Macklin walked into the room with the numbers for the board. Only two people in the room knew that the numbers were implausible and inaccurate. Duke and Jenkins were looking to drive up the stock price with implausible numbers—Macklin’s job was to execute the fraud.
Duke and Jenkins were always nervous when Macklin walked into the room. They were never sure why. In their mind, they had hired a professional to act against the best interests of their company, but in the best interest of their pockets. To them, Macklin was a bad actor ripe for business espionage. In fact, Macklin was a bad stage actor, once credited with playing a puddle in a stage production because he was such a mess during rehearsals.
Macklin took a folder and started walking around the table, handing out the numbers. Before he had made it halfway around the room, one of their accountants exclaimed. “These numbers can’t be right.”
“What do you mean?” Macklin asked. Duke and Jenkins froze.
“Well, you just have the number seven written down as a line item. What do you mean it’s just seven? Seven what exactly? What is seven?”
“Oh, I know what happened,” Macklin said. He rushed around the table and grabbed all of the papers. Then he raced to the door. “Give me a minute.”
Macklin left, and everyone at the table stared at each other. What was happening?
“Should we take a break?” Jenkins suggested. Everyone at the table agreed. Jenkins and Duke raced back to Macklin’s office, where Macklin was furiously typing.
“What is going on?” Duke asked
Macklin looked up from his computer and smiled. “Hello, gentlemen. I had two sticky notes – the one you gave me and this one that had numbers for pauses I have to make in another role.”
“What do you mean, pauses?” Duke asked.
“Like, how long I’m supposed to wait before I say anything.”
“How do you confuse seven and 1.6 million?” Duke asked with more anger.
“You know, when I was just standing there at my other job, they said the same thing,” Macklin replied.
Duke almost charged Macklin, but Jenkins held him up.
“How quickly can you have this done?” Jenkins asked.
“Mere seconds,” Macklin said with a smile. He started humming “Singing in the Rain” as the two worried businessmen walked back to the conference room.
“Maybe we have the wrong guy,” Duke said. “We’re going to go to jail because we put our trust in the wrong person.”
Even Jenkins couldn’t argue.
Macklin raced past the two to get back into the conference room, and they were the last to get the new papers.
The accountant who brought up the original problem looked them over and nodded. “These look great!”
No one else pushed back. Everyone seemed satisfied with the new returns.
Jenkins and Duke sat in the conference room long after everyone was gone, shocked that the plan had worked and thinking about how they would spend all their new money.
“So we survived Macklin’s screw-up?” Duke said finally.
“No, I think Macklin’s a genius,” Jenkins replied. “He put everyone at ease with the second numbers because the first numbers were so off.”
As the pair basked in the genius of picking Macklin, Macklin was on his way to an audition to work at a Renaissance Fair. Macklin did not get the role.