Dexter had suffered through having makeup applied, and was waiting in the green room for the show to start. He felt weird wearing makeup, and had to resist the temptation to remove it. It wasn't easy.
To say that he was nervous would be an understatement. The palms of his hands were sweating and he kept wiping them off on his pants. His stomach flipped each time someone had entered the green room. He was convinced that the moment he stepped onto the stage that he would have to go to the bathroom. His four visits to the bathroom while he was waiting, had not produced much in the way of urine.
Ed was much more relaxed about waiting than Dexter was. He tried to tell Dexter a few jokes to ease the tension, but Dexter hadn't responded to them.
"Dexter, listen to me. You'll do fine out there. Don't worry about it," Ed said.
"I'm really not good at this," Dexter said with a worried expression on his face.
"Just imagine that it is a regular business meeting. You've sat through enough of those, to know how to act," Ed said.
Thinking back to all of the meetings he had attended, Dexter asked, "You mean that I'm supposed to nod my head like a bobble-head doll, and agree with every idiotic thing he says?"
Ed laughed. "No. You're job is to disagree with every idiotic thing he says."
"That's a change," Dexter said.
Finally, the big moment arrived. Dexter and Ed were taken into the studio. They were seated across a desk from Phil Xander. After a final touch-up of their makeup, they were on the air. Phil Xander introduced the two men.
Phil said, "I must say that I'm pleased to be the first to interview the notorious Dexter James."
"Notorious?" Dexter said.
Phil said, "You've got to admit that you're kind of a wild man."
"You think I'm a wild man?" Dexter asked getting irritated.
Phil said, "You've come out with a lot of controversial stuff over the past year. It is a real pleasure to finally get you here, where I can ask you some serious questions."
"Not for much longer," Dexter muttered.
"What did you say?"
Dexter answered, "You're not going to be pleased for much longer."
"Why do you say that?"
"Let me ask this, Mr. Xander," Dexter said getting a raised eyebrow by the formal address to the host. "I noticed that your program is called the 'Phil Xander Show.' Yesterday, you said that having engineers put their names on products was an idiotic idea. Why did you name your program after yourself, if you consider that to be ... and I quote... 'the epitome of narcissism?'"
"That's different. I'm staking my reputation, here," Phil answered.
Dexter asked, "Don't you think an engineer should stake his reputation on every product he designs?"
"I guess he should," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Yesterday, you said that it was stupid."
"It just hasn't been done," Phil said.
Dexter said, "That's wrong. John Deere did it. Henry Ford did it. Marconi did it. Westinghouse did it. I can go on all day about engineers who put their names on their products."
Ed piped up, "I put my name on the whole company."
"I'll concede that point," Phil said weakly.
Dexter said, "You also said that customers wouldn't be served by having coffeemakers that lasted twenty years. Would you like to bet a steak dinner on that?"
"Sure," Phil said.
Dexter turned to face the camera. He said, "I have a request to make of everyone who has had a coffeemaker fail on them this month, or wants the next coffeemaker they buy to be the last one they have to buy. I would appreciate it if you would send an email to the Phil Xander Show during the next commercial break."
"Don't suggest that," Phil said looking horrified.
Ed snickered.
Dexter said, "You also said that a business that produced a product that lasted twenty years wouldn't stay in business twenty years. I disagree with that. I think it will be an exceptionally stable business."
Ed interjected, "After an initial flurry of sales, such a business would probably settle down to a consistent sales level every year. It would be a very stable business so long as it kept up its quality."
"The stockholders expect growth," Phil said.
"I strongly disagree with that. A nice stable company is exactly the kind of stock that grandmother wants her retirement money invested in. She doesn't want a stock that fluctuates every damned day and is liable to lose all of its value overnight. She wants one that produces a consistent return on investment, year after year," Dexter said.
Ed said, "There are a lot of grandmothers who've lost their retirement moneys because of that 'must grow' mentality."
"It is a well known maxim in business that a company has to grow or it will die," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Did you know that at one time people thought ice cream caused polio?"
"You're kidding?"
"Nope. It turns out that there was a strong statistical correlation between sales of ice cream, and outbreaks of polio. Of course, the real reason for the correlation was because polio is a summer-time disease, and ice cream is a summer-time treat," Dexter said.
