Hostile Takeover by Patrick E. McLean Read Free Book Online

you fire all of them, you don't have a company anymore. If you try to cover for everyone else's lack of competence, you can't get anything done. Edwin decided that he would start with the meetings.
    The next day, he dictated a very brief memo that read, "Time is our most valuable resource. My time most of all. Anyone found to be wasting time will be subject to summary dismissal."
    Because it was a memo in the age of electronic communications, many employees had seen fit to ignore it. Really, who sent memos on paper anymore? But in the first wandering, pointless meeting Edwin attended—when the first twinge of headache intruded upon his otherwise serene brain—Edwin stood and said, "You are all fired." Then he walked out.
    Everyone had laughed, thinking that it was some kind of joke. What a card our new owner and CEO is. What a pip. What a pistol.
    The next day, he had another meeting. It was also agenda-less, wandering and seemingly unconnected with any action that could cost or save the company money. Edwin once again stood, buttoned his coat and said, "You are all fired." This time someone had the temerity to laugh while he was still in the room.
    Edwin did not attend a third meeting. He let a week and a half pass. When the next paychecks went out, everyone he had fired received an envelope in the mail. Instead of a check, there was an invoice for office rentals and administrative support services pro-rated from the date of termination.
    Several employees came to plead with Edwin. They needed their jobs. They couldn't understand why they had been fired. Some of them had been with the company a very long time, and after all these years of service…?
    Edwin listened patiently to each of them. And then he said, "You are welcome to keep coming in each day, but we must charge you rent. We are a business, not a charity. We have responsibilities to our shareholders."
    One man, fat, outraged and red in the face had said, "But you are the majority stockholder!"
    "Yes, and you have not lived up to your responsibilities. Good luck in your future endeavors."
    In the end, Omdemnity Insurance still had wasteful meetings. But Edwin neither saw nor heard of them, so his problem was solved. And he was freed up to really get to work.
    He began his search for a specific kind of employee. Something more than just replacements for the useless men he had fired. Edwin created for them a very special and rigorous training course. One out of every 10 candidates graduated. Nothing was graded on a curve. And after a year, Edwin had produced a cadre of the most ruthless and efficient businessmen the insurance industry (and perhaps the world) had ever seen.
    He called them The Adjustors. In a normal insurance company, an adjustor was a person who adjusted the numbers to fit reality. Not so with Omdemnity Adjustors. These men adjusted reality to fit the numbers. After all, reality is messy. Reality is whimsically cruel and imprecise. Numbers could be pure in a way the real world could never be.
    As magnificent as the Adjustors were, they were not enough. One could not win a war with Special Forces alone. So Edwin had written page after page of policy and procedure. After a year of work he had described the roles and responsibility of every last employee in Omdemnity Insurance. He had created an elegant, interlocking system of rewards and punishments, rights and responsibilities. His genius had created a system designed to be staffed by idiots. By the time he was done, he had poured his heart into this work—and his grief as well.
    Though it was a poor replacement for her, when he thought of this system, he called it Agnes.

    As Topper stomped up the front steps, he thought, Yeah, I'm definitely quitting now. Soaked to the skin, even his considerable fury wasn't enough to keep him warm. He was never putting up with this shit again. Unh-unh, no way. He was going to make an angry beeline to Edwin's office, sting him a few times with insults and fly away