The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  I drove out of the hotel garage into a dark day and pouring rain. I drove down the M4 slowly, I don't play around with rain. I took the Slough turnoff. A small blue Nissan followed me off the motorway. It also followed me all the way through to the industrial estate, but it drove on past as I pulled into Clark's. Come to think of it, I had seen it behind me on the motorway as well, driving as slowly as I was. Another London guy with business in Slough today.

  It was raining too hard for a cigarette outside, so I went into the building, said good morning to the guy at the desk. He looked unhappy, maybe he was a smoker as well, maybe the rain was the reason why the desk was attended this morning. Maybe he spends non-rainy days wandering around all over the place smoking cigarettes. Or maybe he doesn’t. But if I see that desk unattended again during working hours, I'm going to make it my business to find out why.

  I went to the old cow's office, yes the meeting was fixed for 9 o'clock. She looked like she wanted to ask me what my problem was, I was a few minutes early. But she didn't. If anyone deserves a salary cut, it's her…let's see what is agreed in this morning's meeting.

  I went into the conference room, coffee already there, poured myself a cup and in came Fred and Charlie.

  "Good morning, Peter," said Fred.

  "Good to see you back again," said Charlie. "Will it be for long?"

  "Good morning, folks," I said. "Just for another two weeks. But you won't have to put up with me every day. I'll be in and out."

  They poured themselves coffee, sat down.

  "How was your meeting with Roger yesterday?" Fred asked.

  "Fine. Very good. Friendly as always."

  "And what have you got for us this morning? By the way, Ron and his guys are really into those set-up reductions. I've never seen him so enthusiastic. He sees big productivity gains."

  "I'm pleased to hear it," I said, "but let's not forget to make sure we receive the machine by machine progress reports regularly and on time. Keep the pressure on. And this morning, we have three items to discuss. The first one is a hairy one, salary and wage cuts. Then we have purchasing. And then we just need to confirm our monthly reporting techniques vis-à-vis Group."

  "O.K., let's start with the hairy one," said Fred.

  "The hairy one is the big cost-cutting. We've done most of the small stuff. But for the heavy, painful stuff, we shall—like the Japanese, and unlike the Americans—start at the top. That means the shareholders, in this case United Fasteners. They will receive no dividends this year, agreed with Roger and Geoff. It doesn't affect our results of course, but it sure as hell does our cash flow a lot of good."

  Fred and Charlie both nodded. They weren't worried about United Fasteners, they were worried about what was coming next.

  "Next in line is top management. First of all, there will be no bonuses for last year's performance. Secondly, there will be no bonuses for this year's performance either. As you know, approved bonuses for the prior year are generally paid in July. This means that it will be more than two years before the next possible bonus payments can occur, if approved of course. In addition, you will get no stock options on United Fasteners shares."

  "Not a surprise, Peter," Fred said, "although we were hoping for something if we made this year's targets. Admittedly it will have been with your assistance, but we have also done a lot and we will have got rid of over three million in losses, a tremendous improvement."

  "I agree with you, Fred, but for the full year there will be no profit, or none worth speaking of."

  "I can't disagree with that, Peter."

  "And now the big one. Salary cuts for everybody. It starts with top management and the cut we are looking for here is 15%."

  "What?" said Charlie in a loud voice. "That is a vicious slice in my view. Can they do it without our agreement?"

  "If you will allow me, Charlie, I don't at the moment know whether it can be done without your agreement, I haven't even seen your contracts. But if you will allow me to say so, it is not a question of 'they', it is a question of 'we'. One would be hoping for it to be your own voluntary decision. First of all to show your readiness for sacrifice until the company becomes profitable again. Secondly, because we are looking for cuts for all employees, and you guys will need to show yourselves first and foremost as an example. And thirdly, we need to convince the works council and the employees to accept their cuts, and the cuts at your level will have to be heavier than theirs. In fact we want to do this whole thing on a socially acceptable basis."

  "Go on, Peter," said Fred.

  "Below top management level, we want cuts of 10%, 5% for the next level down, and zero for the lowest wage earners. However, we will be expecting the latter to agree to work an extra seven hours per month in lieu."

  "Seven hours per month? They'll never agree to that, Peter. Ask Ron."

  "Oh I think they will, Fred," I said. "It's only twenty minutes per day. It won't kill anybody. In any case, we now need to discuss how we're going to get them to agree to the whole thing."

  "Well now," said Charlie, "I am all ears on that one."

  "O.K., let me fill in a few details. Firstly, you and your colleagues will have to work out the salary and wage levels at which the 10%, 5% and the 7 additional hours should be applied. Secondly, we should build in an exception clause for proven hardship cases—to be approved in each individual case by yourselves of course. Thirdly, we need to document all of this and meet with the works council. Fast. It would be good if we could have this done by tomorrow morning and meet with them tomorrow afternoon. You should inform them verbally that you will be taking 15% cuts and zero bonuses in any case. And also tell them that you intend to address the whole workforce sometime this week and could they please arrange it, preferably by stopping work early on the Friday afternoon. That way, they will have the whole weekend to cool down and think about it."

  "But…" said Charlie.

