Day of the Moron | Page 9

be thrown out, and his own organization
will have to disavow his action, because he'll be calling the strike against his own
contract."
"Well, I hope so." Leighton's tone indicated that the hope was rather dim. "I wish you
luck; you're going to need it."
* * * * *
Within the hour, Crandall arrived at Melroy's office. He was a young man; he gave
Melroy the impression of having recently seen military service; probably in the
Indonesian campaign of '62 and '63; he also seemed a little cocky and over-sure of
himself.
"Mr. Melroy, we're not going to stand for this," he began, as soon as he came into the
room. "You're using these so-called tests as a pretext for getting rid of Mr. Koffler and
Mr. Burris because of their legitimate union activities."
"Who gave you that idea?" Melroy wanted to know. "Koffler and Burris?"
"That's the complaint they made to me, and it's borne out by the facts," Crandall replied.
"We have on record at least half a dozen complaints that Mr. Koffler has made to us
about different unfair work-assignments, improper working conditions, inequities in
allotting overtime work, and other infractions of union-shop conditions, on behalf of Mr.
Burris. So you decided to get rid of both of them, and you think you can use this clause in

our contract with your company about persons of deficient intelligence. The fact is,
you're known to have threatened on several occasions to get rid of both of them."
"I am?" Melroy looked at Crandall curiously, wondering if the latter were serious, and
deciding that he was. "You must believe anything those people tell you. Well, they lied to
you if they told you that."
"Naturally that's what you'd say," Crandall replied. "But how do you account for the fact
that those two men, and only those two men, were dismissed for alleged deficient
intelligence?"
"The tests aren't all made," Melroy replied. "Until they are, you can't say that they are the
only ones disqualified. And if you look over the records of the tests, you'll see where
Koffler and Burris failed and the others passed. Here." He laid the pile of written-test
forms and the summary and evaluation sheets on the desk. "Here's Koffler's, and here's
Burris'; these are the ones of the men who passed the test. Look them over if you want
to."
Crandall examined the forms and summaries for the two men who had been discharged,
and compared them with several random samples from the satisfactory pile.
"Why, this stuff's a lot of gibberish!" he exclaimed indignantly. "This thing, here: ... five
Limerick oysters, six pairs of Don Alfonso tweezers, seven hundred Macedonian warriors
in full battle array, eight golden crowns from the ancient, secret crypts of Egypt, nine
lymphatic, sympathetic, peripatetic old men on crutches, and ten revolving heliotropes
from the Ipsy-Wipsy Institute!' Great Lord, do you actually mean that you're using this
stuff as an excuse for depriving men of their jobs?"
"I warned you that you should have brought a professional psychologist along," Melroy
reminded him. "And maybe you ought to get Koffler and Burris to repeat their complaints
on a lie-detector, while you're at it. They took the same tests, in the same manner, as any
of the others. They just didn't have the mental equipment to cope with them and the
others did. And for that reason, I won't run the risk of having them working on this job."
"That's just your word against theirs," Crandall insisted obstinately. "Their complaint is
that you framed this whole thing up to get rid of them."
"Why, I didn't even know who either of them were, until yesterday morning."
"That's not the way they tell it," Crandall retorted. "They say you and Keating have been
out to get them ever since they were hired. You and your supervisors have been
persecuting both of those men systematically. The fact that Burris has had grounds for all
these previous complaints proves that."
"It proves that Burris has a persecution complex, and that Koffler's credulous enough to
believe him," Melroy replied. "And that tends to confirm the results of the tests they
failed to pass."

"Oh, so that's the line you're taking. You persecute a man, and then say he has a
persecution complex if he recognizes the fact. Well, you're not going to get away with it,
that's all I have to say to you." Crandall flung the test-sheet he had been holding on to the
desk. "That stuff's not worth the paper it's scribbled on!" He turned on his heel in an
automatically correct about-face and strode out of the office.
* * * * *
Melroy straightened out the papers and put them away, then sat down at his desk, filling
and lighting his pipe.