SRF Heavy Industries

So here’s one of the current business scenarios, translated into the language of metaphor.

The boss says, “Let’s run the Iditarod.” Not my usual scene, but I’m paid as a consultant. Figure out how. That’s my job.

“Sure,” I said. “Dogs, a sled, cold weather gear, spare parts, supplies…. I’ll hire a consultant, we’ll make a list, raise some capital, and go shopping.”

“No money for that. Capital is hard to come by,” he says. “Let’s run a few races first, start small, and we’ll expand to actual huskies and a sled and a trained driver. Meanwhile, we have an old refrigerator box, some dental floss we can weave into whatever ropes it takes to tie dogs to it — whenever we can get them — and I found us some chickens.”

“Chickens.”

“Yeah. They cost less than a twentieth what a dog costs, they’re cheaper to feed, and if we tie hundreds to the sled –“

“Box.”

“–whatever, we’ll fuckin’ fly!”

“So let me get this straight. We’re going to spend the next six months weaving reins out of dental floss and making snow shoes and parkas for chickens so that in a year we’ll have won enough prize money to afford an actual sled and a dog or two?”

“Sure! And when we have a dog or two we’ll put ’em behind the chickens to make ’em run faster! But not months. Weeks. And maybe only four of them. If we don’t get the prize money rolling in fast we won’t make payroll.”

…

And six weeks pass. We’re up to our armpits in snow, pulling a cardboad box piled high with shivering chickens and ruptured and pillaged sacks of chicken feed, with ropes made out of dental floss cutting into our bodies.

“This would go a hell of a lot faster if we ditched the chickens,” I say. “And it would leave more chicken feed for us to keep up our strength.”

“We’re not ditching the chickens,” he replies. “I paid thousands of dollars for enough chickens to pull as much weight as a team of dogs. We’re not leaving them behind. We just have to find a path where the snow is shallower….”

“Have we won any prize money yet? It’s been hard for me to see anything like a finish line through the blinding glare of the absurdity of this situation.”

“Not yet. Keep pulling!”

…

Does anyone really want to see where this scenario is going to end? Because I don’t. And I’m sick to the teeth of chicken feed.

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