The 1st Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders Read Free Book Online Page A

females who seemed, to Blank, all “old women” who smelled of lavender and whiskey sours, arrived late for work, and were continually taking up office collections for birthdays, deaths, marriages, and retirements.
    The main duty of the Circulation Department was to supply to the Production Department “print-run estimates”: the number of copies of each magazine that should be printed to insure maximum profit for Javis-Bircham. The magazines might be weeklies, semi-monthlies, monthlies, quarterlies, semi-annuals or annuals. They might be given away to a managerial-level readership or sold by subscription. Some were even available to the general public on newsstands. Most of the magazines earned their way by advertising revenue. Some carried no advertising at all, but were of such a specialized nature that they sold solely on the value of their editorial content.
    Estimating the “press run” of each magazine for maximum profitably was an incredibly complex task. Past and potential circulation of each periodical had to be considered, current and projected advertising revenue, share of general overhead, costs of actual printing—quality of paper, desired process, four-color plates, etc.—costs of mailing and distributing, editorial budget (including personnel), publicity and public relations campaigns, etc., etc.
    At the time Daniel Blank joined the organization, this bewildering job of “print-run estimation” seemed to be done “by guess and by God.” Happy Bob White’s staff of “old women” fed him information, laughing a great deal during their conversations with him. Then, when a recommendation was due, White would sit at his desk, humming, with an ancient slide rule in his hands, and within an hour or so would send his estimate to the Production Department.
    Daniel Blank saw immediately that there were so many variables involved that the system screamed for computerization. His experience with computers was minimal; on previous jobs he had been involved mostly with relatively simple data-processing machines.
    He therefore enrolled for a six months’ night course in “The Triumph of the Computer.” Two years after starting work at Javis-Bircham, he presented to Bob White a 30-page carefully organized and cogently reasoned prospectus on the advantages of a computerized Circulation Department.
    White took it home over the weekend to read. He returned it to Blank on Monday morning. Pages were marked with brown rings from coffee cups, and one page had been crinkled and almost obliterated by a spilled drink.
    White took Daniel to lunch and, smiling, explained why Blank’s plan wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.
    “You obviously put a lot of work and thought into it,” White said, “but you’re forgetting the personalities involved. The people. My God, Dan, I have lunch with the editors and advertising managers of those magazines almost every day They’re my friends. They all have plans for their books: a article that might get a lot of publicity and boost circulation a new hot-shot advertising salesman who might boost revenu way over the same month last year. I’ve got to consider a those personal things. The human factors involved. You can’t feed that into a computer.”
    Daniel Blank nodded understandingly. An hour after they returned from lunch he had a clean copy of his prospectus on the desk of the Executive Vice President.
    A month later the Circulation Department was shocked to learn that laughing Bob White had retired. Daniel Blank was appointed Circulation Director, a title he chose himself, and given a free hand.
    Within a year all the “old women” were gone, Blank had surrounded himself with a young staff of pale technicians, and the cabinets of AMROK II occupied half the 30th floor of the Javis-Bircham Building. As Blank had predicted, not only did the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines handle all the problems of circulation—subscription fulfillment and print-run