"Sorry, Scotty, just a little attempt at humour."
"You're still adding a day to the turnaround time" Ron Edwards said.
"And you'll get it back for us, plus interest."
"Oh, right, and how exactly......."
"Did you notice I said " re-equipped"? I guess your boss hasn't told you yet. You're getting three, high speed, state of the art web presses with on line book binding equipment. This represents over five million dollars worth of printing presses, and right now they're somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean on their way to Halifax. They should arrive in less than two weeks, along with the installation engineers, and should be fully operational by the middle of May. What comes off the end of these presses will need very little effort to turn it into a finished book. I don't want to get too technical here, as it's not everybody's cup of tea, but if you want to get your production supervisors together I'd be pleased to go over the specifications with them. The point is, these presses will knock two days off your normal book production turnaround time. Vancouver will gain a day, and local customers will gain two. And by putting all book production in Halifax we gain some very significant economies of scale and some improved efficiencies. Both of these come down to one thing; more profit. More cash in the bank for AGI."
"Sounds too good to be true. What happens when you miss the flight, or it's too full to handle our extra freight?" Mick Shaw asked."We won't miss the plane because it's our plane," Alan replied. "We have a three year lease on a fleet of three Airbus freighters, which will make daily flights across the country stopping at the six AGI Centres. If you're behind time on a job you call the airport and have the plane wait."
"And the cost of this fleet has been counted into your calculations?""Of course."
"OK. One more question. Where's the catch?"
"Please put on Slide Nine, Mary" Alan said.
Mick cut through the laughter. "The catch, Alan?" "I'd say that from the look on your face you've already guessed, Scotty. It's not part of my presentation, but I'll give you the gist. The new presses automate a lot of the presswork and a big chunk of the bindery work. And since you'll be handling only bookwork you'll have no need for your old jobbing presses."
"Or their operators," Mick said, and the mood changed in an instant."Or the cutters in the bindery" Ron Edwards threw in. "Nor the gluing machines, nor....."
"How many, Alan? How many men are we going to lose?"
"I honestly don't know. The personnel people will be down to talk to you about it. But I've heard it could be a third of your workforce."
"Good God, No!" said Harry.
* * *
Harry Murphy's Dream Diary: Friday, March 27.
We had moved into a new house. My mother and Father were in the living room talking quietly together, and I went off to explore. Within a short time I realised that the house was immense, and comprised dozens if not hundreds of rooms. I walked through a large, high ceilinged room to a set of Patio Doors looking out on a small, neat English garden. I opened the doors and stepped through. Once in the garden I saw that I had been wrong about the size; it was huge. Mature trees stretched to the skies; spacious lawns with manicured edges were set out for lawn bowls and croquet; flower beds displayed a riot of colour. I crossed a lawn and found a small path leading away between two privet hedges, and I followed it for a while, eventually coming up against a high wall of red brick. I followed the wall to the left, and experienced a strong feeling that if I could only find a way to the other side I would find something quite wonderful; but no opening presented itself. Disappointed, I turned and tried to retrace my footsteps, but I did not recognize this part of the garden and realised that I was lost. I was not worried about this since I knew that all I had to do was find an exit from the garden and then follow the road around to the front door of the house.
I set about trying to find a gate leading out of the garden but suddenly found myself in the middle of a small shopping mall. I walked along between two rows of small specialty shops, idly looking into their windows at the displays of merchandise. One of the store windows had a display of weapons, and I stopped to admire the deadly looking implements, which included long, broad bladed knives, rifles of various types and a number of machine pistols. In the centre of the display was a large hard-cover book with the title "How to Kill People" emblazoned in large scarlet letters on the cover. The letters seemed to dance and flow as I looked at them. I saw nothing odd or incongruous about having such a store in the middle of this otherwise normal suburban mall.
