On the Edge 2: Earnest and Dullina

The effect on an entire society that is pushing the edges of the possible in order to get a competitive edge at the cutting edge is to force everyone inside it to push themselves to their own edges.  The evacuation of the psychological center gives everyone a common consciousness.  They are all ‘edgy’.  However, the experienced effects can be very different.

The triers who doggedly struggle to make it on the edge, find it always narrow, slippery and steep.  The winning edge above them is elusive, but close.  To meet the challenge is an exhausting uncertain and precariously stressful balance, between progress and setbacks, worry and hope, making it or falling.  They risk out of necessity rather than the challenge.  They live a tough and disciplined life against the odds. They may not be imaginative or daring, but they make up for that with hard work.

The strugglers grimly hang on, or gradually lose their grip .  Fear and despair make them clutch desperately, as long as their strength holds out.  They know that if or when they fall, it will be a hard landing, for they likely will try to avoid taking others down with them.  They know they will not return from the valley of the shadow of marginalization; the place of the fallen.  For the few, it is but a temporary purgatory.  For most, it is the damnation of dis-empowerment; a place haunted by broken dreams, lost opportunities and self loathing.



Earnest and Dullina had always dreamed of owning their own business.  They devoured success books and became serious seminar junkies.  At last they had saved enough equity capital, come up with a good business idea, done their research, designed an excellent business plan and had borrowed prudently.  The hours of working directly in the business were long, as were the hours of working on it, to ensure that everything worked smoothly and as close as possible to plan.

Dullina, who was the main driving force of the business, was indefatigable in her grasp of the innumerable details that make a business work.  Earnest was good with the customers and motivated their employees with his enthusiasm and good humor.  And the business plan with which they started the business, carried them through very nicely for the first couple of years, but they didn't revisit it often enough for it to remain a useful living instrument for the longer term.

The competition was tough and getting tougher, as others started to capitalize on their trail blazing success.  This forced them to continually rework their business mix, reduce costs, revamp displays, invest in new capital equipment and borrow more heavily than they would have liked.  While they did their best to give their children, each other and themselves some quality time, it was not enough, but they persuaded themselves that once they had got the business bedded down, they would have more time.

At one Christmas family get together at around this period, the subject of their business was brought up by Dully's cousin, Fred, who was something of a wheeler and dealer in the city.  Amongst other things, he had a very sharp sense of business timing, as to when to get in and when to get out. 

It wasn't hard to get Earnest to talk about 'his baby', despite Dully's efforts to shut him up.  Ernest had had a few and within five minutes, Fred had easily enough information to know for certain, that it wasn't so much a bundle of joy, as a temple of doom.  He tried to say something tactful to this effect, but Dully cut him off with a look that said, "none of your business".  He shrugged and turned his attention to Earnest's gorgeous younger sister.

It was their baby.  They had put so much of themselves into it.  It was doing well enough and providing the family with the sort of standard of living that they felt very comfortable with.  Besides, what would they do if they sold it?  What would they live on?  It took them two years of painstaking research, finding premises, getting the finance and all the rest of it for this one.  Why would you do that all over again?

The arrival in their market segment of a large business competitor meant even greater pressure.  They responded with investment in much more substantial advertising and signage and turning the business into a 24/7 facility.  The problem they could not overcome was the big competitor’s volume/price advantage and capacity to loss lead. 

Although they had substantially upped their service standards, price was often a larger customer consideration and the service premium and other extra inputs remorselessly pressured the profit line.  The children saw even less of their parents, until an amphetamine problem with their eldest forced Dully to take time out, leaving Earnest to cope in the business increasingly on his own.  He started to drink and smoke too much.

Without Dully's constant steadying hand and administrative input, the quality and cost control, the eagle eye that would stop a pilferer even thinking about it, the follow up with suppliers and customers and checking the journal reconciliations everyday, so that inconsistencies, omissions and mistakes could be spotted and rectified; all this degraded. And she got so frustrated and angry with Earnest when she did check.  There would be the inevitable row followed by long frosty domestic silences.

Earnest and Dullina’s business started losing money. His health began to deteriorate, as did her sense of humor.  Within two years it had become nonviable and unsaleable.  He developed a heart murmur.  She developed an asp's tongue.  Eventually they were forced to close it down, owing large sums.  The pressure of the failure gradually made their marriage insolvent too.  They stayed together to repay the debts and see the children through.  When these accounts were settled, they too parted company, in bitterness and regret.


To successfully negotiate the treacheries of life at the winning edge requires vision and charisma, an opportunistic temperament with a plan, agility and flexibility , confidence and nerve, cunning and a killer instinct, patience and timing, trust edited by caution and prudence, a gamblers smell for the fall of the cards and a keen appreciation of the weaknesses and strengths of competitors, partners and employees.  Even with a good product and and an up-to-date plan, plodders like  Earnest and Dullina would need a good wind and and a fairy godmother behind them to survive in the long term in an environment where predators are known to lurk.

The manager of a holding company run by a solicitor for a trust made out in favor of one of Fred's more loyal employees, bought Earnest and Dullinas stock and equipment for a quick take-it-or-leave-it price.  It was then 'sold' to a Netherlands Antilles company controlled by another of Fred's solicitors in The Bahamas who sold it to a Bahamas holding company, which then batched and sold them back to dealers in the local market at a nice profit, that was only taxable in the Netherlands Antilles.

In two days, Fred made more money out of Earnest and Dullina's business carcass than they had made in their best year of trading. But that's life on The Edge.