Connor didn’t expect to get rid of the two of them without some sort of resistance, in fact, he was hoping for that, which is why he called them in to give them the axe in person. But they weren’t cooperating. They just turned and looked at one another, smiled briefly, and then broke out into uncontrollable bursts of laughter.
Connor couldn’t stand it. He too, underwent change. His face flushed and his blood pressure began to climb. He clenched his fists in anger, and without thinking, slammed the right one down on the glass-topped desk as hard as he could. The glass shattered, and some of the shards displaced, a few into the soft flesh of the heel of that hand.
He rose to his feet, the anger soaring to new heights. When his blood pressure followed it up the strain was too much for his mistreated circulatory system. Suddenly, with a wince of pain and a feeble squeal, his tantrum ceased involuntarily.
Connor sank back into his chair, right arm dangling limply alongside. A thin trickle of saliva flowed from the same side of his slack mouth. He muttered only gibberish from then on.
Bryant and Bradford stopped laughing as suddenly as Connor stopped talking, and stared dumbly at each other for a moment. The silence was broken when Bradford facetiously asked, “Who do you suppose won the pool?”
The business meeting of the board of directors of Gleaners, Inc. was, as always, informal. It took place in the back room of Morrie’s, a less than elite bistro and eatery on the wrong side of the tracks, frequented mostly by impecunious college students and transients. The fare was tolerable, and reasonable, but not fancy.
Bryant, as chairman of the board, opened the meeting with a toast. “To Lefty Connor, without whose cooperation this entire operation would have flopped.”
Down the hatch went five mugs of Dad’s Root Beer, each fortified by a shot of scotch. This combination, which sounded revolting, was uncommonly palatable, though it didn’t work with just any old root beer. Just about any kind of scotch would do but the root beer had to be the real stuff.
“Now, then,” Bryant continued, grabbing a slice of the pizza the waiter had just delivered, “what’s the score, Donohoo?”
Bill Donohoo was the company treasurer. Also, he managed the local office of the State Unemployment Commission. “We made $8,700.00 off the machines last month,” he announced, “all of which was used to expand to new locations, including six other cities throughout this state. Fees for testing brought in another $23,000.00, all of which will be distributed to the stockholders and board members as salaries and to reimburse for expenses.”
“Good for you, Bill,” Bradford shouted, a little louder than he intended, being on his second round of scotch and root beer. “Eating is the hardest habit I ever tried to break.”
“Stay sober, Chuck, you have to give the progress report. I’m through, so you’re next.”
“It’s a formal occasion,” Bradford replied, “so I’ll stand, if I can.” He struggled to his feet, grabbed himself a slice of the rapidly disappearing pizza, and announced, “We placed 113 people in more or less responsible jobs last month. I’m particularly pleased to announce that eight of these were scientific positions filled by people without degrees in the discipline for which they were hired, and that five of these competed successfully against people who did have such degrees.”
There was a round of applause. Bradford used the interval to wolf down his pizza and reach for more. “Our star testee was Junius Brown, a transient originally from Bone Gap, Illinois. Junius is now third shift engineer at the Bolton Textile plant here in Waybellowe. I have to say I never expected to see a perfect score on spatial relationship comprehension but Junius came within a hair, all with only six years of schooling—”
“—And the plant manager tells me they haven’t had fifteen minutes downtime on the line since he took over third shift,” Donohoo interrupted.
“I was just gonna say that,” Bradford added glumly. “Uh, that’s all.” He quickly sat down, just as the waiter entered with a fresh pizza.
“I’d ask the secretary to read the minutes of the last meeting, only I happen to know she didn’t take any.”
“I’m not going to take any this time, either, Don,” the secretary replied.
Judy Ivnik really was a secretary, Bryant’s old secretary from when he was a professor at the college. “I’m waiting for you to finish the old business so we can take up some new things.”
“As far as I can tell, we are finished, thanks to your negligence. OK, how about it? Is there any new business? I’d like to stop talking and start eating, too, you know.”
“I’ll make my motion,” Judy announced. “The motion is that we double the prize for high scores and make it a dollar, and that we also cut the fee for playing from a dime to a nickel.”
She turned to face blank stares from Bryant and Bradford, the only two of the five of them presently unemployed.
Anticipating their probable comments she continued, “Believe it or not, there will be substantially more people playing if we do this. To some it might even make the difference. I figured it out, and it’s clear that increasing the volume will substantially increase the number who play, but it won’t even come close to doubling the number of winners. Therefore, we’ll save a little bit there, and in time, we’ll be even again on our own revenue.”
“You’ve got figures?”
“Well, they’re in my head, Chuck, but—”
“—OK, then I’ll accept them, and I second your motion. But, let me add a thought; at the moment, we’re taking hits on rewards because we let the smart people play over and over again. Now, there’s nothing basically wrong with that except that it’s redundant for us and it defeats our basic purpose. For them, all it proves is that in that one category they can win over and over again.
“So. what I propose is to amend the motion, to change the rules so that if a winner plays again he has to take a different test. That way, he gets another chance at a prize and we get new data. With this new data we’ll be able to tell just how broad a person’s genius really is.”
“I can buy that, Chuck,” Bryant added. “How about you, Bill? Would it screw up your operation any?”
“Probably not,” Donohoo answered. “If anything, it would make it easier for my people to evaluate the applicant. We’d have a better idea who to send him to. And since our system is already trunked into Gleaners’s there wouldn’t be any additional load. For Gleaners there’d be more records, of course. I think, to be fair to the winners, we ought to be able to tell them why they’re barred from competition.”
“The employers are already doing that, Bill. It’s part of the hiring process. Some of these guys have been so browbeaten by society they’re convinced they’re inferior. It’s a real boost to self-esteem to know they’re not.”
“And that worries me, too,” Donohoo replied, almost defensively. “What are we going to do when word finally leaks out, when some of these formerly ‘elite’ people have to face the truth that it’s they who are inferior? That’s going to hurt, Don, that’s the bunch in power.”
“I won’t argue with you there, Bill. I’ve put considerable time into the problem myself. They best I can say is that they have it coming. And they do. As long as man has been man, raw ability has never been allowed to be the regulating mechanism it should have been. There have always been ways for the inferior or mediocre to cheat. The weak have always combined to pull down the mighty.