At the end of the stores I found a small office, and I knew that this was part of my father's new house. I went into the office and looked out of the window at a busy street scene. At the back of this room was a door which I opened and went through to find myself again in a huge, high ceilinged room. This one had many marble statues lining the walls to my right and left. I walked through the room to the end, where I found several old people sitting around on benches reading magazines. I sat on an unoccupied bench and picked up the magazine which I found there, but it was in a language I did not recognize and so I could not read it.
I looked up from the magazine to see a young girl, about twelve years old, sitting on the bench directly opposite me. She had on a spotless, well pressed white dress and held a small black book. She looked to me as though she were about to attend a Sunday School meeting or bible class. As I looked at her she smiled. Suddenly it became very important that I should speak with this child, but as I stood, so did she. She walked slowly away towards the far end of the large room and, although I ran to catch up with her she rapidly reached the door to the office and went through. I followed her through the door but found that it now led to the garden. The girl had vanished, and I was extremely upset to have lost her. I became very agitated and started to cry. I shouted into the garden: "Where are you? Come back to me."
I suddenly realised that I had met this child before, and on more than one occasion, although I could not remember where or when. It struck me that I should have recognised her, and I should know her name, yet I did not. I called out again: "Who are you? What is your name?" From somewhere in the garden I heard her call softly: "Don't you know me, Harry? Don't you recognize me, Harry? Why, I'm your Fairy Godmother." Then I heard children's laughter from far away in a distant part of the garden.
Saturday, March 28, : Notes:
My family never owned a house remotely like that. My first years were spent in a small three bedroom semi-detached house in the north of England, and later, when my father became successful in his business ventures we moved to a small bungalow.
I am trying to follow Liz's advice and look behind the face values of my dreams to the symbols and what they represent. Theo once said to me that men choose their houses, cars and wives 5% for their usefulness and 95% for show. Taking the huge house to be a symbol of success, then, I see the dream telling me that my mother and father were more "successful" during my early years, than I have become now, with our grand home in Halifax's east end. Our home is very nice, and quite large, but doesn't include many ballrooms, shopping malls or art galleries. My mother and father were certainly successful in terms of the love they shared with each other and with my brother and me, and I like to think that they set the pattern which Liz and I successfully copied. Is the dream simply saying that such success is worth more than money in the bank and expensive possessions? A bit trite, I think.
The weapons shop was priceless. No attempt at subtlety there. What a beautiful collection of deadly hardware! Rambo would be proud to own any of the knives in that shop window! I assume that it is intended to tell me that I don't like Simon Jensen very much. I don't really want him dead, of course, but as Liz says, this is all symbol and metaphor. When people say "I'm going to kill you" they rarely mean it. I remember very well coming home to my mother once after I'd fallen into the canal while wearing a brand new pair of shoes. She said to me "If you've ruined those new leather shoes I'll kill you." I was a bit worried for a while, even though I knew she didn't really mean it.
The girl, of course, is a very important symbol of something. Liz was absolutely right (I am so tired of writing that!). I counted seventeen appearances in my forty five documented dreams to date. That averages better than every third dream. Always much the same; I spot her, zip, she's gone. And of course Liz was also right about my "joggers"; no reference to the girl in white in any of them.
So what do little girls dressed for bible classes symbolize to me? Purity? Innocence? If so, what is the relevance of that? Naivety, possibly. Is S.H. telling me how naive I am? Not that I'd blame him, given some of my recent performances. But what am I supposed to do about such a message? How am I supposed to react? And why would she call herself my "Fairy Godmother?" Does that make me Cinderella?
* * *By chance, Phil Sutherland met George Thorpe at the entrance to the Bourque building at ten after six on a brilliant Wednesday morning in early April. "I was coming up to see you, George," Phil said. "News of your boy Simon out in Halifax."
"Oh, yes. Settling in, is he?"
"You're not going to like this George."
"Out with it then, man. Tell me what you have and I'll tell you if I don't like it."
"They pulled a shutout play on him."
"I don't like it. Alan Hurtubuise and his people, presumably?"