"We're not talking polio here," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Perhaps the reason that so many companies have to grow or die isn't a law of business, but is a consequence of introducing management structures and practices that sap a stable company of its stability.
"How many companies bloat their management staff once they get to a certain level of success? How many companies start emphasizing process over productivity? How many turn to the bottom line for every decision rather than an emphasis on a product? How many companies have executives who suck every penny of profit out of the company?
"I think ... I might be wrong, though I doubt that I am ... that there are a lot of reasons why a company might have to grow or die.
"For one, I think that management fails to remember what made the company successful. I think they forget about customer need, customer service, and quality; in order to purse a profit.
"I suggest that our business academicians might be better served to investigate those reasons, rather than prescribing a bandage that masks the true issues."
"Everyone knows that a business has to grow or die," Phil said.
Dexter said, "Everyone knew that stress caused ulcers. Now we know that ulcers are caused by bacteria. Everyone knew the earth was flat. Now we know that it isn't. Don't give me that 'everyone knows' argument."
Ed said, "We went through some growing pains in my company. There was a lot of room for expansion in the early days. Then we reached a point where the market was saturated. I had a choice of trying to grow by expanding my product line or accepting that my business was as large as it was going to get.
"I looked around at my options and found that I didn't see any real business areas that made sense for me to expand into. I chose to accept that I had my share of the market, and that my job was to maintain that share. Much to my surprise, many of the companies in the injection molding business started to fail. My market share grew with each failure of my competitors.
"Now you might think that it was because the market was shrinking. That wasn't the case. The market was nearly stable, and growing only slowly. You see, a lot of my competitors chose to diversify, but failed in their expansion plans and went out of business. I focused on my maintaining my core business, and I survived.
"It took three idiots less than five years to drive a stable company to a point where it was nearly out of business. They bought into that whole 'expand or die' nonsense.
"For a couple of years they were able to play accounting games that made it look like the company was growing. What they were really doing, was lining their pockets, rather than serving as caretakers. They put into place idiotic policies 'to save money'. They cost the company far more money than could ever be saved. The paper bill for all of the extra paperwork ate up a full ten percent of the profits.
"Dexter is right about there being reasons that some companies have to grow in order to survive. Of course, I think the biggest reason a lot of business executives feel that way, is out of greed. You can't get a forty million dollar bonus, if your company only does forty million dollars worth of business. It's got to grow until they can grab the big bucks. If it falls apart later, who cares? They got their money out of it."
Phil said, "I disagree. If a small company doesn't grow quickly enough, the large companies will put it out of business faster than you can blink. If they can't do that, then they'll buy it. The concerns of a large company have to change from the small company mindset in order for it to survive.
"There are a lot of factors that dictate certain business practices. Even the laws change once you hit certain levels of employment. Your arguments suggest a certain naiveté when it comes to the need for growth."
Dexter said, "I keep having this image of a giant bloated elephant, being swarmed by army ants. Sure, the elephant out masses any single army ant, but the number of ants overwhelms the elephant. I think a hundred small businesses, each of which is taking a small chunk out of a big business, will eventually put that big business, out of business!
"It starts with coffeemakers, then toasters, can openers, electric griddles, blenders, and who knows what else.
"Each little company takes a little bite out of the big guy. At first, the big guy doesn't feel a thing. Then there will be a little concern that sales are down a couple of percent, across the board. After a while, the company that once had a thirty percent market share will discover that it has a three percent market share."
Ed said, "It gets even better than that. For the big company, it will look like the market is shrinking, because everyone who buys the well made coffee pot today, won't be buying one next year or the year after that."
"You've got a really good point," Dexter said looking over at Ed.
"I think so," Ed said with a grin.
Phil said, "Just think of how many people you'll be putting out of work."
"Just think of all the other things I'll be able to buy because I'm not spending my money on new coffeemakers every year. I might get a new lamp or a set of golf clubs," Dexter said. "I'm sure that those other sales will employ people."
Phil said, "You know that those companies will start out like you say, but they'll discover that it doesn't work. The smart ones will grow and the dumb ones will go out of business. Before you know it, they'll be big companies themselves and nothing will have changed."
