Dead Cow and Fish Kill (standard:humor, 4891 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: Nov 21 2010	Views/Reads: 2823/2740	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A story on a company that runs factories to cook animal parts.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


Neal had more Italian in him than any other European blood. He was short
and stocky with olive skin. His voice had the distinct New Jersey 
accent. Early in life, he worked in a restaurant and was a part owner 
of a small Italian delicatessen before it went broke. A rendering truck 
used to pick up fat and bones from his restaurant once a week, and that 
was how he get to know Joel Bernstein, the rendering factory-manager 
who offered him a job as a truck driver when Neal went broke. 

Every time Neal got a call from corporate, he felt jumpy because of his
lack of total understanding of the rendering process.His old boss 
Bernstein, who was totally self-educated in rendering, used 
explanations containing technical terms every time the factory broke 
down. Bernstein used explanations such as, “ Not getting enough vacuum 
in the evaporation system”. “The conveyor screw is not pulling enough 
material to feed the cooker.” “The material is too sloppy to cook.” 
“The press is not pressing properly.” “The refractory in the boiler is 
in bad shape, needs a replacement soon,” etc.Neil regurgitated these 
every time he had to explain something about factory breakdowns to 
corporate. 

Jim Jones, JJ for short was the senior Vice President at the corporate
office of Dead Cow Rendering Company.He had a checkered past. While in 
high school, he got a summer job in an animal-rendering business 
belonging to his friend's dad.His work was to schedule the route trucks 
to pick up the fat and bone trimmings from various supermarkets in the 
town. That was how he became a route manager. A short man, JJ's 
perpetual crooked smile brought fear among his subordinates. In an 
unexpected corporate shake up, an Investment Company from northeast 
bought “Dead Cow Rendering Company” hoping to “make a kill,” 
financially speaking. Mad-Cow Disease, although it did not kill any 
cows, almost bankrupted the company. The investors promoted the crooked 
smile JJ to COO, CEO, and President all at once, to show their 
confidence in him. With over thirty years in rendering business, he 
realized that the business of animal rendering would never go down like 
coal or steel since as long as people eat meat, animals, had to be 
slaughtered and the waste animal parts had to be disposed of by 
rendering. Since millions of pounds of waste animal parts had to be 
rendered daily across the country, his job was as safe as a parish 
priest's. 

It was a dream come true for JJ.JJ drives an emerald-green Jaguar. While
driving to work it occurred to him that his initials JJ and the first 
letter in Jaguar, made a “Triple J,” a symbol for his recent promotion 
to three positions at once.He always liked to see the pattern in 
everything.If he didn't see one, he created it. He compared himself to 
a Jaguar, which went for the jugular vein of its prey. His competitors 
were his preys in the nasty business of the animal- rendering. He saw 
himself as a lion holding the jugular vein of his competitors. 

As the new president of “Dead Cow Rendering Company”, JJ designed a new
company logo of a dead cow a with bloated stomach lying on its back 
with all four legs straight up in air and the words “Cook Me Quickly” 
coming from its mouth painted on all the company vehicles. Whatever he 
read in trade magazines, JJ would repeat in meetings. “If we don't 
render animal parts, the whole country will become a landfill full of 
animal parts and the whole nation will stink.” Or “ Huge harvests of 
soybeans in China and Brazil was hurting our business,” so on and so 
forth. 

JJ fired several corporate staff members from the previous
administration and recruited new ones.The one and only qualification 
for any job was total loyalty to him. His inner circle staff was all 
“Yes Men.” He behaved like a Jaguar on a tree with his handpicked staff 
on the ground, looking to identify any disloyal person to be caught at 
the jugular vein. 

The people at the Investment Company on Wall Street who owned Dead
CowRendering Company didn't like to eat red meat, preferring tofu and 
veggies instead.Obsessed with their blood cholesterol, LDL, HDL levels, 
and cholesterol/HDL ratio, etc., they made sure their blood vessels 
were clear and clean.During lunchtime they jogged around their office 
building as a show-off. One of their company's new recruits with an MBA 
from an Ivy League School presented impressive results from a study 
showing a close relation between the eating habits of an average Joe 
and his company stock value. The MBAalmost choked while eating a baby 
carrot during lunchtime while sharing his joke “If an average Joe 
doesn't eat more red meat, we are dead meat.” 

