As far back as we can remember, and until well after we left our home town, Finky was our grocer. Actually, Finky were our grocer. There were two of them, identical twins, whom we could never distinguish by appearance alone. Usually, only one would be in the shop, so we would address him as Finky. We don’t remember ever calling either Finky by his correct name, Mr Finkelstein, when we were young. Mr Finkelstein was the father of Finky and Finky, until many years and Mr Finkelstein had passed. When we were young, we dealt with the twins as if they were two manifestations of the same person; in our minds the grocery shop was Finky’s, not Finkys’s. Today, Finky (either one) is Mr Finkelstein to us. The shop is still there, but Finky and Finky have l ong since sold it to Mr Callejas and subsequently retired. Even though times and the merchandise have changed considerably, we wouldn’t be at all surprised if Mr Callejas has preserved one remarkable aspect of the emporium: Finky’s Bean.
It was a grape
Finky’s fruits and vegetables were weighed in a scale hung from the ceiling of the shop. The scale had a circular dial indicating weight and below it, hanging from a three-tailed chain, was a metal pan. The pan always seemed to have a bean in it, but we could be mistaken about this detail. Cousin Nathan thinks it was a grape, and claims that Cousin Charles told him it was a grape. Cousin Charles, according to Cousin Nathan, based his belief that Finky’s Bean was actually a grape on a meticulous study undertaken by his late father, the remarkable Uncle Sonny. Cousin Nathan became so exercised when we challenged his Finky report that he set up a conference call, notwithstanding the fact that at the time Cousin Charles was kind of busy running the e mergency room at a mid-sized New England hospital and generally bringing people back from the brink of death. Without doubting the veracity of his father’s statement, which could well have been made in late summer, Cousin Charles agreed with us that Finky could not have had a grape for his scale in the winter, not in those days. Winter grapes were mighty scarce in our youth and much too expensive to be used where a bean would do. We’re not sure Cousin Nathan will ever get over this telephone conversation. He may grow to doubt his every childhood recollection. If Cousin Charles ever seizes on this possibility, he will make a point of disagreeing with Cousin Nathan about trivia until Cousin Nathan is driven completely around the bend. Cousin Charles is capable of waiting for years and then insisting, when Cousin Nathan is vulnerable, that Finky’s Bean was really a grape all along and assuring Cousin Nathan, in a tone of perfect sincerity, that Uncle Sonny said it was a grape and that was that. We don’t know how many times Finky’s Bean was sold. But Finkelstein’s Grocery not only survived the establishment of an A&P supermarket in our little village, but lived to witness its demise. When the grocers of our youth finally retired, the potent combination of their frugal dispositions and Finky’s Bean had educated the children of two lovely families and created a cushion against the hardships of old age. Finky’s Bean lived on in the custody of Mr Callejas, we think. About a dozen years after Mr Callejas took over the grocery shop, he bought a very old, large and wonderful house. It was Cousin Nathan’s house, although Cousin Nathan lived in another house a considerable distance away. It was also the house we grew up in and, a generation before, the house in which Uncle Sonny and his siblings, including our mother, were raised.
By Hesh Wiener
It had been in our family for three generations. And, we can only surmise, it was acquired with the help of Finky’s Bean, which had been around for three generations, too: Mr Finkelstein’s, Finky’s and Mr Callejas’s. Microsoft earns its money one way and IBM another. Microsoft sells millions of copies of MS-DOS and Windows and other little packages. What can it make on a copy of Windows? Bupkes! Beans! IBM, on the other
hand, is paid tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for its software products, such as MVS, CICS and DB2. It’s enough to make a bean-counter cry, and it often does. Our small town grocers didn’t knock out A&P. A&P knocked itself out. And Microsoft isn’t clobbering IBM, even if it has power in the personal computer market that IBM covets. IBM’s wounds are, like those of A&P, mainly self-inflicted. Windows isn’t in competition with IBM in the segments where IBM is getting most of its revenue. But Microsoft’s strategy has fostered comparisons. It has gotten a lot of people to investigate whether they could do more work on cheap personal computers that support a vast amount of low-cost software instead of on larger systems, particularly mainframes, that not only cost a great deal but also don’t have inexpensive software to harness their power. So far, the results favour IBM. For big companies, familiar mainframe systems remain the most practical way to handle the humongous information processing jobs. IBM says it is slashing prices. This is true, but only to a degree. IBM is not making progress at the rate Microsoft is, nor at the pace of Intel, nor of Seagate, nor of any of the companies that provide components for desktop computers and, increasingly, servers. So the trends still suggest IBM is on the r oad to ruin, even if it is no longer travelling at the speed limit. IBM’s new managers seem more adept at using a spreadsheet program – it’s probably Microsoft Excel running under Windows – than their predecessors. Outsiders, they are not hindered by sentimentality when it comes to paring away people and plants. But IBM still is trying to pass off corporate liposuction as a substitute for lean efficiency. IBM seems to be saying some of the right things, but taking far too long to do them. John Akers was saying some of the right things, too, about the time he was yanked off his Boola Boola pulpit by craven directors driven, we suspect, mainly by fear of shareholder lawsuits.
Wiser attitude
Perhaps Lou Gerstner, who seems to know what he wants, really has developed an understanding not only of IBM but of his limits. If that is the case, he will depart next year or possibly the year after. Like Cousin Charles in his emergency practice, Gerstner can save the endangered patient but not live out his life for him. IBM would have completed a reorganisation process that is usually accomplished under the protection of bankruptcy. There is only one additional gift Gerstner could bestow on IBM: he could imbue the company with a different and wiser attitude. We don’t know if Mr Callejas ever thought about buying up the old building that once housed our local A&P and which since was the home of a succession of unsuccessful supermarkets. He might have been attracted to a business that allowed him his sabbath rather than the seven day week required by the little grocery. But if he studied both options carefully, he could have come to only one conclusion: to prosper over the long haul, his best choice would be to buy the small shop equipped with Finky’s Bean. Success in these times comes from executing a large number of transactions, each with a slim margin and each carried out on a small scale.From Infoperspectives International. Copyright (C) 1994 Technology News Ltd.
