Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Efficiency Expert

15. CHAPTER XV. LITTLE EVA. (continued)

"I can drive a milk-wagon," said Jimmy, "but the drivers are all on strike."

"Now, be serious," she announced. "Let's look for something really good. Here's somebody wants a finishing superintendent for a string music instrument factory, and a business manager and electrical engineer in this one. What's an efficiency expert?"

"Oh, he's a fellow who gums up the works, puts you three weeks behind in less than a week and has all your best men resigning inside of a month. I know, because my dad had one at his plant a few years ago."

The girl looked at him for a moment. "Your father is a business man?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer, "Why don't you work for him?"

It was the first reference that Jimmy had ever made to his connections or his past.

"Oh," he said, "he's a long way off and--if I'm no good to any one here I certainly wouldn't be any good to him."

His companion made no comment, but resumed her reading of the advertisement before her:

WANTED, an Efficiency Expert--Machine works wants man capable of thoroughly reorganizing large business along modern lines, stopping leaks and systematizjng every activity. Call International Machine Company, West Superior Street. Ask for Mr. Compton.

"What do you have to know to be an efficiency expert?" asked the girl.

"From what I saw of the bird I just mentioned the less one knows about anything the more successful he should be as an efficiency expert, for he certainly didn't know anything. And yet the results from kicking everybody in the plant out of his own particular rut eventually worked wonders for the organization. If the man had had any sense, tact or diplomacy nothing would have been accomplished."

"Why don't you try it?" asked the girl.