"Michael Thomas - The Time Thief" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thomas Michael)

"The march on the plant. You know."

Mark sensed they should keep quiet, but this was Randy, after all, and he didn't
want to loose his spot as Randy's number one pal. "There's gonna be thousands,"
Mark said.

"That a fact?" Randy said. "I suppose your dads will be there, right in the
front row."

"You bet," Mark said.

Randy shook his head. "Suckers," he said. "It's all a sucker's game. Remember
what I told you guys. You don't want to be the ones buying the cards, you want
to sell them. Nobody gets rich playing the cards and nobody gets rich working in
some factory. You think marching on Ford's is going to make things better? Fat
chance. And even if it does, your fathers will just be replacing one master with
another. I got this cousin who works in a mine. They got a union. You know what
that means? It means they still work in the mines only they got to pay union
dues on top of everything else and do what the union bosses say to do. No, the
only way to get ahead is with guts. You got to be an entrepreneur."

"A what?" Joey asked.

"You heard the man," Mark said, even though he had no idea what an entrepreneur
was.

Randy tapped the tobacco down on a Chesterfield and lit the cigarette. "Go out
on your own. Take me, for example. The boss tells me what to do, but he doesn't
give a rat's ass about how I do it. As long as they get their cut, I'm a free
man. So if I want to pay you guys more, that's fine and dandy. I don't report to
nobody. And when I go home, my old lady's got steak on the table. My boy doesn't
hold his pants up with rope. He's got more suspenders than you guys got teeth.
So wise up. Ford's is for suckers."

"Right," Mark agreed. Randy was always right; his vision of life lingered with
Mark, filled him with a luminous sense of life's possibilities, as rich as a
stomach full of steak. The alternative was the assembly line, his future as
predictable and fixed as engine blocks rumbling along the line in their
single-minded ferocity.

"For instance," Randy said, "I can foretell the future. I predict there's more
layoffs coming."

"How do you know that?" Joey asked.

"Because that shelf over there is empty. Do you know what used to be on that
shelf? Hair dye. All the old guys are busy dying their hair so they look young
and maybe fool people into thinking they still got what it takes. Happens every
time rumors about layoffs start. Ain't that pathetic? Like I says, only suckers
buy the cards."