increase in its Big Board price.
Daniel Blank had been hired as Assistant Circulation Manager. His previous jobs had been as Subscription Fulfillment Manager and Circulation Manager on consumer periodicals. The three magazines on which he had worked prior to his employment at Javis-Bircham had since died. Blank, who saw what was happening, had survived, in a better job, at a salary he would have considered a hopeless dream ten years ago.
His first reaction to the circulation set-up at Javis-Bircham was unequivocal. “It’s a fucked-up mess,” he told his wife.
Blank’s immediate superior was the Circulation Manager, a beefy, genial man named Robert White, called “Bob” by everyone, including secretaries and mailroom boys. This was, Blank thought, a measure of the man.
White had been at Javis-Bircham for 25 years and had surrounded himself with a staff of more than 50 males and females who seemed, to Blank, all “old women” who smelled of lavender and whiskey sours, arrived late for work, and were continually taking up office collections for birthdays, deaths, marriages, and retirements.
The main duty of the Circulation Department was to supply to the Production Department “print-run estimates”: the number of copies of each magazine that should be printed to insure maximum profit for Javis- Bircham. The magazines might be weeklies, semi-monthlies, monthlies, quarterlies, semi-annuals or annuals. They might be given away to a managerial-level readership or sold by subscription. Some were even available to the general public on newsstands. Most of the magazines earned their way by advertising revenue. Some carried no advertising at all, but were of such a specialized nature that they sold solely on the value of their editorial content.
Estimating the “press run” of each magazine for maximum profitably was an incredibly complex task. Past and potential circulation of each periodical had to be considered, current and projected advertising revenue, share of general overhead, costs of actual printing-quality of paper, desired process, four-color plates, etc.-costs of mailing and distributing, editorial budget (including personnel), publicity and public relations campaigns, etc., etc.
At the time Daniel Blank joined the organization, this bewildering job of “print-run estimation” seemed to be done “by guess and by God.” Happy Bob White’s staff of “old women” fed him information, laughing a great deal during their conversations with him. Then, when a recommendation was due, White would sit at his desk, humming, with an ancient slide rule in his hands, and within an hour or so would send his estimate to the Production Department.
Daniel Blank saw immediately that there were so many variables involved that the system screamed for computerization. His experience with computers was minimal; on previous jobs he had been involved mostly with relatively simple data-processing machines.
He therefore enrolled for a six months’ night course in “The Triumph of the Computer.” Two years after starting work at Javis-Bircham, he presented to Bob White a 30-page carefully organized and cogently reasoned prospectus on the advantages of a computerized Circulation Department.
White took it home over the weekend to read. He returned it to Blank on Monday morning. Pages were marked with brown rings from coffee cups, and one page had been crinkled and almost obliterated by a spilled drink.
White took Daniel to lunch and, smiling, explained why Blank’s plan wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.
“You obviously put a lot of work and thought into it,” White said, “but you’re forgetting the personalities involved. The people. My God, Dan, I have lunch with the editors and advertising managers of those magazines almost every day They’re my friends. They all have plans for their books: a article that might get a lot of publicity and boost circulation a new hot-shot advertising salesman who might boost revenu way over the same month last year. I’ve got to consider a those personal things. The human factors involved. You can’t feed that into a computer.”
Daniel Blank nodded understandingly. An hour after they returned from lunch he had a clean copy of his prospectus on the desk of the Executive Vice President.
A month later the Circulation Department was shocked to learn that laughing Bob White had retired. Daniel Blank was appointed Circulation
Within a year all the “old women” were gone, Blank had surrounded himself with a young staff of pale technicians, and the cabinets of AMROK II occupied half the 30th floor of the Javis-Bircham Building. As Blank had predicted, not only did the computer and auxiliary data-processing machines handle all the problems of circulation- subscription fulfillment and print-run estimation-but they performed these tasks so swiftly that they could also be used for salary checks, personnel records, and pension programs. As a result, Javis-Bircham was able to dismiss more than 500 employees and, as Blank had carefully pointed out in his original prospectus, the annual leasing of the extremely expensive AMROK II resulted in an appreciable tax deduction.
Daniel Blank was currently earning $55,000 a year and had an unlimited expense account, a very advantageous pension and stock option plan. He was 36.
About a month after he took over, he received a very strange postcard from Bob White. It said merely: “What are you feeding the computer? Ha-ha.”
Blank puzzled over this. What had been fed the computer, of course, were the past circulation and advertising revenue figures and profit or loss totals of all the magazines Javis-Bircham published. Admittedly, White had been working his worn slide rule during most of the years from which those figures were taken, and it was possible to say that, in a sense, White had programmed the computer. But still, the postcard made little sense, and Daniel Blank wondered why his former boss had bothered to send it.
It was gratifying to hear the uniformed starter say, “Good morning, Mr. Blank,” and it was gratifying to ride the Executive Elevator in solitary comfort to the 30th floor. His personal office was a corner suite with wall-to-wall carpeting, a private lavatory and, not a desk, but a table: a tremendous slab of distressed walnut on a wrought-iron base. These things counted.
He had deliberately chosen for his personal secretary a bony, 28-year-old widow, Mrs. Cleek, who needed the job badly and would be grateful. She had proved as efficient and colorless as he had hoped. She had a few odd habits: she insisted on latching all doors and cabinets that were slightly ajar, and she was continually lining up the edges of the ashtrays and papers with the edges of tables and desks, putting everything parallel or at precise right angles. A picture hanging askew drove her mad. But these were minor tics.
When he entered his office, she was ready to hang away his coat and hat in the small closet. His black coffee was waiting for him, steaming, on a small plastic tray on the table, having been delivered by the commissary on the 20th floor.
“Good morning, Mr. Blank,” she said in her watery voice, consulting a stenographer’s pad she held. “You have a meeting at ten-thirty with the Pension Board. Lunch at twelve-thirty at the Plaza with Acme, regarding the servicing contract. I tried to confirm, but no one’s in yet. I’ll try again.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I like your dress. Is it new?”
“No,” she said.
“I’ll be in the Computer Room until the Pension Board meeting, in case you need me.”
“Yes, Mr. Blank.”
The embarrassing truth was that, as Mrs. Cleek was probably aware, he had nothing to do. It was true he was overseer of an extremely important department-perhaps
He could have given the impression of working. Many executives in similar circumstances did that. He could accept invitations to luncheons easily avoided. He could stalk corridors carrying papers over which he could frown and shake his head. He could request technical literature on supplies and computer systems utterly inadequate or too sophisticated for Javis-Bircham’s needs, with a heavy increase of unnecessary correspondence. He could take senseless business trips to inspect the operations of magazine wholesalers and printing plants. He could attend dozens of conventions and trade meetings, give speeches and buy the bodies of hat-check girls.
But none of that was his style. He needed work; he could not endure inaction for long. And so he turned to “empire building,” plotting how he might enlarge the size of the Circulation Department and increase his own influence and power.
And in his personal life he felt the same need for action after the brief hibernation following his divorce (during which period he vowed, inexplicably, to remain continent). This desire to “do” dated from his meeting with