"Yes."
"If young Hurtubuise and his team hadn't just improved our profitability by half a billion a year I'd have his hide. He knows he can get away with it, at least while he's still riding high on the success of his project. Damn his impudence. I presume his audience knew what was happening?"
"My sources say they gave Alan a standing ovation when your boy left. They're claiming a shutout record, which should make young Simon quite a celebrity in some circles."
"You're right. About me not liking it, I mean. I don't like it a bit." * * *As promised, hard on the heels of the Project Team came a delegation from Personnel to confirm the bad news. Harry had suspected that the grapevine estimates were more a result of employee fears than rationalised thought, but the numbers had been confirmed. Two hundred and eighty positions throughout the plant were to be declared surplus to requirements. No area of production was spared, and the layoffs also reached into the administrative and technical areas of the plant. Complicating matters was the fact that negotiations with the various unions had taken place in Toronto, but neither management nor union negotiators had thought to keep their regional people informed. The Union's excuse was that they had considered the negotiations to be incomplete and didn't wish to burden their regional brethren with a partial report. Management's explanation was that Regional employees would do as they were told.
Harry had to admit that the AGI plan looked sound. The cost-effectiveness figures could not be refuted. If the plan worked as projected the company would increase net profits by hundreds of millions of dollars per year, and that, as he had often told his own staff, was the bottom line. AGI was not a benevolent institution. It existed to make money for the people who had invested in it -- which now included Theo, and, to a much smaller extent, Liz and Harry. He had to agree, too, that the firm was being very generous to the affected staff. Any employee with thirty years or more of service would be granted an immediate, unreduced pension, regardless of age. This included one employee who had started with the company at the age of twenty and would now be in receipt of a full company pension at the age of fifty. He had happily signed the release forms and told Don Harrod that he intended to work in his son's small engineering business, and that with his full pension and the income from his new job he would actually be increasing his earnings. Others would be much less fortunate, although nobody would leave without a separation package of some sort. Nevertheless, openings for operators of the old, technically obsolete equipment in use at Burton's would find it very difficult to obtain work elsewhere, and hard times were predicted for many families that spring.
The plant's employees had rapidly tired of the cumbersome AGI-Halifax designation. Several workers now refused to accept the new name and had reverted to calling the plant "Burton's." Although the management group could not officially sanction this, Harry was secretly rather pleased. He knew that Theo would be pleased, too, if he should find out about this minor act of rebellion.
Simon Jensen saw the use of the old name as an endorsement of his predecessor and an affront to himself, and launched a personal crusade to end the use of the old name. His efforts were a source of great glee to some employees, who treated the CEO's campaign as something of a game, and set up an elaborate spy network to let them know when Jensen chose to lurk in their work areas. A rash of spray-painted graffiti appeared on walls throughout the building, and Jensen even stepped out of the elevator one Monday morning to find "Burton's Forever" painted in dayglow orange on his office door. He had turned on his heels and stormed down to Personnel, straight into Don Harrod's office where a meeting was in progress. He had yelled at Don that in future any person speaking or writing the name "Burton's" was to be fired on the spot. Don had coolly replied that the penalty for minor insubordination was an oral reprimand for the first offence ; for the second offence, a written warning; for the third........
"I am changing the rules," Jensen bellowed. "You don't have the authority to change Personnel rules," Don informed him politely. "In that case, as of right now you no longer work for me," the CEO screamed. "I never worked for you in the first place, thank God," Don replied, smiling, "And I wouldn't consider doing so for the President's salary."
Jensen: "Then just who the hell do you think you work for?"Don Harrod: "I think I work for the AGI Corporation."
Jensen: "Who do you report to, you stupid little man?" Don: "I report to Phil Sutherland at Headquarters in Toronto."
Jensen: ""Phil Sutherland will hear of this conversation!"
Don: "He certainly will, Mr Jensen, before you're even back in your office. I suspect that your uncle George will hear of it, too, before the day is out."
