You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps by Tom Holt Page A

till you’ve bought the purse. This is just, like, for demonstration purposes.’ He emptied out a palmfull of softly chinking coins, looked at them wistfully and put them back; all except one, which he allowed to full on the floor. Then he started to count, slowly. As he reached ten, the coin stopped being solid and became a very tightly wound spiral, which gradually straightened itself out into a straight line and squirmed away under the desk. ‘No kidding,’ he said. ‘They’re the genuine bloody article. They’re also,’ he went on, ‘bloody extortionately expensive. No, we aren’t keeping the bottomless purse, because we couldn’t ever afford it in a billion years. Real pity, that.’
    Colin thought for a moment. Then, in a very quiet voice, he asked: ‘Dad, has this got anything to do with the damn great big tree growing right up through—?’
    ‘All we can afford,’ Dad went on, as though Colin hadn’t spoken, ‘is to hire them to broker a deal for us, a deal with one of their other clients.’ He frowned, then continued: ‘You know what our biggest headache is?’
    Colin nodded; easy peasy. ‘Cheap imports,’ he said.
    ‘That’s right. And you know why we can’t compete with those—’ (Here Dad said something highly reprehensible about the Chinese.)
    ‘Labour costs,’ Colin replied promptly. ‘You told me all this.’
    Dad nodded slowly. ‘These clients of JWW,’ he said slowly, ‘are going to solve all that. What we’re going to do is, we make all the workforce redundant, effective immediately, and these friends of JWW are going to supply us with replacement workers. No minimum wage, no pension contributions, no sick pay, maternity leave, equal opportunities, investing in people, health and safety, nothing like that. We’ve got their cast-iron guarantee that their workers’ll work an eighteen-hour shift, no tea breaks, no unions, per capita productivity like you wouldn’t fucking believe and - this is the really good bit - they don’t want paying. And—’ the grin on Dad’s face extended from ear to ear, like a professionally cut throat ‘- the joy of it is, it’s all absolutely hundred-per-cent legal.’
    ‘Legal?’
    ‘Couldn’t be more legal if it tried.’ Dad slumped forward and covered his face with his hands. ‘And we can afford it,’ he went on, sitting up again. ‘All we got to pay is JWW’s bill - which is going to be bloody enormous, but compared to the sort of money we’ll be making from now on, it’s a short pee in the ocean. In eighteen months we’ll have driven those [inexcusable racial epithet] out of business, and the Yanks and the Poles too, most like. It’s absolutely sure-fire. We can’t lose.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Colin. ‘That’s—’
    ‘Yes.’ Dad sat up sharply. ‘It is, isn’t it? And that’s what that thin cow from JWW’s coming here to sort out; and since you’re -well, you’re part of the business, so you’re involved too, so I thought I’d better tell you now, before you get the wrong end of the stick or anything.’
    Colin thought for a while. ‘It sounds really, really good,’ he said cautiously, ‘and I know we’re in a really bad position right now. But sacking everybody - some of them have been with us for years and years, Dad, it’s not—’
    Dad lifted his head and gave Colin a scowl that brought back some very bad memories. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But if we carry on like we are at the moment, the firm’ll go bust, they’ll be out on their ear anyhow, so what’s the difference? And this way, they’ll get their full redundancy, all legal and by the book, so they’ll be all right. And besides,’ he added, his scowl blossoming, ‘to be absolutely bloody honest with you, I don’t give a toss. All I care about is this business, which I’ve worked fucking hard for all my life, and I’m damned if some slanty—’
    ‘All right,’ Colin said. ‘I take the point.’ He hesitated, considering various aspects of the