The Spiked Heel

Griff was not at all pleased with the memo, a carbon copy of which had reached his desk, since the IBM operation tied in with his own. He liked Frank Fazio, and he had also liked Joseph Manelli to some extent. But Manelli exhibited all the signs of becoming a worse son of a bitch than Kurz had ever been, and this was very disturbing to Griff.

He voiced his opinions in the seeming privacy of the Cost Department, and Marge listened to him quietly and attentively. When his tirade was completed, he was surprised to find McQuade standing in the open doorway, and he felt this strange panic again, and he cursed McQuade mentally, certain the man’s forefathers had all been Indian scouts.

McQuade smiled. “You shouldn’t condemn Joe, Griff,” he said. “He’s stepped into a difficult job. And, after all, you know as well as I do that the IBM Room was operating at a loss. Or at least that’s what Joe told me.”

“Well,” Griff said warily, “I suppose so.”

McQuade shrugged. “I’ve got a bad habit, I guess, of always trying to see the other man’s viewpoint. Griff, we’re all being paid to do a job, aren’t we? If we’re not doing our job, we’re accepting money under false pretenses. I think Joe did the right thing in letting the entire department go. And I think the big boys at Titanic will be pleased with what he’s done.”

Griff imagined they would, but he did not voice any comment. Throughout the past week, he had come to accept McQuade as a permanent fixture in the department. The tight formality of their earlier thrusts at friendship had dissolved into a smoothly functioning working relationship. Griff took to calling him “Mac” without feeling silly about it, and McQuade went about his getting-acquainted job effortlessly and quietly, asking nothing more than desk space from the department. He visited other departments, and he talked to people, and he spent a lot of time with Manelli and a lot of time with Hengman and a lot of time in the factory, and as much time in Chrysler Building across the river. He really seemed determined to learn the Kahn operation. He was always courteous and always pleasant, and there was no real reason to distrust him.

But, at the same time, Griff very rarely voiced any opinions about Titanic while McQuade was present. He was sensible enough to realize that McQuade was indeed a representative of the now-mother company, and he was in no hurry to vilify Mom’s name while McQuade was around. Lurking in the corner of his mind was Hengman’s declaration that McQuade was a “hetchet men.” Griff wasn’t sure that McQuade was, but he was not anxious to find out. He considered McQuade’s unfortunate entrance during his tirade a serious mishap, and he warned himself to be more careful in the future.

The firing of the IBM Room precipitated a flow of memos from every department in the factory and Sales Offices, as if the firing were a slap in the face which had suddenly brought the entire company to its collective feet. The week after the firing would long be remembered as Memo Week.

Manelli started the ball rolling with his upper-case memos, a sign of affectation no doubt, but certainly boldly impressive in their own quietly screaming way. The memos came from his office like ominously falling stones, and they probably started the avalanche which followed. The first memo was a short one. It said:

RE LABOR BUDGET. AS WE ALL KNOW, THERE ARE BOTH PIECEWORKERS AND TIME WORKERS IN THIS FACTORY. OUR PREDETERMINED BUDGET FOR EACH MONTH FIGURES APPROXIMATELY THE COST IN LABOR FOR EACH DEPARTMENT. IT HAS BEEN BROUGHT TO MY ATTENTION THAT MANY DEPARTMENTS HAVE A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF PIECEWORKERS WHO ARE COLLECTING MONIES FOR TIME WORK. THIS MUST STOP AT ONCE.

SIGNED:

J. MANELLI, COMPTROLLER

It was true, of course, that floor foremen had pets on their floors, or friends, or relatives, or even mistresses. It was also true that these assorted pets, friends, relatives, and mistresses did a lot of piecework, and that sometimes the piecework on a particular shoe ran out, and there was nothing left to do but go home. Being a pet, friend, etc. of the foreman came in handy at such times. The foreman found work for these idle pieceworkers, putting them on straight time for the remainder of the day. The work was usually of a non-laborious nature, and was generally a waste of time and — more important — company money. So Manelli’s first memo was not a silly one. It was, in fact, a pretty shrewd one, and Griff wondered how in hell he had ever found out about the delinquency or how he’d ever mustered up the courage to call a halt to it.