SUMMARY OF THE
STORIES
IN CHICKEN SOUP FOR YOUR CORPORATE ASS
Chicken Soup
for your
Transnational Ass
Silam Paley is an entrepreneur from
Cincinnati
who bought a hospital in Seoul to transform it into a factory of board
games. During
a dinner at Darren Jakobsen´s house, a friend of him, he met Ward
Callahan.
They got on very well, they liked Tom Clancy, Nazi memorabilia and
Vintage
automobiles.
Ward decided to close down his factory
in
Midland, Cincinnati, which manufactured Scrabble games, and move it to
Silam´s
one in Korea, mainly because labour there was cheaper than in the
States.
Meanwhile, the workers of the Korean
factory
wanted a pay-rise, but because there have less employee rights over
there, the
workers were fired and strict measures were put in place in the factory
to
avoid employees insurgence.
Employees boicot the plant and it was
discovered later on that some of the Scrabble games were not up to
quality
because they were missing the letter E.
As a good businness man, Silam saw an
opportunity out of this downside. He was to ask consumers to report any
anomalies with the Scrabble game by post and thecompany would have to
sort it
by sending back the missing letters. The company then would have a
database of
consumer information that could be sold to marketing companies and make
great
profits out of it.
After Darren´s dinner, Silam began to
have
health problems and become forgetful and lost interest in making
money.
Chicken Soup
for your
Rainforest-Bulldozing Ass
Young Li Kim is a Korean business man
who
bought the rights to a strech of rainforest in New Zealand to expand his
business, but still felt that needed to computerized his operations. He
thought
his son Young Li Jr could help him in his venture, so Young Li Jr was
sent to
Cincinnati University to study Computer Science.
Young Li Jr shared a room at university
with a
history student that was hardly around, and he also worked in a research
center. However, he did not make any friends and because he neglected
his English
lessons he started to fail his exams.
He was about to be expelled from
university, so
he spent sleepless nights going without food and studying hard in order
to pass
his exams. He was in a very bad state when went wandering into the
streets of a
wealthy neighborhood mummbling and acting strange. A neighbour called
the
police and Young Li Jr was arrested out of his mind and with no
documents.
Chicken Soup
for your
Animal Experimentation Ass
Victoria Washington was working in a
lab of a
research center when she fell ill, probably because of the chemicals
she used
in the lab, and had to stay home for three weeks. Being home had a
positive
side, she could spend more time with her daughter, who usually stayed
at a day
care center when she was at work, and also spend time with her son, who
during
her illness took well care of her. The negative side was tha she was
afraid to
loose her job if she did not return to it soon.
One morning she went to see her manager
in the
lab. That day a raccoon had scaped and was free around the building. She
stopped to see her supervisor first, Janine, but she was very busy,
preocuppied
and wore a boiler suit, something new in the department.
Later she went to talk to the Risk
Manager,
Ward Callahan Jr, in order to find out why the sick pay had not
arrived. She
has missed her first rent payment in four years and her landlord had
threatened
her to evict her. While they were discussing the affair the raccoon
that had
scaped jumped and chewed Ward´s eyes.
Chicken Soup
for your
Health Insurance Ass
Robert Sullivan who was a friend of
Darren
Jakobsen, learnt of his death that morning. The previous day he had
dined with
him and in the way home he had to call the police about a very
suspicious Asian
man wandering in his neighbourhood.
Robert was a Claims Investigator for
the HMO
and that day had a couple of meetings. One with a woman who claimed
that was
ill because she had been poised at work, and the other meeting was with
Jerry
Armantrout who needed a liver transplant which was not covered by his
insurance
policy.
He was quite affected by the news of
his friend
death and felt that day a special love for his daughter and his
alcoholic wife.
He decided to go and pick up his daughter from the day care center, but
then
remembered that Sally, Jerry´s wife worked there, and did not feel like
seeing
her after denying his husband the cover for the operation. Then he went
into a
sports bar and demanded something to eat and to drink. A few hours
later he was
dead for food poisoning.
No one went to pick up Robert´s
daughter that
afternoon, so Sally had to do extra non remunerated hours and take care
of
Robert´s daughter.
Chicken Soup
for your
Landlord Ass
Darren Jakobsen made a living through
the rental
of property, and things were going well for him. He enjoyed inviting his
friends for dinner, doing parties by the jacuzzi and was going on
holiday with
his wife to the rain forest of New Zealand that
year.
He had to evict the Washington´s
because he did
not understand how one family could not pay for the rent and did not
want this
happening in his business. To celebrate this, he invited his friends for
dinner, Silam Paley, Robert Sullivan, Ward Callahan and Ward Callahan
Jr. After
dinner, he and his wife, Janine, had too many drinks and fell asleep in
the
jacuzzi which malfunctioned in the middle of the night and they were
burnt
inside.
CHARACTER SPATIAL ANALYSIS
BACKGROUND CONCLUSION WORKS CITED
Academic year
2008/2009
©
a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente
Forés López
©Ana Ruth Contreras Fernández
Universitat de València Press