyone uses. He opens the door to the CEO’s office and finds… that he’s on the roof.
He walks out onto the roof, barricading the stairwell door so security can’t topple him, and then finds another elevator. He enters this one, and it takes him to “level 13,” which is supposed to not exist. (There is a level 12 and 14, traditionally buildings have no level 13.)
Who greets him? A janitor he sees everyday. The janitor extends his hand and says, “Hi, I’m Daniel Klausmen, CEO. Welcome to Project Alpha.”
Turns out Zephyr is a fake corporation that Project Alpha orchestrated in order to study and develop new management techniques.
Well, the main character is morally driven, and the rest of the book is about how he has to live a double life as a Zephyr employee and an Alpha agent, and about how he ultimately does “the right thing” with the true knowledge of Zephyr.
You won’t want to read it now that I’ve spoiled the major plot twist (I didn’t see it coming), but if you do, you can borrow it from me. I’ve looked into the author’s other books and plan to get them soon. One is called “Syrup” and the other is called “Jennifer Government,” which takes place in a future where all people are required to take their employer’s name as their last name. For example, I would be Adam University. Katy would be Katy JCC.
Anyway, does anybody remember the shooting that took place at the Playstation 3 launch? Some guy was shot because of the shortage of PS3s? Here’s an excerpt from “Jennifer Government.” It takes place at Nike.
“What do you know about Nike Mercurys?”
Hack blinked. “They’re our latest product. I haven’t actually seen a pair, but… I heard they’re great.”
The Johns smiled. “We started selling Mercurys six months ago. You know how many pairs we’ve shifted since then?”
Hack shook his head. They cost thousands of dollars a pair, but that wouldn’t stop people from buying them. They were the hottest sneakers in the world. “A million?”
“Two hundred.”
“Two hundred million?”
“No, two hundred pairs.”
“John here,” the other John said, “pioneered the concept of marketing by refusing to sell any products. It drives the market insane.”
“And now it’s time to cash in. On Friday we’re gonna dump four hundred thousand pairs on the market at two and a half grand each.”
“Which, since they cost us—what was it?”
“Eighty-five.”
“Since they cost us eighty-five cents to manufacture, gives us a gross margin of around one billion dollars.” He looked at Vice-President John. “It’s a brilliant campaign.”
“It’s really just common sense,” John said. “But here’s the thing, Hack: if people realize every mall in the country’s got Mercurys, we’ll lose all that demand we’ve worked so hard to build up. Am I right?”
“Yeah.” Hack hoped he sounded confident. He didn’t really understand marketing.
“So you know what we’re going to do?”
He shook his head.
“We’re going to shoot them,” Vice-President John said. “We’re going to kill anyone who buys a pair.”
Silence. “What?” Hack said.
The other John said, “Well, not everyone, obviously. We figure we only have to plug… what did we decide? Five?”
“Ten,” Vice-President John said. “To be safe.”
“Right. We take out ten customers, make it look like ghetto kids, and we’ve got street cred coming out our asses. I bet we shift our inventory within 24 hours.”
What’s funny is that this was written in 1999.
Anyway, that’s it. Bye for now suckers.
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