  I interrupted him. "I know, Charlie, I'm getting there. You see, we have to take huge steps to achieve the massive improvements in results we are looking for, and these salary and wage cuts alone will save around one million per year. So…how do we get them to agree? You, Fred, will be making the speech to the workforce and my recommendations for that speech would be to base it on the following major points. I would start by telling them what last years' losses were and point out that we are continuing to make losses this year—not untrue on a cumulative basis to date. Then show them the cuts we want to make, about which they will already have been informed by the works council. Make sure they see that you guys are taking bigger cuts than they are, including zero bonuses, and that the lower earners have to sacrifice less. And then I would state that the situation has become so serious that we have 480 jobs available at the lower rates and no jobs at all at the current rates. Because our shareholders will possibly close us down. We have to shock them but we mustn't lie. Closure is not on the agenda, and it is therefore important to use the word 'possibly'. Which is not a lie, because anything is possible on this planet, as Toyota keeps telling us."

  "And you think this will work?" asked Fred.

  "Yes. If we shock them enough. Many of them won't be able to find new jobs in the current environment and they know it. Also, you may want to mention that we pay over the national union rates anyway and we believe that this sacrifice is not only a socially structured one but that it is also within acceptable limits. A good psychological way to finish would be to say that, quite simply, we are looking for their cooperation to help save the company. And to avoid us having to begin reducing headcount, starting now. And we would be looking for their reply next week."

  "Still difficult, in my view," said Charlie.

  "You may be right, Charlie, but I don't think so. When you tell them that as soon as we are profitable again, and that might be next year already, we will at least reverse the cuts, I think that should swing it."

  "And we don't need to mention that the profits will be based on audited accounts, so the reversa
l would effectively be the year after."

  "Correct, Charlie, at least for now. Of course, you might want to do it a bit sooner, Fred, but that's your call. After all, the permanent benefit is that we will already have saved some salary and wage costs in the meantime…plus any related increases that might have been."

  "Right," said Fred. "Even so, it's a hell of a sacrifice, including for us."

  "I agree, Fred, although less than you think after income tax. But I think you will find that if you make next year's targets, your bonuses and stock options are going to be very large ones. And it is a momentum which should continue for several years. We are going to achieve those targets, no sweat. Not a bad deal at all, in my view."

  "No risk for next year maybe, but I don't know about the year afterwards."

  "Well, I will be cooperating with you at least until the end of next year. Mainly from a distance, so I won't be bothering you too much. And free of charge if we don't make the targets. As agreed with Roger. And as I never like to work for no money, we will make the targets, believe me. What's more, we will do it easily. I will be having more recommendations on the sales and marketing side, for one thing."

  "Nice to hear, Peter, nice to hear," said Fred. "Right…well…we will need to discuss this with our colleagues and if there is agreement, we can meet tomorrow with the works council either in the morning or in the afternoon. I'll let you know what happens, Peter. And now excuse me please, I'm a bit short on time this morning…the next subject is purchasing?"

  "Yes, Fred, and I'll keep it short. As you know, we have already sent out letters to all major suppliers telling them we would like to meet with them individually to discuss our long-term relationship, 'partnership' is the term we used, I think. They will have realized that it's about prices of course."

  "Yes. Some of them have already contacted us," said Charlie.

  "Good. See if you can't fix some meetings for tomorrow and daily after that. The meetings themselves shouldn't take more than an hour each, but we should leave plenty of time between each one. I will be leading the meetings for the next couple of days and your purchasing guy should find the time to be with me. He's the one with the technical knowledge and he can see how I go about it and then he can do it on his own after that. We're aiming for an average of 8% by the way. A hard target, but as you already know, I consider easy targets to be a waste of time. I think we can swing it or at least get close to it. We'll tell them all we want 10% of course, and see how it goes."

  "I'll be amazed if you can achieve that, Peter. But go ahead and surprise us. Wouldn't be the first time," said Charlie pleasantly, and laughed. "What's more, if you achieve it, it would probably mean we've simply been overpaying some of them." Another laugh.

  Dead right buster, if you only knew it. Your so-called purchasing department hasn't negotiated anything for years, nothing at all. And why talk as if it has nothing to do with you?

  "O.K. Well, now I will need a schedule of all suppliers showing products supplied, annual volumes, discounts or rebates agreed on, any issues on quality, any issues on meeting delivery deadlines, and anything else of interest. Starting of course with the ones for tomorrow."

  "Right, I'll ask Ron to fix that," said Fred.

  Right Fred, the purchasing department reports to Ron. Little do you know that we're going to be changing that before year-end. We're going to stop the separations of authority from responsibility in this area as well.

  "Thanks, Fred. And to move on quickly, just a couple of words on today's last subject, results reporting. As you know, we have started to under-report to Group. They expect us to break even this year and are hoping that we will meet our estimates for a positive £2 million next year. And they will be delighted on both counts. Now…as you are aware, it is more or less certain we will beat both of these numbers but they don't need to know that yet. We therefore need to continue to maximize our accruals and provisions. By the way Charlie, I noticed that we still have a lot of room left in our inventory provisions, both for obsolescence and for shrinkage. At some stage, we will need to decide when to start releasing some of these amounts back into profits, depending on when and by how much we want to start exceeding Group's expectations, and in which year."