JJ hand picked Neil and promoted him to work at Corporate Office. Neil
was happy to be part of corporate, his life-long dream. JJ likes the 
expression, “brain storming.”He read about this in a trade magazine. 
Since then, he uses it a lot in every meeting and conference calls. 
During one of his brain storming meetings with Neil, JJ asked if he had 
any new ideas to get more raw materials to render at the factories. 
This caught Neil off guard. After all, his knowledge was very limited 
to what he learned from Bernstein. His days in the restaurant business 
quickly flashed into his mind like a saving grace. 

“Cabbage rendering” blurted Neil. 

“What”?JJ's mind couldn't catch up. 

“You know, how much rotten cabbage is thrown away into dumpsters every
day at large grocery stores?” Neil's voice gained confidence as if he 
discovered some thing totally new. “If we can collect all the cabbage 
and other rotten veggies from all the supermarkets in the country and 
render, we can make a ton of money.” 

Neil's idea has now created a real storm in JJ's brain. 

“You mean to say, we can render rotten veggies like scrap meat?” JJ
started jumping up and down with excitement. 

“Why not, any thing can be cooked.” 

“What do we get out of rendering veggies any way?” demanded JJ. 

Neil found himself in trouble now, he never thought that this
conversation would continue this far with JJ, whose attention span 
generally lasted a few seconds at best. 

“I am sure there is something in everything,” Neil tried to avoid eye
contact with JJ while putting out all the rubbish that just came to his 
mind. 

“Okay, we will talk about it later, I have to make an important call,”
JJ waned toward Neil to leave his office. 

Neil took a deep breath for getting off the hook and thought of thinking
more about cabbage rendering later. 

JJ immediately called his bosses at the Investment Company to explain
about rendering veggies as if it was his own novel idea to expand the 
business beyond animal rendering. The bankers, who loved to eat 
veggies, liked the idea and asked their new MBA recruit to work on 
economics of veggie-rendering. 

Steve Dick was one of the “yes men” JJ promoted to corporate office as
Director of Factory Maintenance. When Dick received the company credit 
card with his name followed by the title “Director, Corporate 
Maintenance,” he was ecstatic. He kissed the company credit card 
lightly several times and placed it in his wallet carefully between 
other cards for safekeeping. 

Steve Dick never liked his last name; not very many people had the last
name Dick. When he was a boy, his grandfather said to him that in 
Britain where their family roots were, Dick was a respectable last name 
and meant another “Person” or “Fellow.” Instead of calling 
somebody,“Hey, Fellow,” they said “Hey, Dick.” All these explanations 
did not satisfy Steve. He would rather preferred Dickson, Dixon, or 
Dickenson but not Dick. None of his friends called him by his first 
name Steve. Everybody liked his last name Dick or variations of such as 
“Dicke” or “Dickling”or worse“Moby Dick.”“ Don't DickaroundDick,” they 
teased him all the time when he was young boy. 

Dick worked as a mechanic in one of the factories Dead Cow Rendering
Company owned before he became corporate. Dick worked under Howard, the 
Plant Manager, for several years. Howard was very knowledgeable when it 
came to equipment and plant operation though he didn't know how to 
manage his people. He constantly abused his men with rude remarks and 
foul language. They in turn thought he was crazy. Dick learned quite a 
bit from Howard about equipment and plant operation the hard way since 
he had to put up with all kinds of insults from Howard. Dick saw a 
light at end of the tunnel. Howard would get fired one day and Dick 
waited for his opportunity. Howard as usual stuck his neck out every 
time and expressed his opinions loudly and put his foot in his mouth so 
often that not long after Dick got Howard's job. The only problem was 
Dick didn't learn everything about plant operation and wasn't smart 
enough to figure out how to fix problems. One thing he learned was to 
shut up and never to stick his neck out to say anything as Howard had. 
That approach worked very well for Dick or Dicky or Dickling. 

Dick continued his approach of solving the plant problems by letting the
mechanics solve them, a risk free- approach unlike the one his old boss 
Harold took. If a piece of equipment broke down, he talked vaguely at 
length and gave a lot of fluffabouthow to fix it. So the mechanics 
called him “fluff” or “fluffy” behind his back. 

When Dick visited one of the West Coast factories, he got a telephone
call from a mechanic at an East Coast factory. 

“Dick, we have a serious problem here. Grease from the cooker is getting
into the boilers somehow, we are not able to figure it out, we need 
your help.” The mechanic sounded panicky. 

“ You guys checked everything?” Dick asked calmly. 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did check everything, still, we can't figure it
out.” 

