a very heavy newspaper

Frank was a young man from a working class family. He had ambition, energy and intelligence, in that order. Sarah's family had lots of money and great expectations of a 'good' marriage to the 'right' kind of man.

Frank was not the right kind of man. Nor did he mix in the right circles. He and Sarah would never have met in the normal course of events. They bumped into each other quite by accident. He rear-ended her when she braked too suddenly. She had been applying lipstick and failed to see the stop sign until it was almost too late.

The car in which Frank was travelling belonged to a friend of his. The two of them got out of the car; Sarah got out of hers. Even though the accident had not been that serious, she was quite shaken and stirred as she exchanged insurance details with Frank's friend. When they were done, Frank offered to buy her a cup of coffee to calm her nerves. She accepted. Afterwards, he drove her home in her car. Home was a huge mansion in extensive grounds in one of the more salubrious suburbs.

After a whirlwind romance, they married, much to her family's disgust. Being reasonable people, however, they overcame their disgust and offered Frank a job in one of the family businesses. That was the only way they could think of to ensure Sarah would be kept in the style to which she had become accustomed.

Frank worked hard and won promotion after promotion until, at the age of 39, became managing director. Under his leadership the business flourished. Sarah's family were delighted; they still retained an interest in the business and were well satisfied with their share of the profits. But Frank did not want or need any partners, sleeping or otherwise. After a number of years on his hefty managing director's salary, Frank made an offer to buy out the family's interests. They accepted.

The business grew to a size that made a stock exchange listing a realistic possibility. But the bottom fell out of the market, and Frank had to put his plans on hold, much to his disappointment. But all was not lost. A few months after the market crash, a multinational corporation decided that the business would fit nicely into their global portfolio, so they made Frank a cash offer. Recognising that much of the success of the business was Frank's doing, as part of the deal they asked him to continue as managing director (albeit in the capacity of an employee) to ensure a smooth transition and ongoing profits. Frank agreed, and the deal was struck.

Unfortunately, things did not go smoothly. Accustomed to answering only to himself, Frank chafed under the bureaucracy and constraints involved in being part of a large multinational. The business continued to do well but Frank no longer felt the same satisfaction he had enjoyed previously. He hated having to work within the highly structured and laborious processes imposed by the business's new owners.

Although the relationship continued to deteriorate, Frank continued as managing director, not because he felt any obligation, but simply because he knew nothing else, had never worked in any other job, could not face the prospect of reinventing himself.

"Why stay around?" Sarah asked him. "If head office is making all the decisions, what do you actually do there all day long?"

"I read a lot of newspapers," he replied facetiously. (This was in the days of hard copy newspapers---the days when Apple was a fruit and Bill Gates had not yet been born.) Facetious or not, truth be told it was the half hour Frank spent first thing every morning reading the papers and rinsing his soul that made his working day that much more bearable.

But only popes and emperors are entitled to lengthy stretches of soul-rinsing. Due to various factors outside the scope of this story, a number of countries around the world entered recession, and the multinational watched its profits turn to losses, its growth to negative growth. A series of cost-cutting measures was embarked upon, including cancelling newspaper subscriptions of those executives whom no-one liked very much, such as Frank.

But was he going to take it lying down? Fuck no!

At the office every morning he would ask his secretary to summons one of the drivers. Then he would take 2 dollars out of his wallet, his own 2 dollars, and give it to the driver saying, "run into town and get me a copy of the Telegraph and the Mail". Then the driver would get into the cab of one of the ten tonne trucks, and drive 20 minutes into town to buy the morning papers for his boss, then drive 20 minutes back. This was not a productive use of the truck whose day job it was to deliver heavy bales of textiles to the customers of the business.

Of course word got back to head office and Frank was asked to explain his actions.

"My subscription was cancelled so now I'm buying the papers with my own money," he explained.

Head office accepted his explanation, or at least pretended to. For the next three weeks, nothing further was said or done in the matter of the newspapers, except that Frank continued to send the ten tonne truck every morning into town.

At the end of the month, Frank got a bit of a shock. Arriving at work one morning he made his way to his office and was startled to see two large sacks just outside his office door.

"What's this?" he asked his secretary.

"It's your August pay," his secretary replied, trying not to smirk, "arrived this morning in the truck".

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