zesty_pinto (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zesty_pinto) wrote2002-12-24 04:51 pm
zesty_pinto) wrote2002-12-24 04:51 pm
Entry tags:
"Growth"
A story about a corporation and the beautiful gardens it builds at it's head quarters. [Calculust]
"The Utopians are very fond of their gardens. In them they have vines, fruits, herbs, flowers, so well kept and flourishing that I never saw anything more fruitful and more tasteful anywhere."
-Sir Thomas Moore, "Utopia"
"Your resume looks pretty good... just out of college?"
"Yes."
"Well I like it so far... interested in gardening huh?"
"It's a hobby of mine, something I find I can relax in."
"Heh, yeah, I guess there's not much to stress about when you deal with plants."
He wanted to tell the reviewer about how difficult it actually could be: the careful watering, the pruning of vines and limbs into an articulate form, of the aphids, the parasites, the weeds, the days with too much sun and the days with too little... but his mind withdrew from it; one could never get a job into management with too many independent thoughts, he knew that. He was twenty-three at that time.
At that time, Kleinfer Electronics was a small company, based in the Midwest of Minnesota, where the land was cheap and the base of operations was a one-story building around some fallow farmland, too sterile from depletion to harbor anything except the occasional weed.
He hated weeds. Weeds sucked nutrients out of the garden. The first thing he did when he went to his new job was fire a number of people he felt were weeds to the business. In the process, he ended up shaving off five percent of wasted revenue from graft, and it was noticeable even for a small company such as Kleinfer. It took only a month afterwards for him to get recommended for a promotion.
Not even a man, as his peers would say, but old enough to be out of a no-name university fresh with a master's degree in business to suddenly become assistant of the CEO. It was a small jump since it was in a small company, but it was still one that he liked quite a bit. His new office was somewhat large, much larger than his old office that was handed to the usual middle management. His new office was soon given his personal touch with a few sunlamps and some bonsai.
To him, business was like gardening. You always tried to make money properly through the most exposure possible, but always keep a control over how the business grows. Pruning off as much as a limb can be necessary if it meant turning the enterprise unstable. In the end, after the years of patience, the tree will become a healthy form made as you desired it to be. Sometimes he would whisper these words to the bonsai as he tended to it during his breaks, and sometimes he would even sleep in his office, a cot in his office and his eyes on the small tree as it continued feeding from the sunbulbs and its saccharine light.
"Beautiful..." It was only a plot of raw earth, skeletal beams framed around the structure in an angle. He closed his eyes and he imagined how the top would look.
"Consider it a sort of gift. You did to this company what would have taken much longer. Thanks to you, the company is finally being looked at by big name investors." The CEO put his weathered hand against his shoulder and he almost revolted at it, at the human touch, but soon began to take it as though the hand was not even existant. An acre of soil around the new structure that would be the new home of Kleinfer. His shoes gave a light crisp crunch as his foot broke into a dead brown leaf, having wandered from the trees that rested on the border of the fallow earth. As he looked at it, thoughts of the bonsai came to him, of the small tree that was being fed by the lamps...
"A tree."
"Hmm?"
"A large tree in this atrium, if you will allow me it." fingers outstretched, pointing to the center of the dust-formed land "I've read about special harvest trees. I want a redwood version," he almost didn't realize that he was smiling when he said it, but he knew at the same time that he couldn't hear his thoughts, that he didn't hear him think about how it was time to test his pruning against a larger tree...
"Our own little Pentagon, right here in Minnesota," his secretary said it with a snicker as she looked out the windows that were near his office, overlooking from the chestnut walls and gas lamp lighting appearance to the bright light that shone down against mirrored glass, and down three stories below to the expansive plot of grass and tended earth.
"Kleinfer Technologies is no Pentagon though," he remarked, looking down, thinking of the tiny sapling that stood in the center of the atria as though it was the tree of knowledge to a garden of Eden.
"-not yet, at least." He smiled back to her as his footsteps made for the door "if anyone asks for me, tell them to look out the window and they'll find me."
Pruning the sapling was his own way of thinking. The atrium far from a proper garden, he made explicit rules not to let anyone touch the tree and thus around the tree was an invisible three foot barrier that the workers respected. Some of them took to watching the man on his break, down or at level with him as he looked and took the cutters to snap off anything he saw fit. What was not used would only be reused to help replenish soil. He wanted fruit plants around to grow with it, helped by it's shade. But he knew that it would come with time.
