The Writers' Circle

As any regular subscriber to Roller magazine (Roller's the name, skating's the game) will tell you, if you have a roller skate related problem you need to talk to a Bulgarian.
For Bulgaria may not have much of a fishing industry, and their cars may be made of the metal that you normally find wrapped around a stick of chewing gum, but for quality and price with regard to roller skates, they cannot be beaten.

Thus it was, that when The Western Skate Company realised that it was becoming uncompetitive, it naturally looked towards the land of the Bulgars.
The owners of Western had figured that if they got rid of their workforce and sold off their factory and machinery, they would have just enough money to buy a profitable Bulgarian concern. The skates could be made cheaply in Bulgaria, and shipped to Western for packaging, distribution and marketing, thus making the company profitable once more.
Showing the cavalier disregard for the loyalty of their staff that is the hallmark of all great corporations, Western instructed their bank to look for a suitable acquisition.
Within a month the bank had found a business that appeared to meet all the criteria. It was called The Hoota Roller Skate Works, and was owned by Mr Boris Hoota and his well upholstered wife Olga.
The board of Western studied the numbers and agreed to go ahead. They obviously needed someone to act as liaison between their new Bulgarian factory and their old offices, and so they sent a memo around asking if anyone in the company spoke Bulgarian.

Tom Smith was a production manager for Western. He spoke no Bulgarian, and was not even sure where Bulgaria was, but he had heard the rumours that the company were going to close their old factory, and he was smart enough to know that jobs in the roller skate industry were few and far between.
One of the marks of a good manager is the ability to lie convincingly, and that was one thing that Tom had learnt to do well. Therefore, in order to keep his job, he informed the board of Western that not only was he willing to travel, but he was practically fluent in Bulgarian. The board were delighted to have found someone, and once the paperwork for the sale of the old factory and the purchase of the new one had been finalised Tom Smith was despatched to Bulgaria.

When he arrived at Western's new factory, he was greeted by Boris Hoota himself. As part of the deal Boris had agreed to stay on for three months in order to let the new man settle in.
They shook hands and Tom said "Hello"
Boris said something unintelligible in return.
The two men stood grinning at each other while each of them tried to think of a word or phrase of the other ones language. After a few minutes silence it was apparent that communication would be a bit of a problem.
Using hand gestures Boris motioned Tom into the factory. He rightly assumed that the new man would want to see what the new owners had spent all of their money on.
When Tom walked through the door into the manufacturing area, it rapidly became apparent why the Bulgarians were so far ahead of the field in roller skate production. Practically all of the space within the factory was taken up by the biggest machine that Tom had ever set his eyes on.
At one end, people were shovelling in scrap metal, rubber and plastic, and at the other end, far away in the distance roller skates were being spat out onto a pile on the factory floor. Everything had been automated to the nth degree.

Tom had been briefed by the people at Western to report on how many skates a day the factory could produce, and how much they cost to make. He tried to ask Boris what the numbers were, but Boris just looked at him.
Tom tried asking in a louder voice.
 He then tried speaking more slowly, and then slowly and loudly at the same time but it made no difference. It was like explaining the principles of aerodynamics to a dog. Boris was interested, but had no idea what Tom was talking about.
Eventually, by using a calender, making a display of counting on his fingers, showing the notes in his wallet and pointing at the pile of skates on the floor it seemed that Boris understood him.
Boris found a piece of paper and drew a clock with a number 24 beside it. Underneath he drew a roller skate with the number 3,000 beside it, and under that he drew a dollar sign with another number. Tom gratefully took all of this information and phoned it through to Western.
When the accountants at the other end of the phone line had done their sums, they were quite pleased. Their new Bulgarian factory could produce around 85,000 roller skates a month at a reasonable cost, and they instructed Tom to send the first order of 100,000 skates to them in five weeks time.

For the next few weeks Tom busied himself with settling in to his new home. Other than arranging for the transportation of 100,000 roller skates, and phoning Western once a day to lie to them about how hard he was working, he didn't have much else to do. Under Boris's supervision the machine practically ran itself, and Tom would pop in every afternoon to see that things were OK. This consisted of giving Boris a thumbs up, and as Boris invariably replied with the same gesture everything seemed to be running smoothly.

It was only when they were getting ready to send the first delivery that it became apparent that there was a problem. The pile of roller skates at the far end of the factory looked much bigger than Tom had expected. He went to find Boris.
When he found him he made a show of counting on his fingers and pointing at the heap of roller skates. He then wrote the number 100,000 on a piece of paper.
Boris nodded and gave him a thumbs up.
This wasn't right. Tom had been in the industry long enough to know what a pile of 100,000 roller skates looked like, and the small mountain in front of him contained many more than that. He picked a skate from the pile and wrote 100,000 on the bottom of it and showed it to Boris, who then took another skate from the pile, put both of them in a box and wrote 100,000 on the lid. When Tom had first asked him how many skates the factory produced per day Boris had written the number of pairs. They were always sold in pairs and it was logical to him that this was the number that he had been asked for.
There were actually 200,000 roller skates in front of them and not the 100,000 that Tom had expected. This presented Tom with a problem. He could hardly confess to Western that his command of Bulgarian was so non-existent that he did not know that the factory had been producing twice as many skates as he had been reporting, they would sack him on the spot.
Still, every cloud has a silver lining. They could simply switch the machine off for a month and send 100,000 this month and 100,000 next month. He pointed at the machine and made a cut throat signal. At this Boris became very agitated. He explained passionately and at great length to Tom that to switch off the machine would be the height of folly. All of the liquid metal and rubber would solidify and it would take months to strip it down, repair it and re set it up again. It was far more economical to keep the thing running.
Tom of course had no idea what was being said to him, and when he went to pull the plug out of the wall Boris stood in front of it so that he couldn't get to it, and refused to budge. After a five minute stand off Tom realised that he would have to find a better way to communicate with Boris.
He decided to let the machine continue running for the time being. He would have to figure out what to do later. For now his priority was to make sure that Western just got half of the skates that were laying before him. He drew 2 skates on a piece of paper and then tore it in half. He raised one half of the torn paper, pointed at it and said "Western" He then screwed up the other half and tossed it away. Boris seemed to understand, and so Tom went off to try and think of a way out of the production/communication problem.

Boris Hoota could not understand why Tom wanted him to throw away half of the skates, but then he had not really understood him from day one. Still it was no longer his business, and in a few more weeks he could leave Tom to it. So he sent the 100,000 right footed skates to Western and dumped the 100,000 left footed skates in his back yard.
He remarked to Olga that night that there must be a lot of one legged skaters where Tom came from.

The arrival of 100,000 useless unsaleable roller skates tipped The Western Skate Company over the edge. They halted production and filed for bankruptcy on the same day that they sacked Tom Smith.
The once mighty company was now only the owner of a Bulgarian skate factory that contained a rapidly cooling machine that could not be put back into operation for months, and a pile of useless roller skates.

A few weeks later Boris Hoota read in his copy of Rollerski magazine (Rollerski's katabar Ha, skatedun nipa Ha) that his old factory was up for sale at a bargain price, and that there were 100,000 worthless right footed roller skates up for grabs as well. He gazed at the 100,000 left footed skates lying in his back yard and thought that he might make the receivers an offer.