Maybe an alarm clock went off in heaven and our oversleeping guardian angel suddenly awoke with a start, frantic to make up for lost time, much as unforeseen circumstances had seemed to conspire against us, driving us to the verge of insolvency, because suddenly all sorts of unexpected events started working for us.

Our first blessing was that soon, in the wake of the firings, another thirty or so relatively highly paid employees, many of them technical, jumped ship and resigned. At first, of course, this panicked us. People had lost faith in us and it was every man for himself. Morale was utterly collapsing, we thought. We worked valiantly, scheduling more meetings, sending out newsletters, opening more channels of communication with our staff to let them know things were basically okay. We shifted more and more responsibilities to the remaining staff. Still, it took weeks for the wave of resignations to abate.

When it finally did and the personnel situation stabilized, we braced ourselves for the obvious repercussions that were bound to follow. Would our service collapse with the missing programmers? Would the billing system go under? Would sales slow? Where would the cracks in the dam show up first?

We waited and waited. And nothing happened. Well, actually something did happen. The tech service cue dropped from ten minutes to thirty-seven seconds. Internet customers stopped getting busy signals and their connection speeds doubled. Our international phone networks started to go up at double their previous speed. Sales picked up. All over the company things started to go right. A large part of this was due to the new fighting spirit of the troops and their positive reaction to being given more responsibility. Things actually started to work better.

A large part, though, was also due to the departure of the grousers. After these people left it became clear that some of them, however talented, were doing nothing but taking up space, or worse. When the company was growing, funded by Wall Street money, it was easy for some to slip into the cracks, pretending to be busy but in fact doing nothing, dispiriting the honest, diligent personnel with their attitude. Under the new regime, though, I think it became clear to these loafers that they’d soon be found out and fired. Obviously, once fired they wouldn’t any longer be so desirable in the employment market.

The game, it seemed, was to go to our large competitors and tell them, “You know that IDT magic? You know who did it? Me. I got the systems up. I thought up the new algorithms. I boosted sales. Yeah, and now they’re going under. Fired over a hundred people. A real shame. If there was any hope, I’d stay with them. But you know how it is. Best if I just get out now. Why, if you hired me, I could probably bring that ol’ entrepreneurial verve here. Maybe even get some co-workers to come along. It’s like you’d be buying IDT and all you’ll have to do is just pay little ol’ me.”