The Ax

8

Once I knew what I had to do, after that sleepless and despairing night, I went back through the resumes three times more, and each time I was increasingly cold and critical and realistic. This person? Competition for me? Education excellent, work record outstanding, but not in my field. A real find for some employer, but not for Arcadia Processing. Not for my job.

And so gradually I whittled the people down to six. Six resumes from people who, because of their work history and their education and their geographical location, were my true competition. I had to count location because I knew most employers would. They don't like to pay moving expenses unless they absolutely cannot find a qualified individual who already lives within commuting distance. So the bright stars in Indiana and Tennessee I decided not to worry about. Their competition was closer to home.

I realized from the beginning the irony in what I planned to do. These people, these six management experts, Herbert Coleman Everly and Edward George Ricks and the others, were not my enemy. Even Upton "Ralph" Fallon was not my enemy, I knew that. The enemy is the corporate bosses. The enemy is the stockholders.

These are all publicly held corporations, and it is the stockholders' drive for return on investment that pushes every one of them. Not the product, not the expertise, certainly not the reputation of the company. The stockholders care about nothing but return on investment, and that leads to their supporting executives who are formed in their image, men (and women, too, lately) who run companies they care nothing about, lead work forces whose human reality never enters their minds, make decisions not on the basis of what's good for the company or the staff or the product or (hah!) the customer, or even the greater good of the society, but only on the basis of stockholders' return on investment.

Democracy at its most base, supporting leaders only in return for their sating of greed. The ever-present nipple. That's why healthy companies, firmly in the black, lush in dividends to stockholders, nevertheless lay off workers in their thousands; to squeeze out just a little more, look just a little better for that thousand-mouthed beast out there that keeps the executives in power, with their million-dollar, ten-million-dollar, twenty-million-dollar compensation package.

Oh, I knew all that when I started, I knew who the enemy was. But what good does that do me? If I were to kill a thousand stockholders and get away with it clean, what would I gain? What's in it for me? If I were to kill seven chief executives, each of whom had ordered the firing of at least two thousand good workers in healthy industries, what would I get out of it?

Nothing.

What it comes down to is, the CEOs, and the stockholders who put them there, are the enemy, but they are not the problem. They are society's problem, but they are not my personal problem.

These six resumés. These are my personal problem.