Wednesday, January the 1st, 2003
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Dear Mr Corncrake
Re: Mr B Bewg, 164 Dismal Terrace, Hoon
Thank you for your letter of 14 July regarding the above-named. I am happy to provide him with a reference.
I have known Mr Bewg for ten years, ever since he took up the position of scrivener, dogsbody and wretch in my vast gloomy factory perched on the hillside next to the lunatic asylum. At the time I engaged Mr Bewg I suspected that he had some past connection with the latter institution, and in the decade since I have had no reason to revise my opinion.
You ask me to comment on my impression of Mr Bewg's “suitability for the job”. Forgive me if I find this difficult. I do not wish to do violence to our mother tongue, but to use the word “suitability” in conjunction with Mr Bewg is to mock the Queen's English. Indeed, it is to make a mockery of Sense itself.
My problems with Mr Bewg began on his very first morning in my employ. To settle him in, I had instructed him to carry out a menial task, removing bits of goo from the interior walls of a vat. To facilitate his progress, he was supplied with a variety of tools including a pencil sharpener, a pin-cushion, and a decidedly ferocious blowtorch. No sooner had I turned my back than Mr Bewg became embroiled in a tussle with my pet panther, which—crazed with hunger—managed to slip its leash and embed its razor-sharp fangs in his left leg. For this impertinence I had no option but to dock Mr Bewg his first month's wages.
It was not a good start, but I had had many a ne'er-do-well working for me in the past, and believed that I could yet mould Mr Bewg into a marginally less repellent specimen of human dregs. To this end, I assigned him to work in the filthiest, dankest wing of the factory, where he was expected to spend all day dragging sacks full of huge iron lumps backwards and forwards through infested tunnels for no apparent purpose. So ineptly did Mr Bewg execute his duties that I was forced to withhold his pay for a further year. I wrung my hands with frustration, but the man was impossible. Given a simple task, he was utterly incapable of completing it with the requisite speed, good humour and fawning obeisance that one expects.
To give just one example: Mr Bewg failed to budge one particularly heavy sack (containing a score of medium-sized anvils) a single inch, despite being given all of four and a half minutes to drag it eight hundred yards along a stinking tunnel in which small bonfires of sulphur had been ignited only moments before. I set a wolfhound yapping at his heels, but to no avail. The man was purely and simply workshy. But I am a fair man, and I had no wish to consign him irrevocably into the underclass of the unemployed and unemployable.
Instead, I agreed with Mr Bewg that he could embark upon a training scheme. In return for a modest fee to be paid to me daily, in cash, I offered to provide him with a comprehensive course of training in a multiplicity of disciplines, both within the factory and in the adjoining administrative hellhole. In the first week alone, we covered a huge range of skills: licking my boots till they gleamed, prostrating himself on his stomach whenever I came within two hundred yards of him, and slobbering with happiness at the mere mention of my name.
At this stage in what can only roughly be called his “career”, Mr Bewg crawled into my palatial office one day to request my assistance with a personal matter. Tempted though I was to have him savaged by giant badgers, I reclined in my unbelievably comfortable executive armchair and heard him out. He confessed that he was in some financial difficulties and begged me to help. Sipping my glass of ruinously expensive wine, I delivered a stern lecture on the virtues of thrift and idly beat him about the skull with a copy of Self-Help. I admitted that I was in a position to pay his paltry debts a billionfold if I wished to, but that such a course of action would not in the long run be of the slightest benefit to him. I then advised him that he could earn a few extra pounds by selling various of his bodily organs and thus better his financial situation while basking in the knowledge that he was being self-reliant rather than coming cap-in-hand to his employer. To prove my point, I offered to buy one of his kidneys and two pints of his blood on the spot, for which I would pay him fourpence. As the bulk of his debts were monies owed to me, I generously docked the fourpence from his account. In this way, I was able to relieve him of the responsibility of handling any cash himself, and thereby falling prey to the inevitable temptation to fritter the money away on food, clothing, and medicine. Only after this transaction had taken place did I set the giant badgers onto him.
Not long after this incident, Mr Bewg announced that he had found himself another job, and wished to terminate his contract of employment. If his inane burbling was to be believed, he had been offered the post of Assistant Slave at a charnel-house, the main duties being to crawl on his hands and knees in foul pits of ordure. While I listened patiently, he explained that he felt this post would give him opportunities undreamed of in his current position, and that he was prepared to take a cut in salary in order to take up the offer. Poking at him with a stick, I nodded my consent. I had no wish to stand in his way. My only concern was that he would have the common decency to fulfil the terms and conditions of his contract before setting off for greener pastures. I then reminded him of the form he had signed on his first day at the factory, the main clauses of which stated that in order to leave, he was required to give forty years notice and to repay every single penny of his salary since day one. To my surprise, Mr Bewg—who moments before had been adamant that he wanted to leave—now said that he would like a few more days to consider the matter. Once again I nodded my assent, then summoned fourteen of my assistants, who bundled Mr Bewg out of my office and set him to work on his latest task, which was to lie face down in a muddy ditch while a herd of demented bison charged over him.
In view of the above, I must admit that I cannot in truth recommend Mr Bewg to you. His work is shoddy, his attendance and punctuality leave much to be desired, and I have the gravest doubts about his character. His sickness record is thoroughly unsatisfactory, and I have been put in the uncomfortable position of having to threaten various members of the medical profession with monstrous violence after they had the temerity to issue Mr Bewg with certificates recommending that he stay off work for half an hour. However, should you decide to ignore my warnings and offer a job to Mr Bewg, I will have great pleasure in delivering what is left of him to your premises upon the expiry of his notice period in forty years time.
Yours sincerely
B. Git
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