The time came months later into the spring... a few brave bees managed to climb from the high ceiling of the buildings into the atria. At the same time, Kleinfer Electronics now held a branch office worldwide into several parts of the outer world market. Some of their sponsors managed to include some fairly esteemed members of the "old money" and the retired yuppies of the "new money." Money was money, but he knew that fertilizer needed its proper treatment before it could be absorbed from the soil. The buds of the redwood began to grow, in the center where surrounding it were tiny bushes of those grew nearby as well, meager growths of wood and leaves that bore nothing more than shade for one's feet if necessary. It was a beginning, he knew, a new beginning that would promise to bear more fruit than he could ever imagine.
"It seems for the past year I made the right decision to choose you." The CEO held his hand on his shoulder. He had grown accustomed to it still, though he was far from desiring to be touched "You seem to handle what you do well."
"I only get by with what is necessary, sir," his voice was still as civil as any man's to their own boss.
"You get by quite well then. You have done in a year, what I have been trying to do for the past twenty years. You know they are already discussing about placing us as one of the Fortune 500?"
"I was told about the honor of your decisions, sir."
The CEO removed his hand, and for once he felt unburdoned "Not my decisions, no no... I could be like other men and take your decisions and consider them my own, but I know the destiny of this company is far too out of my reach for me to be considered a part of it. I'm going to sign up a release form to retire. My position..." he said it, turning his head evenly but with wrinkles that held weight "-are bestowed solely to you."
The office of the CEO was a heavy duty. His eyes turned to the redwood, now already shooting high like the business itself as it reached for the sky, sole except for the companionship it took in the many reflections it saw of itself, of the forest of its sole creation. A million possibilities, all seeming the same, he would think... and yet while the tree looked strong, he knew it needed to be pruned into a better shape...
"Multiple interests," he repeated to the management "We are going to no longer just go into electronics. In order to ensure a better profit margin, our company will now introduce itself to new forms of products."
"But sir," the interruption came from one of the Ivy League boys that the old money recommended "wouldn't it be safer to break it into different departments and names?"
"Our interest still goes around the same audience: Kleinfer makes electronics, just as it can make OS software."
"But sir," interrupted another "Who will we have to get this technology?"
He smiled in response, "Who else, but the right programmers?"
LINUX. People thought he was mad, but he knew the power of the brand name. Giving them the proper finances for it only made a famous brand become legendary. The tree's branches played against the breezes. A little sign to be showy perhaps, maybe even to say that something was destined to fall, but he knew that it was a tree too stable to falter so easily. Already people began to praise it online, saying that this boost would give it the chance to prove that it is the best operating system around. He smiled, knowing that it was as much as a peanut farmer learning to plant wheat... difficult at first, but eventually ritual to understand.
It was strange, being considered one of the wealthiest men in the world. His plan had worked and made the company even twice what it normally should have in revenue. Even stranger, to spend most of his time not even doing anything that the rich would do, aside from pruning the branches of a redwood with a 40 foot cherry picker machine to get anywhere close to the heaven-shot branches. It was a time for him to get real light from the sun instead of the office glow, to breathe the new air, and to think... think carefully. Most of the office workers were used to seeing their CEO spend his off hours in a white shirt and tie and a huge set of clippers, but they still looked anyway... the same way soldiers would look at the very general that would lead them into battle and determine their victory or defeat. A Shogun, perhaps would have fit even more, to spend his time planning the most vicious moves whilst doing the most peaceful, even though he knew... that gardening was never a peaceful thing.
This was the day Kleinfer no longer was just a company... it was the day it became a corporation.
A mild winter, he thought. The redwood, now a fifty foot titan, had branches that he pruned to reach simply for the sky. As the snow embraced the branches that he had to use harder shears for, they slowly coated the mighty tree from the top down, filling into the rising cracks of the rusted bark. There was no wind, though he knew that even wind would do little to fell something he took such good care of. The office seemed as it was. The plow already made its run through here and the parking lot, shaving off the heavy snow, but the atrium held its peaceful appearance below, the plants not bearing fruit, just as his ventures have not been bearing anything more than the potential pips that promised to burst. It would take time, he knew... just lots of time.
Success came in the form of the summer that came. When the blueberries began to appear in the plants below and bees actively took the painful journey around the large crater-like structure taht was the office into the huge acre to pollinate the flowers around. Office workers took their spare time to rest here, sitting by benches that overlooked the blooming bushes and the multitude of colors. Above, the great redwood finally escaped the confines of the building itself, and the CEO was forced to have people help him with the grooming of the tree. Profits were going well for Kleinfer, and it seemed as though it was meant to never end.