"You might be right about that," Dexter said. "It may be inevitable that the greedy and incompetent will rise to the top of a company and then suck it dry, but I think there are a lot of smart businessmen out there who don't feel that way."
Phil said, "You make it sound like it is a trivial matter to create a product that lasts a long time. We all know that it isn't easy, and it isn't cheap."
Dexter looked over at Phil with an expression suggesting that he was looking at something disgusting, on the bottom of his shoe.
He said, "I know what engineers have been allowed to do, and I know what engineers are capable of doing. The difference between those two facts is like the difference between night and day. American engineers can create products that will blow your mind in terms of styling, quality, and functionality."
"I think that is a myth," Phil said. "Everyone knows that American workers are productive, but the fact of the matter is, they are expensive. There's no way that they can be productive enough to offset their high cost."
"So you think the American Worker is the enemy of profits?" Dexter asked.
"To a certain extent, that's true," Phil said.
Ed said, "That's wrong. My company grew because of good dedicated workers. These are folks who occasionally stayed a little late to fix some problem. These are folks who suggested ways to improve our business.
"You might get a guy on the production floor who makes a suggestion that saves you all of the money you'll ever pay him, for the rest of the time he stays at the company. Effectively, he becomes free labor, because of that one suggestion.
"You don't get that with slave labor. If you have slaves making your goods, do you know what you get? You get garbage made by slaves."
"It doesn't change the fact that American workers are overpaid," Phil said.
"I'll tell you something! You don't know what the hell you're saying! You can take away a million dollar bonus from one executive, and give a thousand employees a thousand dollar a year raise. Knock off ten million dollars of bonus money, and you can give ten thousand employees a thousand dollar raise," Dexter said.
Phil said, "Those executives earn those bonuses."
Now it was Ed's turn to give Phil a dirty look.
He said, "The largest bonus I ever gave myself, as the head of my company, was fifty thousand dollars ... and that was the year that I retired. That same year, I gave the janitor a five hundred dollar Christmas bonus. That's a reasonable difference between the guy at the bottom and the guy at the top.
"Those three jokers that I tossed out of my company gave themselves millions of dollars in bonuses, while driving my company into the dirt. The janitor got nothing at Christmas time. That's not reasonable, and it's not right."
Dexter said, "Those three should have been paying the company for the stupid things they did."
Phil said, "I still disagree with the kind of humiliation you were proposing for those men."
Ed said, "The difference between the founder of a company, and an executive of a company; is the same as the difference between a home owner, and a renter. The homeowner takes pride of ownership, and maintains the property. A renter just doesn't give a damn."
Phil said, "We're going to have to break..."
Dexter shouted, "Don't forget to email the show about coffeemakers during the commercials! Did your coffeemaker break recently? Do you want a..."
"We're off the air!"
Glaring at Dexter, Phil shouted, "Don't ever shout over me on my show, Dexter James!"
"Or what?" Dexter asked.
"I'll toss you out of here so fast that your head will spin," Phil said poking a finger in Dexter's direction.
"I guess I'd better not do that again," Dexter said without sounding the least bit repentant.
"You better not," Phil said.
"You better offer to buy your IT people dinner, tonight," Dexter said glancing down at his watch.
"Why?"
"Because, in about a minute, your mail servers are going to go down ... and they are going to go down hard," Dexter said with a smile.
A woman came over to fix Dexter's makeup while two other women were fussing over Ed and Phil.
Dexter growled, "I saw myself on the monitor. I looked like a clown. You gave me purple lips. I don't have purple lips."
"I'll fix it," the woman said.
"Please do," Dexter said.
"Quit talking," the woman said.
"Phil?" echoed from the speakers.
"What?"
"The mail servers crashed!"
"Damn!"
"See," Dexter said grinning at Phil and earning a dirty look from the makeup woman.
Ed said, "Damn, you're good."
"I figured they'd get somewhere between ten and twenty thousands emails in the first minute of commercials. I'm not the only one who is tired of being forced to buy junk, to replace junk," Dexter said.
"I guess so," Ed said chuckling.
Phil said, "You can't run a successful household goods business, with a twenty year warranty on the products."
"Sure you can," Dexter said.
Ed said, "I'd put money on it."
"So would I," Dexter said.
"We'll be on air in five, four, three..."
