Tim Morris' laptop bleeped so he clicked on the blinking email icon. He swore under his breath when he saw the subject line. Malcomb had called a meeting for four. Tim swore again when he looked at the time on his watch. It was ten 'til four, and the executive conference room was three floors up. He'd have to almost run in order to comply with Malcomb's edict that all meetings start on time. In order to start his meetings on time, Malcomb expected all attendees to be there at least three minutes before the starting time, and five was even better.
Tim was the Director of Product Quality for Frobisher's Personal Products, a company that made over-the-counter products for, as Malcomb put it, "Probably the most uncomfortable of all mankind's illnesses". That illness was constipation, and FPP made rectal suppositories that were guaranteed to fix the condition or your money back. They also made a line of hot water bottles that included a hose, two little nozzles for enema use and one long, curved one called a "feminine hygiene attachment". Everybody except Malcomb called that one the "V-flush".
Tim liked his job except for having to work for Malcomb. Malcomb Frobisher was one of those executives who believed the CEO of any company should have a complete understanding of every aspect of running his business. Since Malcomb was the CEO of FPP, he saw no reason why any of his employees should question his competency in every area of the business. Had Malcomb been as competent as he believed himself to be, working for him might have been more like fun.
Working for Malcomb was like trying to build a house in the middle of a hurricane. Malcomb always wanted the "latest info", and once he got the report, had a multitude of ways to make the situation better if only his employees were smart enough to figure out those ways and put them into use. He expected each and every one of his ideas to be analyzed, planned, and financially evaluated by each department and that information presented at the next staff meeting a week later.
Since Malcomb considered every one of his ideas as a possible candidate for a patent, they were therefore treated as secret. That meant only employees at the director level could do any of the analyzing and planning. Tim and the rest of the Directors at FPP spent most of their time putting together presentations that called Malcomb's ideas really great ideas, but because of the state of technology, weren't financially feasible. That wouldn't have been all that bad if they hadn't had real jobs to do as well.
Tim unplugged his laptop and tucked it under his arm, stuck a pen in his breast pocket, and headed for the elevator. He made it to the meeting within the three minutes limit.
"Boys", began Malcomb -- he always called them "his boys" -"I've just had a report from Accounting on our sales this quarter. I'm sorry to say that FPP is still on a downward sales trend for all our products. I know it's not the fault of any single one of you, but together we have to take the blame. We also have to take on the task of finding out how to dig ourselves out of this hole we seem to be falling into.
"That's what my great-great-grandfather did in eighteen seventy, and he's responsible for the company we have today. As I've probably told you before, he was a patent medicine salesman and he had the same problem we face today. He didn't give up, he...
Oh my god, thought Tim, here he goes again with the story of how FPP came to make suppositories. He'd heard it so often he could almost repeat it verbatim.
Hiram Frobisher was an English immigrant who found his calling making and selling what passed for medicine in those days. Alcohol was always the base, as the harsh taste made the medicine seem very strong. Hiram added selected herbs for color, odor, and taste, and bottled them himself. He did his mixing and bottling on Sunday. The other days of the week, he traveled the surrounding area with a horse and wagon, and sold his medicine to anyone with a quarter for one of his small bottles, or half a dollar for one of the large ones.
Hiram bought his alcohol from a local farmer who distilled it from corn mash. One day in July of eighteen seventy, the farmer's still caught fire along with a hundred gallons of fresh moonshine. Hiram was out of business unless he could quickly find another source. He tried and tried, but couldn't.
Hiram was sitting on his porch watching his wife make soap the next week since he didn't have anything to sell, and noticed the clear liquid left over after she ladled out the soap. "Bertha, what do you do with that? he asked.
"I throw most of it away, but I keep a couple of bottles to use on my hands when they get dry."
Well, old Hiram didn't believe in throwing away anything he could sell, so he set about finding a way to use the liquid. It was slippery, and it was clear. He tasted it and found it to be a little on the sweet side. He didn't think people would buy medicine that tasted good, so he discarded that idea.
