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“The insurers are threatening to re-negotiate for a higher rate.”
The chairman of the board, Warner Wagner, grimaced.
“Why?”
“Our staff are developing too many health problems from sitting at a desk all day.”
“Damn. What about standing desks? Or… or treadmill desks?”
“Too expensive. We don’t have the liquidity for that at the moment. Maybe in a couple of quarters if we prioritize it, but the re-negotiation would happen sooner than that.”
“Can we cut expenses any further to compensate?”’
“I’ve asked the accounting department, but it’s going to be hard to cutter numbers of expenditures without cutting our revenue too.”
“Any lines of credit we could use?”
“We’re over-leveraged as is after upgrading the servers last month.”
“Ah, right—the digitization effort. Speaking of which, why haven’t I heard anything about that for two weeks? Are people doing anything on it at all?”
“It’s an old company. We’ve got tens of thousands of records to scan and pushup to the central database, plus the electronic indexing. But with respect, sir, the matter at hand…”
“I have an idea.”
This was Patrick Withersham. He was the youngest member of the board. While he was not exactly disliked, he was an unorthodox thinker, and many of the board members were uneasy whenever he spoke. His ideas never seemed to work out.
“Why not use turn our disadvantages to our advantage?”
Mr. Wagner looked skeptical.
“And how do you propose to do that, in this case?”
***
Tracy, the secretary for the accounting department, relayed the news to George Belker, the head of the Records Department, as soon as he came in in the morning. He did not take it well.
“They’ve done what with our files?”
“The legacy files have been moved to the other end of the building due to space constraints.”
“What? What space constraints? They were already right here. That’s a ten minute walk now!”
“The E-mail says they have also discontinued the digitization effort for now. All queries into the archives are going to be manual due to some technical errors they are trying to sort out with the digitization effort.”
George buried his face in his hands.
“Good lord. We get several of those a day. I’m going to have to distribute the work among the staff just to keep the department from collapsing,”
He rubbed his temples.
“Sometimes,” he said, “The people upstairs have no consideration for the people doing the heavy lifting.”
***
“Good news, the employees are walking more. Bad news is, it is disproportionately falling on the records department. Security and programming are still pretty sedentary. And we’re incurring a lot of overtime.”
Mr. Wagner looked dour.
“That’s not good. What Dewey do?”
Mr. Withersham looked unpreterbed.
“No trouble at all, Mr. Wagner. We’ll just dip a little further into our bag of tricks.”
***
George read the memo several times. He was certain he understood all the individual words, but when he put them all together, what they said didn’t make any sense.
“They want me to cross-train—programmers? And the janitors? And the… the security staff? In the Records Department?”
Tracy was pointing at her screen ticking things off, and seemed to be counting something in her head.
“As best as I can tell, it’s really basically just every department,” she said, after some deliberation.
“To ensure that our operational capabilities have the maximum flexibility and minimize the possibility of delay in record accessioning due to recent strategic choices,” George re-read aloud in a monotone voice, and then stopped himself, “Good lord, why not just say ‘we’ve dug a hole, it is now time to fill it back in’?”
***
“There’s some grumbling, but the cross training efforts are going well, overall. Overtime is down, records requests are still fairly timely. But we’ve got another problem. We’ve talked with the company doctors, and they think that our current plans are not providing enough arm exercise.”
“Easily fixed,” said Mr. Withersham.
***
“The records have now been relocated to a room with taller ceilings to accommodate more efficient storage,” he laughed out loud, slightly stunned. “And how do they propose we get to the ones near the ceiling, exactly? Ladders?”
As George said this, one of the interns came back from the storage area, out of breath.
“Yes, sir. They’ve got ladders there.”
George turned and stared at him.
“Say again?”
“Ladders, sir. Big ones. And steep. I’ll tell you, my arms are pretty tired from climbing up to the top to get some of the older records.”
***
“Still not enough of an upper body workout, I’m afraid. And the deadline for the contract re-negotiation is coming up.”
“Suppose we did this, then?”
***
George sat at his desk with his head down in his hands for a full five minutes. He couldn’t bring himself to situp straight. Tracy came in and nudged him.
“We have a call from… is everything alright?”
He pointed at the screen.
“Due to work on the floors in the records department,” the e-mail read, “monkey bars have been provided for traversing the space between filing cabinets.”
“Dumb-bells,” George mumbled. “Complete and utter dumb-bells.”
***
At long last, the contract negotiations came—and went. It did not go well.
“The insurance company was impressed by our efforts to improve the cardiovascular fitness and strength of our staff.”
“Why are they demanding so much to continue providing the company insurance plan, then?”
“Well, sir, it seems that due to all of the extra walking they’re not used to, many more of our employees have been presenting with strain injuries. We’ve had several more claims as well due to people falling off the ladders and monkey bars, which as you know is presently a two story drop. Which reminds me, sir, we got a letter from OSHA that we need to have the board look at in a moment.”
Mr. Wagner turned and stared at Mr. Withersham, who was even now confidently smiling and opening his mouth. Mr. Wagner raised a hand.
“I think perhaps we’ve missed the purpose of the exercise. Before you speak, Mr. Withersham, may I make a fitness recommendation of my own?”
Mr. Withersham seemed taken aback.
“Of course, sir.”
The old man stood up and pointed his cane at the door.
“May I strongly recommend you run for the exit? Very quickly? Because in ten seconds I’m going to call security and tell them you’re the reason they’ve been hiking up ladders every so often, and I doubt they’ll ever in their professional careers have taken more pleasure in ejecting someone from the building.”
“This is highly irregular!” protested Mr. Withersham. “The board has to vote before any members can be ejected from…”
“Aye!” shouted the board in unison, as Mr. Withersham ran for the exits.