Jensen: "I'll get you for this, you fool. Don't think you can speak to me like this and get away with it. If you weren't such a shrimp I'd take you outside and give you a lesson on how to talk to your boss."
At this point Don's staff had judiciously moved away from the table and seemed ready to start taking bets on which bones Don would break first. In fact the super-cool Mr. Harrod did lose control. He burst into hysterical laughter which, people said later, could be heard all over the fourth floor. Jensen had more recently taken to patrolling the halls in his search for miscreants, and these walks often took him into production areas. Of all the employees at the plant the production people were the hardest headed, and any meeting between Jensen and a pressroom or bindery employee was certain to become a battle within minutes. On one such patrol he had stormed over to Mick Shaw, the only person he recognized in the cavernous pressroom, and started to rant. Mick had listened politely for a few minutes and then, at a pause in the one sided conversation, had told Simon that he was in a restricted production area without proper protective clothing. Jensen had ranted for a further three minutes, and at the next pause Mick had told him that unless he left immediately and came back wearing a hard hat, steel toed boots and appropriate eye and ear protection, Mick would be forced to close down machinery rather than risk any harm coming to AGI-Halifax's new CEO. Simon ignored this and launched into a lecture on how low-life peasants should react to a visit from eighth floor royalty. This time Mick didn't wait for a pause. He pulled a sizable steel whistle from the pocket of his overalls and blew a powerful blast. Jensen cursed and covered his ears. All around the huge room presses started to shut down. Mick turned and walked away, but Jensen followed him and, very unwisely, caught hold of the bigger man's elbow.
"Just where do you think you're going, Shaw? I haven't dismissed you yet."To the relief of those watching Mick only smiled. In the unnatural silence of the huge room he was able to speak quite softly.
"A pressroom shutdown is a very serious thing, Mr. Jensen. To restart the presses is a slow, costly job. It can't be done under an hour and normally takes between two and three. You see, the ink-feed ducts will all have to be scraped clean of dried ink and refilled. Paper webs will have to be re-tensioned. All plates will need to be reset to correct register. Drying ovens will cool and need to be re-heated. Material losses usually add up to several thousand dollars, and work in progress could be ruined. The finance people say that the total cost of a pressroom shutdown can run to five thousand dollars a minute, and there is a standing rule from Toronto that the Chairman's office must be called at once when such a shutdown takes place. So I'm going up to the Production Director's office to ask Mr. Murphy to call Mr. Thorpe and explain that the work stoppage and press shutdown was caused by an individual on the floor who refused to wear protective clothing or footwear, and refused to leave when I asked him too."
Jensen gaped."I'll tell you what I'll do, Mr. Jensen, as a special favour to you, just because I like you." Mick reached out and pinched the CEO's cheek between his finger and thumb. "If you can get your miserable, ugly little face out through that door over there by the time I count ten, I won't tell Harry which particular mindless idiot caused the shutdown."
"You can't talk to me like that, you great Ape! I'm the Boss in this plant and you'd be wise to ...........""One" said Mick. "Two."
Jensen was out of the pressroom by the count of five. Mick blew another blast on his steel whistle and the presses started up again. John Rider, the union shop steward, had come over to Mick as soon as he'd heard the stop-work whistle.
"Is that what you meant by "pulling a shutout play" the other day?" he asked."Close enough," Mick said.
* * *
April came to Nova Scotia in a blaze of blue sky and hot yellow sun. Even by local standards the spring was exceptional that year. Crocuses and early daffodils added dots and patches of contrast to the rapidly greening fields, and old Adirondack lawn furniture was hauled out of ten thousand garages to be painted and displayed on ten thousand awakening lawns. At their cottage Liz and Harry welcomed the turning of the earth with an enthusiasm bordering on worship.
