Downsizing
by Scott Parkinson
I, as the CEO of Scott Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Scottland, have had to face some tough realities. It seems that I am not as liquid as I could be, or should be, and that this lack of capital is having a dramatic impact upon what Scott Inc. is capable of doing. My ability to acquire is severely limited, my marketplace bullishness is being hampered, and most importantly, my shares of Scott Inc. have become devalued.
I, being ultimately responsible for the financial well-being of Scott Inc., have probed this matter deeply and identified some key indicators of the recent downturn. After counting the cash, assessing the assets, and projecting the projects it appears Scott Inc. has allowed unchecked growth to outpace its earning potential. The brutal world of corporate greed has negotiated poor Scott Inc. into a troubled position. Being that Scott Inc. has only a single revenue source, that being SCOTT's paltry job, and market factors have acted upon the corporate world to sadly deny the true value of flipping burgers, the present economic climate has vastly devalued SCOTT's talents and Scott Inc.'s corporate stature. The milk and honey days of the past, when minimum wage was truly a life of opulence, are gone for good and so too must the institutions that rose with those heady times depart.
It is with much sadness that Scott Inc. has realized that we can no longer continue to operate at our present size, with our present revenue, and have any hope of surviving within these volatile times. So, with much regret, I must now inform you that Scott Inc. has searched long and hard for solutions and the only one that looks to have any real hopes of turning around the present dire conditions is downsizing. Yes, for Scott Inc. to be able to operate within its budget it must dramatically restrict its expenditures and with a company like Scott Inc. that means lay offs.
When I looked into downsizing Scott Inc. my first priority was to remove any redundancy. In better times those redundant systems gave Scott Inc. a bit of security, for any loss had an immediate back up, but as I have stated before, the fat times are gone. No longer capable of supporting the redundant systems I have removed all but the primary servicers.
First to be recognized were the eyes. Damn it if we didn't like having two eyes, but waste, waste, waste. We were employing two eyes, but only getting one image. So out with one gelatinous orb. Scott Inc. can no longer continue to support slackers within the corporate body.
Next to go were the ears, lungs, and kidneys. All of them taking two to do the job of one. One of each was essential, but the second was pure gravy--gravy that I may love, but can no longer afford.
After having plucked, hacked, yanked, and eviscerated SCOTT, we at Scott Inc. realized that maintaining even the trimmed down version was beyond our revenue generating capacities. It still would require too much fuel to power the body corporate. So, we looked even harder for cuts that could be made.
Through some remarkable visionary thinking it dawned upon us at Scott Inc. that we no longer had to look like we used to, for that was a manifestation of the old Scott Inc. These were new times, and for us to survive in this new age we must change what we were. It took some pretty hard decisions, but we finally had to fess up to ourselves that we could no longer run with the big dogs. Our fortunes were not that good. In fact, our fortunes were pretty awful. We realized that not only couldn't we run with the big dogs, we couldn't even hobble along with the rest of the pack. After a lot of intense debate it was finally reasoned that we couldn't support both legs anymore. Hell, we realized that two legs were not a redundant system, but when it came right down to it, a second leg was out of our price range. The cost of constantly feeding that appendage, which only moved us around and exposed us to more things that we were no longer capable affording, was too ironic. So, with the corporate ax, we whacked off one leg.
After the first leg went, our minds opened up to all the possible savings and it was only then that we began to see light at the end of our tunnel. In a mad frenzy of corporate slashing we dropped an arm, a buttock to go with the afore mentioned leg, the hair, half our teeth‹you don't need that many teeth when you ain't eating that much food‹and that space-wasting, good-for-nothing appendix. Standing in a pile of blood and extraneous parts we at Scott Inc. felt we had moved in the right direction.
We even realized an additional means of savings that had not occurred to us at the onset of this radical downsizing. It dawned on us that this smaller nub of a body no longer needed to be housed in a vast and wasteful apartment. Heck, we didn't even need a shed. To our open joy, we realized that a good-sized box could now contain the remains of Scott Inc.‹I tell you, this downsizing really has its benefits.
As I stand here now, in this streamlined corporate vessel, I am once again feeling good about the future‹even plucky, you might say. When I hop about I can feel the other corporations eyeing my efficiency with envy. For, though they cut, none run as clean as I. I'm a single-piston engine super-charged with high-octane greed and I'm back in the race for the greatest slice of the American Pie. Fuck the dead weight and under-acheivers, I'm ready to kick ass (still got one good leg) and take no prisoners. God Bless American Capitalism.
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