Unit One:Big Bucks the Easy Way

Two college-age boys, unaware that making moneyusually involves hard wor k, are tempted by anadvertisement that promises them an easy way toearn a lot of money. The boys soon learn that ifsomething seems to good to be true , it probably is.

BIG BUCKS THE EASY WAY

John G. Hubbell

"You ought to look into this," I suggested to our twocollege-age sons.

"It might be a way to avoid the indignity of having to ask for money all theti me." I handed them some magazines in a plastic bag someone bad hung on our doorknob. Amessage printed on the bag offered leisurely, lucrative work ( "Big Bucks the Easy Way!") ofdelivering more such bags.

"I don't mind the indignity," the older one answered.

"I can live with it," his brother agreed.

"But it pains me," I said，

"to find that you both have been panhandling so long that it no longerembarr asses you."

The boys said they would look into the magazine-delivery thing. Pleased, I le ft town on abusiness trip. By midnight I was comfortably settled in a hotel ro om far from home. The phonerang. It was my wife. She wanted to know how my day had gone.

"Great!" I enthused. "How was your day?" I inquired.

"Super!" She snapped.

"Just super! And it's only getting started. Another truck just pulled upout fron t."

"Another truck?"

"The third one this evening. The first delivered four thousand Montgomery Wa rds. The secondbrought four thousand Sears, Roebucks. I don't know what thi s one has, but I'm sure it will befour thousand of something. Since you are re sponsible, I thought you might like to knowwhat's happening.

What I was being blamed for, it turned out, was a newspaper strike which m ade it necessary tohand-deliver the advertising inserts that normally are inclu ded with the Sunday paper. Thecompany had promised our boys $600 for deli vering these inserts to 4,000 houses by Sundaymorning.

"Piece of cake!" our older college son had shouted.

" Six hundred bucks!" His brother had echoed,

"And we can do the job in two hours!"

"Both the Sears and Ward ads are four newspaper-size pages," my wife infor med me.

"Thereare thirty-two thousand pages of advertising on our porch. Even as we speak, two big guys arecarrying armloads of paper up the walk. What do we d o about all this?"

"Just tell the boys to get busy," I instructed.

"They're college men. They'll do what they have todo."

At noon the following day I returned to the hotel and found an urgent messag e to telephonemy wife. Her voice was unnaturally high and quavering. There had been several more truckloadsof ad inserts.

"They're for department stores, dime stores, drugstores, grocery stores, auto stores and so on. Some are whole magazine sections. We have hundreds of t housands, maybemillions, of pages of advertising here! They are crammed wa ll-to-wall all through the house instacks taller than your oldest son. There's on ly enough room for people to walk in, take oneeach of the eleven inserts, roll them together, slip a rubber band around them and slide theminto a plasti c bag. We have enough plastic bags to supply every takeout restaurant inA merica!" Her voice kept rising, as if working its way out of the range of the h uman ear. "Allthis must be delivered by seven o'clock Sunday morning." "Well, you had better get those guys banding and sliding as fast as they can, and I'll talk to youlater. Got a lunch date.

When I returned, there was another urgent call from my wife.

"Did you have a nice lunch?" she asked sweetly. I had had a marvelous stea k, but knew betterby now than to say so.

"Awful," I reported. "Some sort of sour fish. Eel, I think."

"Good. Your college sons have hired their younger brothers and sisters and a couple ofneighborhood children to help for five dollars each. Assembly lines h ave been set up. In thelanguage of diplomacy, there is 'movement.'" "That's encouraging."

"No, it's not," she corrected.

"It's very discouraging. They're been as it for hours. Plastic bagshave been f illed and piled to the ceiling, but all this hasn't made a dent, not a dent, in t hesituation! It's almost as if the inserts keep reproducing themselves!" "Another thing," she continued.

"Your college sons must learn that one does not get the bestout of employees by threatening them with bodily harm.

Obtaining an audience with son NO. 1, I snarled,

"I'll kill you if threaten one of those kids again!Idiot! You should be offering a bonus of a dollar every hour to the worker who fills the mostbags.

"But that would cut into our profit," he suggested.

"There won't be any profit unless those kids enable you to make all the delive ries on time. Ifthey don't, you two will have to remove all that paper by your selves. And there will be noeating or sleeping until it is removed."

There was a short, thoughtful silence. Then he said,

"Dad, you have just worked a profound change in my personality."

"Do it!"

"Yes, sir!"

By the following evening, there was much for my wife to report. The bonus p rogram hadworked until someone demanded to see the color of cash. Then so me activist on the work forceclaimed that the workers had no business settlin g for $5 and a few competitive bonuses whilethe bossed collected hundreds of dollars each. The organizer had declared that all the workerswere entitled to $5 per hour! They would …… 此处隐藏：9303字，全部文档内容请下载后查看。喜欢就下载吧 ……