The Publisher's Office
Dreadfully Poor Publishing Co.
4 Vesper Court, off Paternoster Row
16 May 2026
Mr Parry,
It is with the gravest reluctance — and the gladdest economy — that we must decline to meet the wage you press upon us for your gentle, if inspiring, tenure in the mail room. The trouble, plainly put, is that you are altogether too capable for the post: you sort what was never properly addressed, deliver what no sender will own, and frank with such conviction that the stamps appear to thank you for the privilege.
We cannot in good, or any other conscience retain a man of your calibre at the rate his calibre commands — for to pay you what you are worth would be to concede you are worth what we cannot pay, and to concede as much would, by the plain operation of conscience, oblige us to pay it.
We therefore decline to concede.
What the mail room requires of DPP, you see — or what DPP requires of the mail room, the distinction is a postal one — is someone considerably less capable: a gentleman who will mis-sort with the cheerful indifference the wage entails, so that the wage may remain the wage and the room remain the room.
Your competence has, most regrettably, priced you out of incompetence; and incompetence, in the mail room, is the chief qualification of the post. A first-class sorter is, by the ledger's reckoning, a second-class economy.
We have resolved the matter in the only fashion the books permit: by returning you upward, to sender. Management, as you are aware, requires less and pays more — which is precisely the arrangement your gifts now demand and our budget can only afford in inverse proportion to the work performed.
The less you do, the more we may pay you to do it; the more we pay you to do less, the less we may pay the gentleman beneath you to do more; and the less we pay him, the better he will be at the post — by which small miracle of double-entry we arrive, by a different road, at the very figure we began by refusing.
The wage is parried, Mr. Parry. The post is kept. The ledger is whole.
Welcome to management, J.R.
Yours in glad economy,
The Publisher