“Umm, grease is lighter than water, right?” asked Dick. 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, go figure it out now. I gave you the clue, how to fix the problem
now.” 

The mechanic practically received no advice from Dick to fix the
problem, hung up the phone muttering “your are full of fluff.” Dick 
spent most of his time taking photos of used and dilapidated factory 
equipment at various rendering factories and junkyards from East Coast 
to West and showed it to JJ as a novel idea of acquiring used equipment 
to save money for the company. None of the equipment he bought was 
either useful or saved him from facing to solve any specific 
maintenance problem at any factory. Once while flying in a plane, he 
wrote his corporate responsibilities in few verses on the back of the 

boarding pass as follows: 

My Corporate Responsibilities By Steve Dick 

I take pictures, pictures of equipment, 

Old and new, inside out, outside in, 

Upside down and downside up; 

I log a lot of travel time raking up frequent flyer mileage, 

Quality time is suck-up time for me, 

I am ready to step in as V.P., now, 

I hang on to my company cushy job by hook or crook. 

Dick read what he wrote again and again and thought what his grandfather
said once about their British ancestral roots and respectability in his 
name “Dick.” For the first time, he felt proud to be named “Dick.” 

JJ was under pressure from the Investment Company back east to
expand“Dead Cow Rendering Company.” JJ kept chanting, “acquisition or 
liquidation,” in his mind all the time. In the acquisition frenzy, he 
bought a small meat-meal mixing company in the Midwest. The factory had 
no buildings except two rusted silos and a mixer located outdoors to 
mix the meat meal.The Investment Company was happy about the 
acquisition deal, at least on paper. This was JJ's first acquisition 
and was proud to expand the company.He brought on board Duke, the 
former owner of the blending company and gave him the title of 
“Director of Hazard Control and Safety Promotion.” A rotund, five feet 
tall person with deep eyes buried in thick lenses, Duke's life-long 
dream was always to write memos. Before acquisition, his company was a 
one-man show, just himself.But now he was in charge of several 
managers. He wasted no time in sending memos on safety to all persons 
at every level in the company. Following was one of his memos: 

From: David Duke 

Director of Hazard Control & Safety Promotion 

To: General Managers Plant Managers Route Mangers Garage Managers
Drivers and Workers 

Waste Water Treatment Operators and to whom ever it may concern. 

I am writing this memo as the recently appointed Director of Hazard
Control and Safety Promotion. Safety is the utmost in plant operations 
particularly in our kind of operations where we walk on slippery greasy 
floors.Therefore I remind you to be careful on slippery floors. If a 
worker inadvertently slip and falls into the huge hoppers containing 
dead animals during night shift and nobody notices, he will end up as 
part of meat meal mixture by the next day. Therefore, I suggest every 
one of you to walk carefully near the hoppers. Lastly, I want to share 
an observation I made during my recent visit to one of our poultry 
rendering facilities. I saw one of our workers chasing a few live 
chickens that were dumped along with a truckload of dead ones; he could 
have drowned in the mountain of dead chickens without anybody noticing 
him. I advise managers to instruct their workers not to repeat this 
risky behavior at our plant premises. Again, as a recently appointed 
Director of Hazard Control and Safety Promotion, I assure you my 
services are available 24 hours a day. Please remember our company 
motto when it comes to safety: “It is not worthwhile to die for a dead 
animal.” 

Sincerely, 

David Duke Director of Hazard Control and Safety Promotion CC:Jim Jones
COO, CEO, and President Dead Cow Rendering Company 

P.S. Please display the placards with the motto “Be safe and it is not
worthwhile to die for a dead animal” prominently everywhere in the 
factory yard. 

JJ loved the memo, particularly the company motto on safety. Through a
recruiting agency, JJ selected Victor or in short Vicky for the 
position of Vice President of Pollution Control. Victor's physique and 
his athletic achievements as a former college football player impressed 
JJ very much. 

Though Victor's qualifications did not even remotely meet the job
description, the recruiting agency padded Victor's resume to meet all 
the job requirements and got him the job.As a Vice President of 
Pollution Control, in short V.P.P.C., he convinced JJ to introduce a 
new method of doing business called “outsourcing” or contracting out 
all company projects to outside contractors.JJ liked the new 
terminology and started out sourcingall the company's work to outside 
consultants, not realizing the hefty fee, the consultants charged the 
company. 

