Derek in Accounts Payable was an excitable type, but only to a certain extent.
When he rounded the corner to speak to Jason, his boss, colleague and friend he was more excited than normal.
The fact that he kept his voice low to avoid others hearing was indicative that it was also something serious.
“I’ve got it Jason! It just came out of the blue and punched me in the eye!”
“What is it?” asked Jason noncommittally. He had been presented with many of Derek’s ‘ideas’ before and knew to take them with a grain of salt.
“It’s the answer to the unemployment crisis. It is so simple I can’t believe no one else thought of it before!”
Derek’s mouth corners dropped an imperceptive millimeter downward. “This is going to be a doozy.” he thought.
“Here it is in a nutshell,” Derek stated, “We have too many people on unemployment because of the recession. We don’t have enough funds to keep paying them off forever.
“And we have to make sure that the Unemployment Office itself doesn’t get downsized or closed so that we lose our higher than normal wages and good benefits that are paid for by the earnings of the normal workers.
“So what we do is make it so difficult to get on unemployment and so time consuming to deal with or so poorly paid out that the people applying for it either starve to death from low payments, go insane filling out forms and dealing with technicalities or give up in frustration and becomes homeless or kill themselves.
“It’s great! No matter what we come out on top and intact! What do you think?”
Jason was quiet for a moment, no emotion showing on his face. Suddenly he jumped up inspired.
“That’s a great idea Derek! Let’s put it into operation immediately! In fact, I’m going to email it to all the other State unemployment offices so they can do the same. Our jobs are saved! Hurray!” He then ran off down the hall to use the fax machine.