September 1st, 2009
Fred wants a bailout
Old Fred has continued to whine and chime about getting his own little piece of the Stimulus Bill. Everybody knows that Fred’s Discount Hardware and Adult Bookstore has been through some hard times lately. His customer volume took a cannonball dive when the WalMart opened across town, and the citizens realized old Fred was practicing acute hosery on them. The Good-ole-boy Fred prices for fittings, tools, and goops were, in fact, the Anti-Discount, prompting clergy to perform retail exorcism in the store. Bizarreville faithful soon gave Freds the 1-finger sayonara, and logged him off.
But Fred, ever the entrepreneur, kept moving forward by expanding into other weird niche offshoots and kooky inventage. He stocked the first doorbell which employed smell instead of sound. He insourced fertilizer development and packaging. He taught Plunger classes in the back office to anyone needing a refresher. He promoted “Overalls Thursdays”, no T-shirt required. There was no end to his cleverness.
But in spite of all these seemingly brilliant, innovative product extensions, Fred’s sales tanked, and he started losing moolah. Of course, he claimed the whole economic slowdown constipated his ability to pay bills, which ultimately caused suppliers to put liens on his bins of nuts and crates of other fastening units.
When he went to Screwbird Bank & Trust to try and get some relief, he found out that the bank had just gotten a $100K government bailout to stay afloat…but would not lend Fred one red cent. They told Fred that his business model stunk, and that the odor was not just the wafts from his compost pile out back. Said his sales strategy looked like it was written by a 3rd grader, which ironically is exactly how far Fred made it in school. Fred got so frustrated that he flatulated in a fuss and stormed out in a cloud of noxiousness.
We all hope that Fred gets his bailout. If he doesn’t they say they will tear his building down. And there’s a lot of folks who hope that won’t happen for various undisclosed reasons.
