Norman Conquest 2066 by J. T. McIntosh

Author:J. T. McIntosh [McIntosh, J. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-5961-7
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 1977-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Arthur Gardner was late going to the factory that morning. Before he made his move he wanted every employee to be there and he wanted work going in full swing.

Two minutes after his arrival the place was in turmoil.

The managers, the executives, the top office staff told him he couldn’t close the factory, just like that. It was not possible. So he started at the bottom and worked up, personally firing everybody. The office boys, the juniors, the typists and clerks didn’t put up a fight. They left apathetically. And the men on the top rungs of the ladder found the rungs below them demolished.

He sent for the foremen and told them to stop production. They didn’t argue either. There could be a hundred reasons for the stoppage, and to simplify matters and avoid argument he spoke not of dismissal or permanent closure but rather of a temporary suspension of production. After all, some day he would probably want to open the factory again. Even if he didn’t, he expected to be begged on all sides to do so, and he might need a good bargaining position.

But not everybody was sent home. From every department certain men and women were sent to the boardroom — clerk Harry Chubb, typists Glenda Morris and Joan Bush, engineers Tom Barton, Jim Simon and John Breaks, production line girls Harriet Price, Angela Devine, Diana MacLeod, Helen Sims…

Seymour he simply fired. He enjoyed that. Seymour, for all his fear and shame and horror over what was happening to his family, had gone on believing that this was part of the price for the top job in design he was going to get. He had clung to this desperately, refusing to doubt, wildly hoping that when he eventually got it a miracle would happen and with the new responsibility he would somehow acquire power over his own destiny and the nightmare would be over.

Now Gardner casually told him: ‘I’ll have to let you go, Frank.’ Gardner was not a master of words. Not for him the subtle tortures which some men could inflict on others merely by talking. However, he remembered good phrases and he had always felt, ‘I’ll have to let you go,’ was a far more satisfying way of dismissing a man than telling him bluntly: ‘You’re fired.’

‘But our deal…’ Seymour faltered.

‘What deal?’ Gardner asked unblinkingly. ‘Oh, you mean the arrangements I made with certain members of your family? That’ll have to stop too, I’m afraid. I’m going to be too busy from now on. Pity.’

Seymour forced himself to persist. ‘You promised me a top job in design — ’

‘Oh, that. Yes, I did, Frank. I did.’ He paused to enjoy Seymour’s relief that he was not going to deny this. ‘But naturally you could only get a top job in design if there was work going on here. And I’m closing the factory, so the job you want doesn’t exist.’

Seymour turned away dully.

As an afterthought Gardner said: ‘If you’ve got money problems, Frank, well there I can help you.

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