Harry liked to assemble an ancient deck chair on the cottage's back lawn and watch his wife at work in the garden. Liz had long ago realised that she would never make a gardener out of Harry and had settled for his occasional help when large plants had to be dug up and replanted, or when barrowloads of topsoil or compost had to be moved and spread. Harry would tell neighbours who stopped to talk that he was practising his specialty, which was listening to the grass grow. He claimed that by listening carefully he could tell where fertiliser was needed, or where some extra seed should be spread to cover a bald spot.
Liz had vowed some years ago to fulfil her mother's dream for the little cottage and plant a seaside garden. At the shoreline the earth was rocky, and subjected several times a year to a deluge of saltwater when storm surges pushed the ocean beyond the normal high tide marks. Surprisingly she had found several plants which could withstand these occasional soakings, including the lovely little Rogosa Roses which grew wild in that part of the country. Liz had dutifully taken cuttings the previous spring and transplanted them along the seaside border of their property. Left to their own devices she hoped the roses would thrive and spread, forming a beautiful natural border to the north end of their home. Closer to the cottage Tamarisk and Russian Olive had shown themselves to be tough and durable, and Liz looked daily for the small green growths which would tell her that her saplings had survived the winter.
A small stream, no more than run-off from the hills to the south, bordered the lot on one side and Liz had planted two hundred daffodil bulbs along its edge last fall. Harry watched her working amongst the golden flowers and tried to recall the poem which fit the occasion. "Beside the Lake, beneath the trees" he remembered "di dah di dah di dah di breeze. Something something something host of golden daffodils."
Harry was feeling more relaxed than he had in weeks. As he sat under the warm April sun and listened to his beloved Liz singing while she worked in her garden he thought back to the messages of his dreams. Trite as it may seem, the message of his recent dream was true. Harry's wealth lay in the love of his family, his robust good health, his freedom from fear of the violence and depravity which seemed sometimes to have a stranglehold on the planet. He could get up in the morning knowing that he would have plenty to eat that day; that he would have a warm, dry, safe place to sleep at the end of it; that neither he nor his children would be sent to fight a war from which one or more of them might not return. He felt guilty, in a way, that he so rarely took the time to appreciate these things, and that he took such matters so much for granted. He felt embarrassed that he had let his career ambitions cloud the truly important matters in life, and that he had made such an issue of it. He wondered how it had come to be that he should want so badly to move up one rung on the success ladder. Would he then immediately start looking to move to the next, he wondered. There was always one more step, always someone above to envy, always someone with a bigger house, a newer car, more money in the bank. He had already surpassed the ambitions of his childhood, and achieved a standard of living beyond anything his parents could have wished for him; why on earth could he not be satisfied with what he had, and take the time to enjoy it? June had told him that George Thorpe worked between ten and twelve hours a day, every day. He disliked weekends because they got in the way of work, and he hadn't taken a holiday in over ten years. And George still burned with ambition. He had confided to friends that he considered AGI to be "small potatoes" in the business world, and he longed for the chance to head up an international consortium, a corporation which measured profits not in millions of dollars but in tens of billions. George had been married briefly, many years ago. His wife had left him after two years, telling her parents that it would probably be several weeks before George noticed that she had gone. She was wrong. He noticed her absence in only ten days.
Was this the life that Harry wanted? To his surprise and chagrin he could not immediately say that it was not.At forty seven Harry had never seriously considered his mortality. He had never thought it important to ask "Who am I really?" or "What is the objective of my life?" These questions he considered to be fodder for afternoon TV talk shows and of no substantial value. And at the end of it all? Dreamless sleep. Spirituality was fine for those who needed a crutch to help them hobble their way through life. Someone to thank when things went well; someone to blame when they went badly. But then they didn't blame, did they? Christians of his acquaintance seemed positively eager to forgive their God when things went badly, or even more absurdly, to blame themselves for disappointing Him. Thanks for the sunshine, and it's our fault when it rains. God couldn't lose. Harry had long ago stopped asking for an explanation of why an all-seeing, all-knowing, allpowerful God should allow planes to fall into the ocean, deadly epidemics to kill by the millions, unending wars to inflict pain and suffering on the innocent of all races, small children to suffer from terrible, terminal diseases. The vague allencompassing response that "It is not given to us to understand His workings," or, worse still, "The Lord moves in mysterious ways" only infuriated him. He still had trouble understanding how some of his close friends and associates -- intelligent people all -- could not only swallow this slop, but made it an important and central component of their lives.