In the beginning, bloated dead cows, pigs and animal parts made Vicky
very sick. Then he realized that he could conduct the business from 
cushy hotel rooms without even visiting the stinking factory sites. For 
crying out loud, I don't have to visit the ghostly factory site, though 
I love to visit the citywhere the factory is located, Vicky thought.For 
Victor, the rendering factory locations were like recreational 
retreats. In San Francisco, he stayed at Fishermen Wharf area over 
looking the Bay. In Los Angeles, he stayed in Long Beach. In Ft. 
Lauderdale, he stayed at luxury hotels, and so on. From airports, he 
drove straight to hotels and never visited the factories at all. 
Sometimes he strayed in cities where no factories existed at all.This 
was an extended luxury vacation with endless golf and feeding frenzy in 
steak houses and specialty seafood restaurants with company money.Once 
while he was flying in an airplane, all of a sudden thoughts rushed to 
his mind about his new-found fortune as VPPC, then he scribbled the 
following verses at the bottom of an advertisement in a complimentary 
travel magazine which asks a young executive, “At what age you want to 
retire, forty, forty five, or fifty?” 

Am I Lucky or What? 

In and out, in and out, 

Flying-in during the morning, 

Flying-out in the evening, 

Let nature take its course in resolving, 

Pollution problems and environmental noncompliance; 

I am happy, happy, happy, 

Bam, Bam, Bam, 

The Investment Company saw a direct correlation between family size and
meat consumption, and immediately instructed JJ to appoint a Hispanic 
person at corporate office.Firstly, it would fulfill minority 
representation on corporate staff and secondly, Hispanics represented 
the largest growing minority group with large families. That translated 
to more meat consumption and more animal parts to render.JJ saw the 
connection and immediately recruited Jose Carlos Rodriguez de la Peña 
as director of Human Resources. 

Jose's parents were from Guatemala. Before he immigrated to the United
States, Jose's dad worked as a cowhand in a large cattle ranch. His 
small house on the ranch in Guatemala, a concrete block dwelling with 
galvanized sheet roofing, was so hot during the daytime, he slept under 
the shade of trees in their yard in a hammock. When he moved to the 
United States, the trailer home his father rented was like heaven for 
him. 

Jose received a degree in mass communication from a community college in
the United States. Being bilingual got him the job as Director of Human 
Resources. He was excited to wear a tie and jacket every day to work 
and sit in his air-conditioned corporate office. 

One day while Jose read a trade magazine to kill time in his office, JJ
crashed into his office demanding that Jose start writing memos in both 
Spanish and English to show that Dead Cow Rendering was serious in its 
“Equal Opportunity Employer” policies.“We conduct nasty and stinking 
business but we are committed to equal opportunity employment here.” JJ 
talked like a mad man. For Jose, JJ reminded him of the ranch owner 
back in Guatemala who always spoke as if pulling his guts out. Jose 
prepared a Company Newsletter with a title appropriately “Guts” or in 
Spanish “Las agallas.” 

“Guts” or “Las agallas” 

It is a great pleasure for me as the first Hispanic Director of Human
Resources of Dead Cow Rendering Company to send this first edition of 
our company News Letter “Las agallas” or “Guts.” 

I am grateful to JJ, the COO, CEO, and President to employ me at the
corporate level to look after Human Resources Division (HRD). While the 
great explorers like Balboa and Magellan discovered Central America and 
Pacific Ocean, JJ discovered me, as I am originally from Central 
America. 

As you know we are in the business of collecting animal guts (offal) to
render at our factories, but you the managers have to go beyond 
collecting the animal guts, and also show your own guts in employing 
more minorities at your facilities. Your guts and the animal guts 
should go hand in hand to prove that our company is an equal 
opportunity employer (EOE). 

Sincerely, 

Jose Carlos Rodriguez Director Human Resources Division 

CC: Jim Jones COO, CEO and President Dead Cow Rendering Company 

JJ loved the Newsletter particularly, how he was compared with great
explorers such as Balboa and Magellan though he never heard their names 
before. 

Most mangers did not take Jose seriously. Everybody believed that he was
filling the minority requirement at corporate level. They called him 
“Las agallas,” a new word they learned in Spanish behind his back. Some 
called him “Pepe,” nickname for Jose. But they all agreed that Las 
agallas or Pepeknew how to greaseJJ's elbows. 

