Say hello to my little friend

I read a news story a few years ago that I still think about now and again so I thought I’d share. This is they type of thing I think about when I have free time.

Two spider monkeys in Bangladesh were found by authorities selling drugs out of a house. The owner had trained the monkeys to recognize the different colored currency from the customers. Here's how it would work: you approach the house/shack and go inside and one of the spider monkeys would "greet" you at the door. You give one of the monkeys the money and he would place it in a locked box (similar to a "comments" box at restaurants, offices, etc.). The other monkey would then run into the back room to get the appropriate amount of drugs (based on currency given to the first monkey) and bring the drugs back to you.

At first I thought this was a simple, ingenious plan – the monkeys do all of the day-to-day work, which frees up your time for back office duties such as accounting and other management tasks. If the authorities should ever raid the house, the only people to get arrested are the monkeys. And we all know monkeys don't snitch - the detectives can have a monkey in an interrogation room for hours with the lamp on them, blowing cigarette smoke in their face, slamming their fists against the table while yelling at them and the monkey will never finger you as the ringleader (wait, did I actually just type that last phrase? I guess I really do want to get on a watch list).

After thinking about it for a while I realized that this original, entrepreneurial plan would eventually fail, and here's why:

1) After buying drugs from 2 monkeys in a shack a few times, I’m sure someone would get the idea of “Hey, why don’t we just go kill the monkeys and take the drugs and the money?” Not a bad idea. As the CEO of this operation you have to think of a way to protect your investment. We’ve all heard the infinite monkey theorem that states if you gave a million monkeys a million typewriters they’d eventually write the works of Shakespeare. Well, if you give 2 monkeys 2 pistols and teach them how to shoot then it’ll just get crazy. So now you’ve got 2 drug-dealing monkeys that are strapped and looking to get some, because a monkey with a gun on his hip has a completely different swagger. Spider monkeys are kind of little, so I’m sure they’ll have a Napoleon complex, and with that comes an itchy trigger finger. You’ve now introduced an element of danger into the work environment and at some point the police will surely be called because of random gunfire coming from the shack at the end of the street. You need an equalizer to stabilize the situation: a gorilla bouncer at the shack to be the “muscle”. He answers the door, greets the customers and carries the heater. That would bring stability back to an otherwise potentially stressful situation. As a backup you could also have an orangutan chillin’ in a rocking chair with a shotgun (and maybe wearing a straw cowboy hat to give him that intimidating, small town Southern sheriff look – that’s at least how I picture it). With the gorilla and orangutan that’s 2 more salaries you’ve got to pay, but it’s probably worth it for the peace of mind they provide.

2) Now there are 4 primates hanging out in the shack, slinging dope and making bank for you. I doubt they will be busy all the time selling drugs; they’re going to have some downtime and will get bored. You don’t want them to fall asleep on the job and be vulnerable to a shackjack (when someone attempts to jack your shack), so you’ve got to provide some entertainment in the shack – a home entertainment system, cable TV, pool table, poker table, etc. Furnishing the shack and providing these amenities are additional overhead expenses that you didn’t originally budget for. You can’t make the shack too fun though, because then the monkeys won’t be focused on the task at hand. With 4 males hanging out all day in a shack (whether it be monkeys or humans), conversations, poker games, arguments over what to watch on TV, etc. inevitably escalate to physical violence without the presence of females around to keep everything chill. So you let the monkeys invite their skanky, stripper ho monkey b!tches over to the shack to hang out while they work. Although this could potentially branch off into a decent monkey prostitution side business, that’s a dicey move that introduces more risk to the company, especially at this early stage. I say for now you focus on the original business of pharmaceutical distribution and evaluate the prostitution opportunities as a possible subsidiary for 1st or 2nd quarter of next year.

3) It’s common knowledge that those who deal drugs usually end up using drugs as well; this is bound to happen. Now you’ve got your 4 monkey employees and their b!tches all strung-out, laying around the shack all day getting high on your sh!t, which is eating into your profits. It would be ok if they only smoked your weed, but we all know that’s just a gateway drug that leads to the harder, more expensive stuff. As a good employer you’ve got to now organize an intervention to get your employees off of smack and send them to rehab, which increases the company’s health insurance premiums. Also, I’m fairly certain that one of the monkeys will eventually knock up one of his girlfriends and then come to you asking for a raise because he wants to do the right thing and provide for his new family blah blah blah. What can you do? You created the situation that led to this and you’d look like an @$$ if you didn’t help him out. More money to keep the wheels of business turning.

4) In order to stay competitive with other local companies you’ll need to provide a benefits package that is appealing to current and prospective employees. This benefits package will need to include onsite day care for the children of your employees, profit-sharing, paid vacations, a retirement plan, an onsite gym, etc. (all of which costs even more money). Pretty soon your original profit margin has been reduced to that of a stay-at-home Mom’s who hosts Tupperware parties.

As you can see, what was originally a simple, creative business opportunity quickly blossoms into a complicated, stressful situation with operational costs spiraling out of control.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this post. In no way did I mean to infer that all female monkeys are skanky, stripper ho monkey b!tches who would eventually participate in a prostitution ring. I was just making a broad generalization about the ones who would hang out with their drug-pushing boyfriends all day in a shack. I’m sure there are a few “diamonds in the rough” in that crowd who are just dancing to work their way through law or med school.


Song of the day: Three 6 Mafia – “Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)”. A club banger. I heard this while in the Chi’ last fall visiting my brother. The original version sampled the theme from the movie Halloween but they didn’t pay to use it so they changed the piano sample just enough to get away with it. I enjoy listening to it while jogging. I like the 2nd verse when he stutters on the first few lines and also the line about Barack Obama.