The makeup women scurried off the set.
Turning to face the camera, Phil said, "We're back with Dexter James and Ed Daimler. During the break they said that they felt so strongly about this, that they were willing to put up money."
Ed said, "That's right."
"How much?"
"Ten million," Dexter answered.
"The same," Ed said glancing over at Dexter.
"What product?"
"Coffeemakers," Dexter answered. "Fifteen million coffeemakers are sold every year. I'll be more than happy to take five percent of that market."
Ed said, "Daimler Plastics will make the plastic parts."
"You men are serious," Phil said.
"Yes, we are," Ed said.
Dexter's cell phone dinged letting him know that he'd gotten a text message. Phil glared at Dexter at the interruption. Someone should have told him not to bring his phone onto the set.
Ignoring the dirty look from Phil, Dexter dug the cell phone out of his shirt pocket. He looked at it, and chuckled upon reading the message.
"My investment manager just texted me. He has a client who's willing to throw two million in on this deal."
"Would you turn that cell phone off," Phil said wondering if he should put some money into it.
Dexter said, "By the way, you owe me a steak dinner."
"Why?"
"Your mail servers crashed as a result of people supporting my position. I'd say that kinda proves my point," Dexter answered.
"We'll talk about that during the commercial break," Phil said.
Dexter said, "This break, let's have everyone email your show who thinks that a five year limited warranty on a hot water heater really sucks."
Phil said, "Please don't."
"Why not? Are you concerned that many of those great business leaders who are heads of companies that are producing the majority of consumer products have forgotten what it means to provide service, quality, and value?" Dexter asked.
"It's not that," Phil said.
"Well then, what it is?" Dexter asked.
"It's just that there are a lot of people out there who will complain about anything," Phil said.
"I think it is interesting that in order to get a real warranty, you have to pay for it. They call it an extended warranty, but it is really the warranty that should have been on the product to begin with," Dexter said.
Ed said, "I hate those things."
"Did you ever buy one?"
"Yes and it was a waste of money," Ed answered.
"Didn't need it or it didn't help?" Dexter asked.
Ed answered, "I bought a cheap laptop for four hundred bucks to use in my camper and they sold me a second year of warranty on it for fifty bucks. I opened the thing one day and the screen fell off. I took the damn thing in and they told me that particular part wasn't covered by the extended warranty. They said the machine was clearly abused. Abused? I just used it."
"I had a similar problem with my MP3 player," Phil said. "I don't buy those extended warranties any more."
Dexter said, "Every production line is going to produce an occasional defective part. It is a fact of manufacturing that there will be defects. Now, you can test the hell out of every item off the line or just accept that you will have some defects. A warranty is intended assure customers that even if they buy a defective item that it will be repaired or replaced. Standing behind a warranty can be expensive if you are producing a lot of defects. Of course, testing the hell out of every product before it leaves the factory is even more expensive.
"What a properly run company will do is selectively test products off the line, examine returned items, and study the manufacturing process for problems. They will make improvements to the design and the production process to reduce the number of defects. That reduces the number of defects and makes standing behind a warranty much cheaper."
Ed said, "Now when you produce an entirely revised product every year, you can't follow that process because you've ended production of a product before the cycle can complete even once. What happens? You end up with a high percentage of defects. Your warranty will kill any chance of profit. Rather than fix the real problem, you limit the warranty so that you can make a profit."
Dexter said, "It seems as if every company producing consumer products has taken the same strategy. The result is that costumers are faced with having to decide among products of low quality with warranties that mean nothing."
Ed said, "Marketeers have decided that people want a new style every year. Dexter and I believe that people want products that last."
"You'll be proven wrong," Phil said.
Dexter said, "I'm reminded of a German car company that produced essentially the same car from World War II until the late seventies without making a major engineering or stylistic change to the car. Any changes they made were to improve the quality of the product. They had ads showing a person hanging off an open door. They had ads showing that it was so well constructed that it didn't sink in water. Those damned cars were rugged things and cheaper than any car produced in the US. I'll admit that they were ugly as sin, but people bought them. You still see them on the road in some parts of the country even though they haven't been on the market for forty years."
Phil said, "I think everyone watching the show knows what car company you are talking about."