  "The problem with doing this," said Charlie, "is that it won't get past the auditors at year-end."

  "No problem there Charlie. This is monthly internal reporting. There are no fiscal responsibilities involved. And if we have to make some adjustments for the year-end tax accounts, so be it. But that can also be avoided in my view. We need to create some calculated methodologies to support the provision numbers we want to show, and document them. I can assist on that if you wish; they need to be based on a formula, but it must provide flexibility. And in a year or two, if we want to change the methodologies again, well…we can do that too."

  "Sorry," said Fred, "but I have to be off now, Peter. Charlie and I will discuss what you have just mentioned and see what we think. Once again, many thanks for your input and see you tomorrow. My apologies for having to rush off."

  We all stood up, shook hands, and that was that.

  I passed by Ron's office to say hi but he wasn't there. I avoided the old cow's wasp nest and ran to the car. I got soaked, it was still pouring.

  I drove off and about a hundred meters down the road I passed a parked blue Nissan. There was somebody in it, but I couldn't see whether it was a man or a woman. Strange. But it couldn't have anything to do with me, no reason. Just coincidence. Another blue Nissan, plenty of them.

  I arrived back at the hotel, checked my emails, no message from Céline yet. I showered, changed into chinos and a sweater and rang housekeeping for my suit to be collected and ironed. It was still grey outside but no more rain. I caught a cab to the Strand and walked up to Covent Garden for lunch, picked up an IHT on the way. There were 78 conflict deaths today, spread around fourteen countries, and they included some young girls blown up by the Taliban for going to school. The optimists are presumably saying don't worry, as they always do, it will all get better soon, the human race has already improved itself and it will, eventually, at some undeterminable and un-forecastable point in time in the future, improve itself some more. We will eventually stop killing each other. Ha.

  Optimists. Optimists are people who are not in full possession of all the facts. How else could you choose to ignore tens of centuries of unassailable proof to the contrary?

  I left the restaurant, lit up a cigarette and turned right to head towards Obrix Consultancy. And…there was that morose looking fellow again. He disappeared around the corner as soon as I started walking in his direction. Now, this was not a coincidence, it couldn't be. But why would anyone want to follow me? Maybe something to do with Jeremy Parker. Yes. But what for? And why follow me, instead of stopping me and asking or saying whatever needed to be asked or said?

  * * * * *

  The dream was sitting at her desk, gamma rays pouring out of her the same as before. I am no longer interested of course, other than for the pleasures of visual inspection, that inoperable male disease. And so I was polite, a small smile instead of a big one and no prolonged gazing into those large and erotic eyes. A treatment to which she probably wasn't accustomed. Perhaps that's why she switched on her own penetrating look, bombarding me with a cloud of lethal electromagnetic rays, pure actinism, asking me how things were and so on as she took me down to the meeting room. Or maybe there had been a split with boyfriend number thirty eight that weekend. Or maybe she had decided that chinos and a sweater made me into a real man, one worth investigating more deeply. Or maybe none of that, maybe she was just having fun, playing her favorite game of destroying the harmonic arrangement of the male hormones.

  She opened the meeting room door.

  "There we are Mr. O'Donoghue," she said, with a smile one would normally associate with a boa constrictor, a nice boa constrictor in this case, and a sexy one, but nevertheless a boa constrictor, one contemplating how best to lovingly
crush a newly identified victim.

  "Thank you, Miss…?" I said. Might as well get the name even though I had no intention of adding her to the blinking red light list.

  "Goodall," she replied, "Jane Goodall. Mr. Parker…Mr. O'Donoghue." And with that she did her noiseless disappearance act again.

  Ahah. Now there we have some proof. Which Jeremy put into words for me. "Good day to you, Peter," said Jeremy. "You appear to have attracted the attention of our lovely Miss Goodall. An unusual and rare event, I can assure you."

  "Good day to you Jeremy. Attracted her attention?" I asked.

  "Yes, she never gives her first name to anybody. You are an exalted exception. The ball, as you might say, now appears to be in your court."

  For a guy with a mental health problem, a massive mental health problem in fact, friend Jeremy could sound excessively normal and sane sometimes.

  "Well, Jeremy, you probably did your computer hacking trick again, just to make me feel welcome. But don't worry, I won't be lobbing the ball back. I never mix business with pleasure. One of my rules."

  Jeremy laughed. "No," he said, "And I have my rules as well. No hacking unless it serves a laudable purpose. Let me assure you that Miss Goodall decided all by herself that you should become acquainted with her first name."

  "Well, then I am definitely flattered, but as I said, I shall not be mixing business with pleasure. Although it was definitely a pleasure to receive your two payments, for which thank you very much, Jeremy. And here is the business end of that as requested, the two related invoices."

  I handed him the documents to which he applied his speed-reading technique, about two seconds it took him.

  "These are fine, Peter, thank you very much. And now perhaps, we could start off on the second item of our agenda? Coffee?"

  "No thanks," I said. "I had one just before I came here. But before we start, there is a small matter I would like to ask you about if I may."