"Harry!" He snapped out of his reverie. "Harry, I've been calling you for five minutes! What on earth were you daydreaming about?" Liz was walking towards him from the end of the garden, a basket of yellow blooms under her arm. "Harry, do you think it's warm enough to get the barbecue out? I could drive into Tantallon and pick up a couple of T-bones and a bottle of Cabernet if you think you could barbecue."
"You bet!" Harry called back. Now that was something closer to his definition of the Meaning of Life! T-bone steaks, medium rare, sizzling on the barbecue, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon breathing on the picnic table, and Liz to sit down and share it with him. No need to get metaphysical about these things, no need at all.
* * *It is very difficult, during the summer season, to get a good table upstairs at Salty's Restaurant during the lunch hour. The tables facing Halifax harbour are popular with summer visitors, who enjoy a tasty lunch, a glass of Keith's Draft Ale, and a splendid view of the hectic activity on the waterfront. Small private sailboats dodge around container ships the size of small towns, and it is not unusual to see a Navy Frigate or submarine passing by the restaurant on its way to or from the Naval Dockyards to the west. In mid May, Liz thought, it shouldn't be too hard to find a good table, so she arranged to meet her friend Rolande there at a quarter past noon. Arriving first she was pleased to be guided to a window table, and ordered a Whisky Sour while she waited for her friend.
Rolande Bertrand went back with Liz "almost to the beginning" as the two of them would say. They met as small girls when both families moved onto the same street at about the same time. They sat next to each other throughout grade school and were rarely far apart when not in class. They had parted only when Liz chose to study Law in Halifax and Rolande left to study Medicine at the University of Toronto, later qualifying in psychiatry and staying in the city following her graduation. Whenever the two women were in the same city at they same time they would get together and catch up on each other's lives. Rolande spotted Liz first and came smiling broadly to the table.
"Damn you Liz Murphy, you never age! Tell me your secret!""A pure heart and a healthy lifestyle. Of course, good genes help out a lot, too. So good to see you, Rollie!"
"Where's the lovely boy who's going to bring me a martini? Oh, there he is. Do you shout "garçon" here, or just wave? Never mind, he's seen me."
The waiter brought Rolande's drink and took their lunch orders.
"Cheers, Liz" Rolande said, and their glasses chinked. "Who goes first this time?"
"You do, Rollie, I went last time. So. Any men in your life?"
"I need another martini before I'll talk about that! There was someone special, at least I thought he was. Unfortunately he was someone else's special, too. Several someones, I think. Anyway, let's not talk about him. How's that big hunk of yours doing? Is he running the company yet?"
"As a matter of fact, if you'd asked me that a few weeks ago I could have said yes he is!""No! Really?"
"Yes. His boss took early retirement, and Harry filled in until Head Office found a permanent replacement. He's back in his own office now, though, and I can't say I'm especially upset about that."
"Didn't they give Harry a shot at the top spot? He can't be too happy to see an outsider brought in.""No, they didn't consider Harry. I don't think they considered anybody, really. What I mean is the job went to the son of a close friend of the Chairman of the Board. You know how it is."
"Do I ever know how it is!""Oh, come on, Rollie, not in your field surely. I mean, they can give Harry a boss who knows nothing about printing, but in your job professional competence and qualifications are everything."
"You'd think so, Liz. But you know I'm not my own boss, not yet anyway. I'm still a company employee. When I hang out my own shingle it will be different. I hear you're back in the work force now, yes?"
"Who told you that? Never mind. Yes, it's true. I'm back as a paralegal in a