The investment bankers were not satisfied with JJ's performance so far
in improving the stock price of Dead Cow Rendering Company on Wall 
Street. As an incentive, they promised JJ additional commission and 
stock options for bringing in more dead animals to cook.For every 
additional dead cow or pig brought in, JJ would get a small commission. 
One day, JJ was driving home in his Jaguar, he heard on the radio that 
the climate change El Niñowas returning to hit United States again, and 
that meant unusual weather patterns would hit the country again with 
severe drought in some places and heavy rains at other locations. This 
can't be good for cattle, pigs or soybean crop, he thought. JJ imagined 
dead cows and pigs with bloated stomachs piling up in the plant yard 
waiting to be crushed and poor farmers in China and Brazil losing their 
soybean crop from bad weather.JJ saw the pattern and the jigsaw puzzle 
pieces coming together, all this spelled good luck for Dead Cow 
Rendering Company. Everything happens for good, JJ thought.He 
immediately called his bosses to let them know the possibility of a 
steep rise in prices of the finished products and abundance of dead 
cows and pigs from bad weather. The Ivy League MBA immediately jumped 
on conducting a study to find how El Niño affected the animal-rendering 
company stock price. 

JJ had no specific business model to run the company. Most of the
business acquisitions JJ made looked good on paper but later proved to 
be a financial burden. His inner circle of “yes men”spent more time 
crisscrossing the country on planes and writing memos.The 
outsourcingpolicy Vicky introduced to make him free of workload ate all 
the company profits and proved to be “Voodoo Economics.”At every 
company brainstorming retreat at an expensive golf resort, JJ 
relentlessly chanted his business principles, which were based on 
simple natural consequences such as“All businesses are cyclical.” “What 
goes around comes around.” “What goes up comes down.” And more 
importantly, “It is the human emotions, stupid, when it comes to stock 
market prices.” 

After moving to corporate office, Neil didn't get a chance to speak to
Joe back at the factory for a long time.One day Joe called him on the 
phone. 

“Hi, boss, it is Joe, remember me?” 

“Yeah, how are things up there, Joe?” inquired Neil. 

“We are cooking an awful lot of stuff you know, thanks to you.” 

“We got to make money.” 

“You know, I noticed recently a lot of dead fish in the creek behind our
factory, I am wondering whether the blood and juices from the dead cows 
killing these fishes?” 

“What dead fish?” Neil inquired. 

“The dead fish I see next to the factory storm drain that discharges
into the creek.” 

“We don't have any storm drain that discharges into the creek as far as
I know,” Neil replied. 

“Well, the storm water from the factory yard containing blood and the
juices from the dead animals on the yard, and all that crap discharges 
into the creek through the storm drain, you know.” 

“Is blood not good for fish?” inquired Neil. 

“I don't know, boss.I read in the local newspaper that a leak from
anhydrous ammonia tank from a farmer's field seeped into the same creek 
and killed an awful lot of fish,” said Joe. 

“May be that ammonia killed these fish too.” Neil reasoned. 

“Yeah, but the farmer lives way downstream to our factory storm drain.” 

“So, fish do swim upstream. Don't you know in Pacific North West, Salmon
swim upstream to spawn every year?” 

“You think that the fish poisoned by the anhydrous ammonia from the
farmers' field were able to swim upstream a few miles to our storm 
drain site to die?” 

“I think so.” Neil showed confidence in his voice. After two days, Neil
received another call from Joe. This time, Joe' voice was desperate and 
frightened. “Neil, this morning, I saw a few guys from the State 
Pollution Control Agency collecting samples at our storm drain at the 
creek.” 

Neil realized that this incident was getting out of hand.“Joe, I
couldn't talk to you on this matter any more, okay?” “You deal with it 
locally, remember, I am now corporate, any way I am getting another 
call.” He hung up the phone. 

Since Neil worked at the corporate office now, he mentioned to JJ about
fish kill during the lunchtime. 

“How can blood and juices from dead cows kills fish?” inquired JJ.
“What's the connection?” 

Neil tried to explain the connection between water stream contamination
with animal blood and fish kill. JJ abruptly stopped Neil, and said he 
needed to go to his dentist for an appointment. Instead he drove 
straight to the country club. 

Joe after speaking with Neil that morning realized that he was a dead
fish. That was exactly how Neil felt about himself after speaking with 
JJ after lunchtime. 

How dead cows could kill fish, thought JJ while having a drink at the
country club but again, “it is the human emotions, stupid,” that kills 
the company stock prices, he reminded himself.JJ decided not to break 
this news immediately to his bosses back eastafter all, he don't want 
to be a dead fish either. 


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