Make Me An Offer by Con Blomberg (ebook reader web .txt) 📕

waste any time getting on FAX and TV, telling everyone that there had been a change in plans due to public demand and we weren't going to be able to roof over Central Park after all. I suggested that, as long as the administration had cooperated, the people should cooperate on the matter.

An hour later, I called the Civic Machine and asked for a check on scissors. The orders had dropped to a mere 5.4 million. Way above normal, but the way the cancellations were coming in, it was obvious that it would be within reasonable proportions soon.

Just in case some of you missed the by-play on that, let me sketch it in for you as I found it out later.

It seems that this Hatty Dakkon had organized a phone campaign on the Let Our Children Enjoy Nature theme which went over big with the women. Every woman called five woman friends and these five called five and so on. You figure it out—with geometrical progression, it doesn't take long to get in touch with about 14-15 million women. Not as fast as TV, maybe, but a darn sight more effective and thorough.

It was the talk of the women's world and we men didn't even know about it until the battle was all over.

This horde of women, led by Hatty Dakkon, agreed that they would order the same dish—gelatin in a round mold on the same night.

You know what this can do to a good Projector. It just went frantic.

Projectors work on the basis of average demand for anything, and with an average demand for round mold gelatin foods two nights in a row of about 10-11 million, it went ahead and ordered a whole conveyor-load of mold dishes from Schenectady.

The next time, it was square molds for two nights; and the next, it was figure-eight for two nights and then a double shot of deep-dish.

They have a new Projector up at Schenectady, same as we have, and it ordered an increase in the size of the mold-making factory based on our demand (which was run in with everyone else's demand). Then, when the demand didn't come through from us and from the other cities in the area, we had to pay the premium for building the new factory.

The scissors business would have bankrupted us completely. Think of it—millions of pairs of steel scissors in the year 2006! Think of the premium for increase in size of factory, prospecting the planets, mining, spaceship freight rates, and so forth. That's why I was glad to give up the Central Park project.

Well, to make a long story short, we aren't going near Central Park. And Charlie, who originally thought of the idea, is probably out there now, wondering why he did it.

Now in closing, I hope all the rest of you who have had a good laugh will sober up and sympathize with me and see what you can do about ordering gelatin molds from us. We'll ship them out pronto—we have a large supply—and no reasonable offer will be refused. Please, fellows!

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Make Me An Offer, by Con Blomberg