“Oh, some stupid bastard in Philly says we shipped him a pair of house—” The intercom on his desk buzzed. He flicked it on angrily and said, “Yes?”
“Mr. McQuade is waiting to see you, Mr. Manelli.”
“Send him right in,” Manelli said.
Griff said, “I’d better run along, Joe. If you two have—”
“No, no, quite all right, stay where you are. I want you to expand on what you were telling me, anyway, and it might not be a bad idea for Mac to hear it, eh? Stay put, Griff, stay put.”
The door opened, and McQuade stepped into the office, ducking his head slightly as he did.
“Joe,” he said politely, “and Griff! This is a surprise. How are you, boy?”
Griff had not seen much of McQuade since the fire hose episode last Wednesday. That had been a week ago, and he had more or less put it out of his mind. Seeing McQuade reminded him of it again, and the picture of McQuade with the hose in his hands became a very vivid thing. He smiled somewhat stiffly, and took McQuade’s proffered hand.
“Fine, Mac,” he said. “And you?”
“Busy as a son of a, but enjoying myself nonetheless. I didn’t break in on anything, did I?”
“No, no,” Manelli assured him, “I was just telling Griff about this—” Manelli stopped short, as if he were debating the advisability of discussing what had just happened with McQuade.
“What is it, Joe?” McQuade asked, smiling.
“Oh, nothing important.” He seemed to be searching for some unimportant thing he could substitute for the phone call from Stiegman. A cleverer man might have come up with something instantly, but Manelli was not a very clever man, so he reluctantly told the truth. “One of our accounts in Philadelphia complained we sent him a pair of house slippers. Silly damn thing.”
“I’ll say,” McQuade said, lifting his eyebrows in amusement.
“So, we’ve just got to send him another pair of shoes, that’s all,” Manelli said, dismissing the subject and shoving the memo pad to a corner of his desk. “Now then, Griff, suppose you tell Mac what you were—”
“What happened to the pair of shoes we sent him?” McQuade asked curiously.
“Eh? Oh,” Manelli said, “well, that’s hard to say. He got these house slippers instead, you see.”
“That seems very odd, doesn’t it? I mean, I don’t know very much about it, but how could we have possibly shipped him a pair of house slippers?”
Manelli shrugged. “Well, that’s what he says. And he’s a pretty big account, Mac. No sense irritating him.”
“No, of course not,” McQuade said.
Manelli smiled, once more dismissing the subject. “Griff and I were discussing possible ways of increasing production. He’s come up with a good idea, and I thought you’d like to hear it.”
“Certainly,” McQuade said. He walked to an easy chair and plopped himself into it.
“Well, it’s not really my idea,” Griff said. “That is, we’ve done it before, whenever Factory was slow. Sales just gives permission to—”
“Is it possible that someone in the factory,” McQuade said, “substituted those house slippers for our pattern?”
“What?” Manelli asked.
“Someone here in the factory,” McQuade repeated.
“You mean…?” Manelli considered this. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, of course anything’s possible, but…”
“I’m just trying to figure out how a pair of house slippers got shipped to an account, that’s all,” McQuade said, smiling and spreading his hands. “After all, it doesn’t speak very well for our efficiency, does it? Opening a Julien Kahn box and finding a pair of house slippers instead of a fashion shoe. Which shoe was it?”
“Flare,” Manelli said. “The Swisscraft straw number. Seems to be catching on nicely, especially on the Eastern seaboard, God only knows why.”
“The red shoe, isn’t it?” McQuade asked. “Yes, I recall seeing that one in the factory. That’s a nice shoe. What do we get for it, Griff?”
“Twelve dollars,” Griff said automatically.
McQuade tilted his head appreciatively. “That’s a little piece of change, isn’t it?” He nodded and then said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt you, Griff, forgive me.”
“That’s all right,” Griff said. “What we’ve done in the past is cut a lot of stuff we could throw into stock. That brings up our pairage and it also guarantees a margin of safety because we’re cutting tried and true patterns, you see, stuff we will always get calls for. It would keep our cutters busy during the slack, and at the same time—”
“Where’s the first place we get a finished shoe, Joe?” McQuade said suddenly. “Packing, isn’t it?”
“Well, we get a finished shoe in Prepacking, too, more or less. Just needs a little trimming and such, but for all practical purpos—”
“But there are no boxes in Prepacking, are there? What I’m driving at, Joe, if a pair of house slippers were to be substituted for Flare, it would have to be in the Packing Room or the Shipping Room, is that right?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But—”
“Is it conceivable that someone working in either of those two departments stole the shoes?” He said the word “stole” as if it were something loathsome that he had to spit out.
“Well, yes,” Manelli faltered, “it’s conceivable. Certainly, theft is a common occurrence in any large busi—”
“How many people are there in Packing, Joe?” McQuade asked. A glow had come onto his face, focused on his eyes, reflected in the eagerness of his mouth.
“I… I don’t know,” Manelli said. “I can check it for you.”
“Please do. And find out how many people are in the Shipping Room, too. And find out how many people in both departments are women, will you?” He leaned back and looked at Manelli.
“Right now?” Manelli asked, raising his eyebrows.
“If you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all. Actually, this is more in Boris’s department than mine, you understand.” He tried a timid smile. “I mean, any trouble in the factory is not really my responsibility. It—”
“Why, Joe,” McQuade said, seemingly surprised, “you’re underestimating yourself. You know very well the comptroller should keep a hand in everything that happens in this building.”
“Yes, yes, of course. What I meant, however, was that Boris Hengman would naturally know more about anything that went on in the factory than…” Manelli shut up, suddenly realizing he was entangling himself in a sticky web of self-denunciation. Reluctantly, he said, “I’ll… I’ll get those figures for you.”
Manelli busied himself on the phone, and McQuade smiled at Griff pleasantly. “You know,” he said, speaking above Manelli’s low rumble, “it’s very important that we discourage dishonesty.”
“Well,” Griff said, shrugging, “theft is actually figured into our budget, you know.”
“It is?” McQuade asked incredulously.
“Yes. You’ll find it listed under Miscellaneous Loss. That’s theft, or shrinkage. We lost a good many pairs through shrinkage, but nothing to really concern ourselves about. Wherever there are people working, there’ll be theft. As a matter of fact,” and here he smiled, “it’s something of a compliment. People don’t want to steal junk. When they stop stealing our product, then it’s time to worry.”
McQuade made a dubious gesture with his head. “I wish I could agree with you, Griff, but I’m afraid I can’t. Every worker in this factory should feel a deep responsibility toward the company. If they steal from the company, they steal from their own pockets. I don’t mind telling you that I agreed wholeheartedly with Joe’s insistence on putting the prices of our shoes in code. It’s not wise to have too well-informed a group of workers, Griff. These men are making — what? — a cent, two cents an operation? They look at the work ticket and they see that we’re selling the shoe for fourteen ninety-five, and that’s a hell of a long way from what they’re getting. They begin to get dissatisfied, and then they begin to ask questions and dispute authority. Like that business in the Cutting Room last week. All right, I know you think I behaved rather harshly and I can’t blame you for the way you feel. But I hope you don’t think I enjoyed what I did? Far from it, Griff. It was a necessary evil. Those men had to be taught to obey!” He noticed the frown on Griff’s forehead. “Well, perhaps obey is too strong a word. Forgive me for using it. They’ve got to understand, though, that we are running a business and not a charity fund, and we’ll do everything in our power to see that they get a fair shake… but not at the expense of ruining the business. The business comes first, Griff. Once they understand that, well, you’ll see the changes.”