Hot Sketch No. 19 — The Passing of the Buck Passers
There was a man of Pep and Potential who owned a large and constantly stretching Business.
Originally it was the size of a pants button and consisted of one ratty Rolltop, two rubber-stamps and a nominal assortment of liabilities.
National Advertising had dredged the Business out of the dump of Dinkyism and tossed it upon the apex of Affluence.
The sudden and unexpected growth had sunk the Boss ear-deep in detail drudgery, and so he decided to surround himself with men who could balance some of the burden that rested upon his convex shoulders and caused forehead-furrows like a first-line trench.
Thereupon he hired for his Sales Manager a calm and collected caterpillar who had been doing high-class dental work at a leading Way Station and acting as professional pallbearer on off-days. Caterpill came Highly Recommended by a frowsy friend connected with an Advertising Agency that was hoeing in 15 per cent on all business placed.
The Boss next decided to graft onto the main trunk an expert Advertising Manager, and so he selected from the 70,000 agitated applicants a complacent party that knew as much about Advertising as a first-class dragoman.
Then said Doc Boss to himself, said he: Now that I have the Sales and Advertising ends of the works hemmed up, I must get me somebody with brains and ballast to do my buying; also a hot hound to superintend the plant and a sprightly spaniel to see that the stuff gets shipped during the same historical epoch in which orders are received.
So he sniffed about the town and soon had these pearly positions filled with a couple of polliwogs related to his wife’s uncle and his cousin’s chums, and they brought their letters of Hearty endorsement from the Pastor and the red-horned Congressman of the District.
Having surrounded himself with the afore enumerated eminent executives, Comrade Boss leaned back in his revolving Reposer and said: “At last I am going to cop a wee round of rest and recreation. No more work, worry, and wiscissitude for me.”
The last syllable had slid gracefully away on the serene, sweet morning air when the new Superintendent greased in to find out if there would be any objection to his putting a new hinge on the factory door.
On his way out, the Supe bumped into the Sales Manager on his way in to ask Governor Boss if he should go ahead and O. K. an Expense Account upon whose fair bosom rested a Bus Fare charge at Holbrook Hollow where the hotel leans leisurely up against the railroad station.
Mayor-general Boss smiled sweetly, said “No” (dam you) and turned away to wrestle with a few speckled doubts that began to creep up into his Thinkery and nibble at his Composure.
Before he had bottled his irritabiliousness, in flowed the serene Advertising Manager wanting to know whether he should change the copy in the Ads every decade or so, or let it stand until it fell down from sheer exhaustion.
When this genius of initiative had ebbed away, the Boss’s telephone she rang and he grabbed at the instrument like a straw grabs at a drowning man, thinking that some diversion in way of a date might be in prospect.
But he found it was the new Buyer wanting to know which of two quotations he should accept—the higher or the lower. Professor Boss replied that it was a knotty case to decide off-palm, but from a superficial cast-over there might be no grievous mistake in accepting the lower quotation; and the Buyer naturally said he thought the same way but didn’t feel justified in taking the responsibility of deciding all alone by hisself.
When Uncle Boss had hung up the receiver he found the bright-eyed Shipping Clerk standing at his tired side waiting to be wisdomed-up on whether he should ship 34,999 lbs. at the L. C. L. rate or pay for the extra lb. and get the C. L. rate.
Major Boss thought a long time but not about what the Shipping Clerkerino had whispered. He was just trying to make a choice between murder and suicide. He decided to do neither, but to just hold onto his Patience as a matter of self-discipline and try to get in his rest between Foolish Quesions.
For the first six months he seemed to be making considerable prog., often getting several moments to himself, during which aforesaid moments he fumbled with his cufflinkers and pulled his eyebrows to see if he could get one out at every pull.
But when the calendar year had begun to run down at the heel, the demands from the Department Heads became so insistent and insupperable that one day Cap Boss jumped up on his desk, gave one blood icing yell, swung his arms wildly in the crisp autumn ozone, and dove head-on into the cuspidor.
When he had been fished out and revived, he seemed strangely calm and collected. In a voice that had a weird, far-away-over-the-hills sound, but carrying in its depths an unmistakable quality of determination, he called in all his hefty, high-class helpers, told them to be seated, and spake as hereinafter recorded, to wit and to-wot:
“When I engaged you muskrats I had a feeling that this Business was slightly pied. I thought you could do the Necessary, and use such commonsense as you perhaps happened to have, in order to push the Enterprise to the pinnacle of Power.
“I now find that not a rum of you has the initiative of a set of false whiskers nor the judgment of a jelly-bean. As Buck Passers you’ve got everything this side of Congress pummeled to a pulp, and when it comes to stalling, you are all Class A-Super and no mistake.
“You will therefore please take a long jump into the jungles of Oblivion, and, as a little souvenir of my regard, I propose to present each man on his way out with a swift kick in the Kupps.”
When the last kanoop had cleared, Commodore Boss got a new outfit consisting of non-relatived men of EXPERIENCE and while the thought of the high salaries he had to pay them made him swallow like a cock eating corn-meal, he got over it when he found he could get off every afternoon for 18 holes and fish for a fortnight without fretting a fret.