#71764 by fisherman bob
Sun Jun 21, 2009 10:10 am
Sun Jun 21, 2009 10:10 am
In a Happy Valley long ago there existed a small manufacturing company called The Acme Flapper Co. An enterprising man named Terrence McGillicutty started this company to supply the best quality flappers for toilets. Orders for the new flapper started coming in almost immediately and all across the land the word spread that the Acme Flapper was the very best flapper money could buy. Many new employees had to be hired to keep up with the demand. For many decades the Acme Co. fluorished, even sending orders to far away lands on every continent. Taxes were low, health insurance costs were low, the employees all were happy and life was good. Plumbers everywhere installed the high quality flapper with total confidence, as they very rarely failed to help keep toilets running efficinetly. The customers of the plumbers were also happy. Then one day a U.S. governement official visited the Acme Flapper Co. and fined the company for exceeding the brand new environmental standards. The company was happy to change its operating procedures to meet the standards and passed the operating cost increase to consumers. All was well again with the happy Acme Flapper Co. Next a man in a fancy suit visited the Acme Flapper and dropped off some paperwork containing to an incident where one of the employees stubbed his toe on a flapper injection machine, thus causing much pain and suffering to the disgruntled employee. The paperwork was of course a lawsuit which was settled for hundreds of thousands of dollars. With the incredible volume of business that the Acme Flapper Co. had it simply had a small price increase to offset the settlement and the subsequent raise in its liability insurance. All again was well with the Acme Flapper company. As time went on more and more men in fancy suits visited the Acme Flapper Co. These were all wonderful officials higly concerned with various issues concerning the employees and the surrounding community as well as issues a few disgruntled customers had. More and more changes had to be made to the Acme Flapper Co. There was an increasing burden of red tape and legal documents, and more and more complicated issues of conformance to various bureaucracies. Soon the Acme Flapper Co. was dealing with many men in fancy suits. The employess found they had to work many more hours for less pay. Companies all over the Happy Valley were experiencing the same kind of problems. Then one day an Oriental man visited owner Terence McGillicutty. He came with a wonderful solution to all of Terence's problems. He offered Terence many millions of dollars to move his entire operation to China where they had no problems like they did in the Happy Valley. This was a dream come true for a man with humble beginnings. So the company was relocated. Soon the market was flooded with flappers that didn't last nearly as long and were made of shoddy material. Not only that many of the flappers leaked, and all the plumbers' customers were very upset. So the plumbers had to go back and make good on their warranties. Unfortuneately for the plumbers the new flappers that wobbled (instead of fitting snugly) were not available from any other source. And nothing could be done to fix the problem of shoddy manufacturing in China. Of course all the laid off former employees of the Acme Flapper Co. couldn't get work as many other companies in the Happy Valley also were laying off workers and moving their operations overseas. In order to solve the problem the government started to print money, thus stimulating the economy and putting people back to work. But alas, the stimulus didn't work well because the government had to borrow money from China and soon the money being printed was worthless. The moral of this story is simple: Don't let your flappers wobble. THE END.