Ed said, "That's our point. That same car company doesn't have the same customer loyalty today that it had then."
Dexter said, "They broke into the American market at a time when it was controlled by the big three automakers. It was the cheapest car on the market despite the fact that German workers cost more than American workers at the time. They were paid better and they had even more days of vacation."
Ed said, "Japanese automakers did the same thing. They introduced an inexpensive car, improved it over years, and kept the price down. They grabbed a huge percentage of the market share. They introduced higher end cars to take advantage of customers loyal to their products who wanted to move up in style and comfort. That strategy worked. Now they control the American car market."
Dexter said, "It's not going to last. They've made the same mistake that the big three made and started coming out with completely new models every year. They now have quality problems, the prices on their products have gone up, and they have lost customer loyalty.
"If you were to ask me what has changed, it is that corporate decisions stopped being made by engineers and started being made by marketeers."
"And accountants," Ed interjected.
"And accountants," Dexter admitted. "The point is that they've fallen into a trap that will allow a smaller company to come in and replace them as the dominate force in the automotive market. There is a well established process that was used by Ford, by the Germans, and by the Japanese."
Phil interrupted and said, "We have to break for..."
"Email about warranties," Dexter shouted.
Furious, Phil turned to Dexter and shouted, "I told you..."
"We're off the air."
"Sorry," Dexter said without seeming the least bit repentant.
Ed chuckled.
Phil shouted, "That's it. You're off the show."
Dexter turned to Ed and asked, "Where there any other points you wanted to make?"
"No. I think we said all that needed to be said," Ed answered.
"Are you up for dinner?" Dexter asked.
"I am getting a little hungry."
The voice from overhead said, "The servers are down again."
"Shit," Phil swore.
"Let's go."
"We need to stop by the bathroom to wash all of this makeup off."
"Thanks for reminding me."
Watching the two men leave, Phil shouted, "You can't just walk off the set like that!"
Ed came to a halt. Looking at Dexter, he said, "I just remembered one more thing that I wanted to mention."
"Okay," Dexter said.
The two men returned to their seats in time for the show to resume.
"On the air in five, four, three..."
Phil said, "We're back on the air with Dexter James and Ed Daimler."
"Phil."
"What?"
"I'd like to say something," Ed said.
"Okay," Phil replied.
Ed said, "During the break, you ordered us off the set."
"I asked Dexter James to leave the set," Phil corrected.
Ed replied, "It was an order and not a request. In light of that, I want to make a comment about yesterday's show.
"You spent an hour denigrating the ideas that Dexter had put on his website. In today's show, we basically explained how everything he put on his website yesterday was reasonable. We've demonstrated that people do want quality. They want real warranties. We've given examples of how companies that produced quality products have displaced market leaders who provide low quality products. This was a reasonable dialog.
"However, yesterday you also spent a major portion of your show mocking and denigrating the person, Dexter James. That was uncalled for. In fact, I would say that it was despicable since he wasn't even here to defend himself. You owe this man an apology and a very public one, at that.
"We weren't denigrating Dexter," Phil objected.
Ed asked, "Are the mail servers up?"
"Yes," Phil said surprised by the sudden change in topic.
Ed said, "How about everyone who thinks that Dexter was treated fairly -- I repeat, treated fairly -- on yesterday's show send in an email stating that?"
"Why ask them to validate that he was treated fairly?" Phil asked puzzled by the suggestion.
"The silence should be deafening," Ed replied.
Smiling, Dexter said, "Your poor IT guys and gals have already had a rough enough day."
Ed stood up and said, "In light of the fact that you demanded Dexter to leave the set during the last break and that you have failed to apologize for your treatment of him on your show yesterday, we are leaving."
"That's unprofessional," Phil shouted.
Ed said, "Calling Dexter James an ignorant, narcissistic, ill-mannered, uncultured, undisciplined, stupid idiot is unprofessional. You said all of those things, and more, about Dexter yesterday."
"But..."
Ed said, "Good day, Sir. We are leaving."
The pair walked off the set with their microphones still on.
Dexter said, "Thank you. That was nice of you to defend me like that."
"It was my pleasure."
"All in all, I think the show went rather well."
"I agree."
"Someone turn off those microphones!"
Edited By TeNderLoin