"Possibility of falling out?" He lowered his gardening book.
"Yes sir," his secretary looked at him with his strong eyes "the board is not approving of some of your decisions with the new divisions."
"Impossible! I've harvested their investment threefold from what they originally put into the company. If anything, they should be happy about this."
"They were willing to compromise further if you were to have an assistant of your own."
"An assistant?" He was still barely even an adult but they already wanted him to have an assistant "I don't need one."
"Remember, sir, that you were once the assistant to the original CEO as well..."
He wanted to say that that was different, that that was before they scaled the global markets, aimed for the right audiences, and went from small time to blue chip. Before, his position was nowhere near as powerful as it once was... before... before he made it better.
He just turned to the atrium, staring into the heavy beam that was the trunk, not even hearing his secretary try to convince him further, wondering if there was someone who could provide better...
He knew for the better. He knew more than the others, but at the same time... perhaps it was all right to let the plant grow by itself. So he allowed himself a new advisor, a person with their own PhD from Harvard; ten years his senior but obviously more steeped in politics than the business itself, and he could tell simply from the way he treated the others as his new superior... all except for the only one that wasn't his superior. He turned to the mirrored wall again, staring, wondering if he let the branch grow in the worst possible way...
"Sir?"
"Yes?" He hated how his second talked to him. Like he was something lower than dirt. It was very subservient, but it also meant that was how he expected those below him to be treated. He pushed it aside to look at the tree reach beyond to the heavens above... the symbol of Kleinfer Electronics now beyond anything.
"It's the board... sir... they want you to consider retirement."
He sighed.
Two years was quite a bit. In two years, he was able to do great things through control, yet... yet he had a feeling this would have happened. As he looked into the tree branches, he thought of the might of the redwood, of the prowess it held, how it was still not even an adult technically, just like him: prosperous and young yet not necessary, perhaps unwanted.
That day he spent, sitting on the bench, the tree next to him as he sat, looking to the heavens as the branches reached for them all with leaves full of bright green glory yet never truly touching them. Even his best shears could not cut through the hybrid tree's thickest branches. He sighed, and thought of the bonsai back home.
"The Utopians are very fond of their gardens. In them they have vines, fruits, herbs, flowers, so well kept and flourishing that I never saw anything more fruitful and more tasteful anywhere."
-Sir Thomas Moore, "Utopia"
"Your resume looks pretty good... just out of college?"
"Yes."
"Well I like it so far... interested in gardening huh?"
"It's a hobby of mine, something I find I can relax in."
"Heh, yeah, I guess there's not much to stress about when you deal with plants."
He wanted to tell the reviewer about how difficult it actually could be: the careful watering, the pruning of vines and limbs into an articulate form, of the aphids, the parasites, the weeds, the days with too much sun and the days with too little... but his mind withdrew from it; one could never get a job into management with too many independent thoughts, he knew that. He was twenty-three at that time.
At that time, Kleinfer Electronics was a small company, based in the Midwest of Minnesota, where the land was cheap and the base of operations was a one-story building around some fallow farmland, too sterile from depletion to harbor anything except the occasional weed.
He hated weeds. Weeds sucked nutrients out of the garden. The first thing he did when he went to his new job was fire a number of people he felt were weeds to the business. In the process, he ended up shaving off five percent of wasted revenue from graft, and it was noticeable even for a small company such as Kleinfer. It took only a month afterwards for him to get recommended for a promotion.
Not even a man, as his peers would say, but old enough to be out of a no-name university fresh with a master's degree in business to suddenly become assistant of the CEO. It was a small jump since it was in a small company, but it was still one that he liked quite a bit. His new office was somewhat large, much larger than his old office that was handed to the usual middle management. His new office was soon given his personal touch with a few sunlamps and some bonsai.
To him, business was like gardening. You always tried to make money properly through the most exposure possible, but always keep a control over how the business grows. Pruning off as much as a limb can be necessary if it meant turning the enterprise unstable. In the end, after the years of patience, the tree will become a healthy form made as you desired it to be. Sometimes he would whisper these words to the bonsai as he tended to it during his breaks, and sometimes he would even sleep in his office, a cot in his office and his eyes on the small tree as it continued feeding from the sunbulbs and its saccharine light.