It was the next day that Hiram went outside to the privy but got no results. The same thing happened the next day, and Hiram was not feeling well.
If I only had some way speed things up, I'd feel a lot better, he thought. Then he remembered the slippery stuff from Bertha's soap making he'd been working on.
Bertha didn't like the idea of sticking a funnel in Hiram's ass while he was bent over a kitchen chair, but he convinced her he needed her help. Once the funnel was in place, Hiram had her pour in a cup full of the slippery stuff and then take the funnel out. He put his pants back on and waited.
Nothing had changed by dinner time, so Hiram ate his normal meal. Nothing had happened by bedtime either, so Hiram went to bed.
About three in the morning, something did change. Hiram woke up with a strange gurgling feeling in his lower belly and an urgent need to visit the privy again. He made it out the kitchen door before the thin stream of evil-smelling, brown liquid erupted from his ass. Hiram tried to contain it, but it was like trying to stop a river from flowing. A smelly trail of brown ooze marked his path to the privy, and Hiram spent half an hour in there before deciding the surge was over. It took seven corn cobs to get himself cleaned up and he had to take off his long underwear and walk to the house naked, but Hiram was ecstatic. He'd discovered a miracle cure.
The rest, as they say, is history. Hiram figured out how to mix the liquid with gelatin and form it into bullet shapes that were easier use than Bertha's funnel, and after a few trials, he figured out the appropriate amount and size to give a somewhat more gentle relief. In a month, he was out peddling "Frobisher's Blockage Relief" and making a small fortune in the process. By the time Malcomb inherited the company, Frobisher had a virtual monopoly on the suppository market.
Hiram's voice brought Tim back to the meeting.
" -- and I know we can do just as well if we put our minds to it."
"Jack, you get your marketing people to finding out what's happening in the market and what we can do about it. Rick, I want to talk to you about some production improvements we can make to lower costs. No sense in losing more money than we have to."
When Tim arrived for the regularly scheduled staff meeting the next Wednesday, Jack, the marketing director, had already set up his laptop and connected it to the projection TV mounted in the ceiling. He took his seat just as Malcomb walked in the door.
Malcomb counted heads, and satisfied all his directors were there, he began the meeting.
"I want to congratulate Jack for putting together this presentation so quickly. I myself haven't seen it yet, but Jack tells me they've finished their market research and have a proposal. Jack, let's see what you've come up with."
Jack smiled and ran his hand over his freshly trimmed and styled hair. He had a habit of doing that - getting his hair cut just before any meeting involving Malcomb. Tim had known for a long time that Jack was an asshole, and figured the haircuts were another one of his ways to suck up to Malcomb.
"Well, yes, I...we finished a quick evaluation of the market. This graph", he tapped a key on his laptop, "will show you what our sales are doing."
The graph was of Sales Dollars over the past twenty years.
"As you can see, sales have been dropping for quite a while. I...we were able to correlate the decline in suppository sales to the advent and increase of this."
Jack tapped his keyboard again and a green line appeared on the same graph.
"The green line is my...our estimate of sales for fiber substitutes and the sales of high fiber food products as reported by the USDA."
Jack turned to face the table.
"Simply put, gentlemen, people aren't getting constipated as much as they used to because they're taking fiber substitutes and eating lots of broccoli. We can't hope to stop that behavior. If we project the graph even further, like this", he tapped his laptop again, "our sales will dwindle to almost nothing within five years. Are there any questions."
Malcomb cleared his throat.
"Jack, you're telling me our sales are down because people don't need our product?"
"Yes, sir. Oh, there will always be some of the baby boomers who grew up with suppositories who'll keep using them, but the generations after that are into eating healthy."
Malcomb sighed.
"That's a sad commentary on what America has become. We used to be a steak and potatoes nation. Now we're tofu and broccoli. I wonder what we'll be in another twenty years. So what do we do?"
Jack smiled again.