"Beautiful..." It was only a plot of raw earth, skeletal beams framed around the structure in an angle. He closed his eyes and he imagined how the top would look.
"Consider it a sort of gift. You did to this company what would have taken much longer. Thanks to you, the company is finally being looked at by big name investors." The CEO put his weathered hand against his shoulder and he almost revolted at it, at the human touch, but soon began to take it as though the hand was not even existant. An acre of soil around the new structure that would be the new home of Kleinfer. His shoes gave a light crisp crunch as his foot broke into a dead brown leaf, having wandered from the trees that rested on the border of the fallow earth. As he looked at it, thoughts of the bonsai came to him, of the small tree that was being fed by the lamps...
"A tree."
"Hmm?"
"A large tree in this atrium, if you will allow me it." fingers outstretched, pointing to the center of the dust-formed land "I've read about special harvest trees. I want a redwood version," he almost didn't realize that he was smiling when he said it, but he knew at the same time that he couldn't hear his thoughts, that he didn't hear him think about how it was time to test his pruning against a larger tree...
"Our own little Pentagon, right here in Minnesota," his secretary said it with a snicker as she looked out the windows that were near his office, overlooking from the chestnut walls and gas lamp lighting appearance to the bright light that shone down against mirrored glass, and down three stories below to the expansive plot of grass and tended earth.
"Kleinfer Technologies is no Pentagon though," he remarked, looking down, thinking of the tiny sapling that stood in the center of the atria as though it was the tree of knowledge to a garden of Eden.
"-not yet, at least." He smiled back to her as his footsteps made for the door "if anyone asks for me, tell them to look out the window and they'll find me."
Pruning the sapling was his own way of thinking. The atrium far from a proper garden, he made explicit rules not to let anyone touch the tree and thus around the tree was an invisible three foot barrier that the workers respected. Some of them took to watching the man on his break, down or at level with him as he looked and took the cutters to snap off anything he saw fit. What was not used would only be reused to help replenish soil. He wanted fruit plants around to grow with it, helped by it's shade. But he knew that it would come with time.
The time came months later into the spring... a few brave bees managed to climb from the high ceiling of the buildings into the atria. At the same time, Kleinfer Electronics now held a branch office worldwide into several parts of the outer world market. Some of their sponsors managed to include some fairly esteemed members of the "old money" and the retired yuppies of the "new money." Money was money, but he knew that fertilizer needed its proper treatment before it could be absorbed from the soil. The buds of the redwood began to grow, in the center where surrounding it were tiny bushes of those grew nearby as well, meager growths of wood and leaves that bore nothing more than shade for one's feet if necessary. It was a beginning, he knew, a new beginning that would promise to bear more fruit than he could ever imagine.
"It seems for the past year I made the right decision to choose you." The CEO held his hand on his shoulder. He had grown accustomed to it still, though he was far from desiring to be touched "You seem to handle what you do well."
"I only get by with what is necessary, sir," his voice was still as civil as any man's to their own boss.
"You get by quite well then. You have done in a year, what I have been trying to do for the past twenty years. You know they are already discussing about placing us as one of the Fortune 500?"
"I was told about the honor of your decisions, sir."
The CEO removed his hand, and for once he felt unburdoned "Not my decisions, no no... I could be like other men and take your decisions and consider them my own, but I know the destiny of this company is far too out of my reach for me to be considered a part of it. I'm going to sign up a release form to retire. My position..." he said it, turning his head evenly but with wrinkles that held weight "-are bestowed solely to you."
The office of the CEO was a heavy duty. His eyes turned to the redwood, now already shooting high like the business itself as it reached for the sky, sole except for the companionship it took in the many reflections it saw of itself, of the forest of its sole creation. A million possibilities, all seeming the same, he would think... and yet while the tree looked strong, he knew it needed to be pruned into a better shape...
"Multiple interests," he repeated to the management "We are going to no longer just go into electronics. In order to ensure a better profit margin, our company will now introduce itself to new forms of products."
"But sir," the interruption came from one of the Ivy League boys that the old money recommended "wouldn't it be safer to break it into different departments and names?"
"Our interest still goes around the same audience: Kleinfer makes electronics, just as it can make OS software."
"But sir," interrupted another "Who will we have to get this technology?"
He smiled in response, "Who else, but the right programmers?"
LINUX. People thought he was mad, but he knew the power of the brand name. Giving them the proper finances for it only made a famous brand become legendary. The tree's branches played against the breezes. A little sign to be showy perhaps, maybe even to say that something was destined to fall, but he knew that it was a tree too stable to falter so easily. Already people began to praise it online, saying that this boost would give it the chance to prove that it is the best operating system around. He smiled, knowing that it was as much as a peanut farmer learning to plant wheat... difficult at first, but eventually ritual to understand.
It was strange, being considered one of the wealthiest men in the world. His plan had worked and made the company even twice what it normally should have in revenue. Even stranger, to spend most of his time not even doing anything that the rich would do, aside from pruning the branches of a redwood with a 40 foot cherry picker machine to get anywhere close to the heaven-shot branches. It was a time for him to get real light from the sun instead of the office glow, to breathe the new air, and to think... think carefully. Most of the office workers were used to seeing their CEO spend his off hours in a white shirt and tie and a huge set of clippers, but they still looked anyway... the same way soldiers would look at the very general that would lead them into battle and determine their victory or defeat. A Shogun, perhaps would have fit even more, to spend his time planning the most vicious moves whilst doing the most peaceful, even though he knew... that gardening was never a peaceful thing.
This was the day Kleinfer no longer was just a company... it was the day it became a corporation.
A mild winter, he thought. The redwood, now a fifty foot titan, had branches that he pruned to reach simply for the sky. As the snow embraced the branches that he had to use harder shears for, they slowly coated the mighty tree from the top down, filling into the rising cracks of the rusted bark. There was no wind, though he knew that even wind would do little to fell something he took such good care of. The office seemed as it was. The plow already made its run through here and the parking lot, shaving off the heavy snow, but the atrium held its peaceful appearance below, the plants not bearing fruit, just as his ventures have not been bearing anything more than the potential pips that promised to burst. It would take time, he knew... just lots of time.
Success came in the form of the summer that came. When the blueberries began to appear in the plants below and bees actively took the painful journey around the large crater-like structure taht was the office into the huge acre to pollinate the flowers around. Office workers took their spare time to rest here, sitting by benches that overlooked the blooming bushes and the multitude of colors. Above, the great redwood finally escaped the confines of the building itself, and the CEO was forced to have people help him with the grooming of the tree. Profits were going well for Kleinfer, and it seemed as though it was meant to never end.
"Possibility of falling out?" He lowered his gardening book.
"Yes sir," his secretary looked at him with his strong eyes "the board is not approving of some of your decisions with the new divisions."
"Impossible! I've harvested their investment threefold from what they originally put into the company. If anything, they should be happy about this."
"They were willing to compromise further if you were to have an assistant of your own."
"An assistant?" He was still barely even an adult but they already wanted him to have an assistant "I don't need one."
"Remember, sir, that you were once the assistant to the original CEO as well..."
He wanted to say that that was different, that that was before they scaled the global markets, aimed for the right audiences, and went from small time to blue chip. Before, his position was nowhere near as powerful as it once was... before... before he made it better.
He just turned to the atrium, staring into the heavy beam that was the trunk, not even hearing his secretary try to convince him further, wondering if there was someone who could provide better...
He knew for the better. He knew more than the others, but at the same time... perhaps it was all right to let the plant grow by itself. So he allowed himself a new advisor, a person with their own PhD from Harvard; ten years his senior but obviously more steeped in politics than the business itself, and he could tell simply from the way he treated the others as his new superior... all except for the only one that wasn't his superior. He turned to the mirrored wall again, staring, wondering if he let the branch grow in the worst possible way...
"Sir?"
"Yes?" He hated how his second talked to him. Like he was something lower than dirt. It was very subservient, but it also meant that was how he expected those below him to be treated. He pushed it aside to look at the tree reach beyond to the heavens above... the symbol of Kleinfer Electronics now beyond anything.
"It's the board... sir... they want you to consider retirement."
He sighed.
Two years was quite a bit. In two years, he was able to do great things through control, yet... yet he had a feeling this would have happened. As he looked into the tree branches, he thought of the might of the redwood, of the prowess it held, how it was still not even an adult technically, just like him: prosperous and young yet not necessary, perhaps unwanted.
That day he spent, sitting on the bench, the tree next to him as he sat, looking to the heavens as the branches reached for them all with leaves full of bright green glory yet never truly touching them. Even his best shears could not cut through the hybrid tree's thickest branches. He sighed, and thought of the bonsai back home.