Late yesterday afternoon, my last appointment was with Poppy Stackpush, Special Assistant to Tim Cook at Apple, Inc. Unlike most of my visitors, she had no briefcase, which might be expected, but she also had no computer – not a laptop, notebook nor pad. Instead, her sole item of professional equipment was an Apple iPhone 5, which she held in her hand, looking down at it intently, texting rapidly as she made her way into my office and seated herself primly on the chair located directly in front of my desk.
I know better than to attempt conversation with someone in a texting trance state, so I simply waited, and why not? I was getting paid full price for a minimum of ninety minutes of consultation, after all, and if she had spent every second of it rudely glued to her favorite toy, thumbs madly flailing, then so be it – I would have been perfectly content to watch her do so. In fact, she ignored me entirely for seven minutes and thirty-four seconds before slipping her iPhone in its belt holster, after which she proceeded to address me as if nothing unusual had happened and she had only just arrived.
“You’re Tom Collins?” Poppy asked, with emphasis and tone which conveyed a mix of uncertainty and dismay.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “You are in the correct place for your appointment at 4:30 p.m., and I am indeed Tom Collins Martini, the person with whom that appointment is scheduled.”
“I… ah… thought you’d be… um… smarter looking,” she remarked.
“And how,” I shot back, “does a smart person look?”
“I donno,” she shrugged, “like Steve Jobs or something, I guess.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “I should I go change into a black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers, then strut around pretentiously, spouting a bunch of fatuous, futurist flap-trap. Would that help?”
“That… uh… excuse me,” she responded, “but are you being, like, ironic or something? Because if you are, I don’t get it, because you’re supposed to be, like, the smartest person in Washington DC.”
“Which is a lot,” I quipped, “like being the tallest building in Baltimore.”
“Baltimore?” Poppy’s face scrunched up into a hideous rictus of disgust. “I’ve heard about Baltimore – it’s like, really icky! Worse than Bakersfield. Do they like, have a lot of tall buildings there or something?”
“Not particularly,” I allowed.
“Hmm…” she mused. “Okay, in that case, I guess you’re trying to tell me something about how smart everybody is in Washington, right? Because I work for Apple, and I’m really from Cupertino, actually, born there, in fact, and Silicon Valley has the smartest people in the world.”
“How odd, then,” I observed, “that you would travel all the way here, inside the Beltway, to visit me.”
“Actually,” she clarified, “Tim sent me here to interview lobbyists over on K Street so Apple can influence the right members of Congress in the next administration.”
“And how’s that going?” I inquired.
“The ones we have right now,” she confessed, “aren’t doing all that good at few things like writing IP legislation the way we want it, but generally, they’re doing an okay job. Tim just wants to make sure if Romney wins, he’s not going to mess anything up for Apple. So I was mostly checking out the lobbyists who are good with Republicans, you know. But this morning, he told me to get an appointment with you and ask you about China.”
“Ask me what about China?” I probed.
“Oh… um… about the workers at Foxconn,” she said. “Tim told me they went on strike again today, thousands of them, at the iPhone factory in Sing… um… Shing… er, Zing…”
“The Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou,” I offered.
“Yeah, thanks,” she acknowledged. “The iPhone factory in… uh… that place, over in China. Tim says we’re in a key transition state at Apple in the marketing roll-out for the iPhone 5 and these… uh… problems couldn’t come at a worse time. Um… do you suppose those Chinese workers know that, and that’s why they went on strike now instead of, like, some other time, you know?”
“That’s very doubtful,” I flatly stated.
“Oh really?” Poppy challenged. “And how come?”
“Because the workers in those Foxconn factories all either live in slums with no electricity and no telecommunications, or, if they are lucky, like the ones in Zhengzhou, they live in huge barracks and high rise blocks that Foxconn built and controls completely.”
“So?” Poppy’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “What does that prove?”
“That Foxconn doesn’t let news about Apple’s marketing, stock performance, iPhone prices or anything else concerning Apple get into their factories or the people who work there. Therefore, it’s highly improbable that thousands of people on the floors of Foxconn factories in Zhengzhou knew enough to conclude today would be the best time to strike. Furthermore, labor at Foxconn is nowhere near well organized enough to communicate the announcement for a strike and then coordinate subsequent actions in such a manner.”
“All right then,” she demanded, “if what you’re saying is true, then what’s the real explanation?”
“That the workers are reacting spontaneously,” I responded.
“Oh, come on,” she snickered derisively, “you mean, they’re all reacting at once to get more health insurance, bigger pensions, longer vacations or something?”
“In a place like Communist China,” I informed her, “factory workers most definitely do not go on strike for more health insurance or bigger pensions.”
“And how do you know that?” Poppy objected.
“Because,” I explained, “in Communist China, factory workers don’t have health insurance and they don’t get pensions, either.”
“Okay,” she sighed, “then what – they want more time off?”
“Madame,” I continued, “in a place like Communist China…”
“Don’t call me ‘madame,’ okay?” Poppy interrupted. “You call little old ladies ‘madame,’ you know? You don’t call women my age ‘madame,’ it’s weird.”
“Very well, then, Ms. Stackpush,” I pressed on, “in places like Communist China…”
“Hey, don’t call me ‘Ms. Stackpush,’ either,” she complained. “That sounds like you’re a college provost and I’m a… sophomore or something on academic probation! Call me ‘Poppy,’ – that’s my name, okay?”
“Certainly,” I persisted. “Poppy, in a place like Communist China…”
“No, no,” she insisted, “don’t call me ‘Poppy,’ either – you’re so… East Coast… that’s it, just totally East Coast… and when you say it, it sounds really creepy!”
At that point, her iPhone 5 played the Justin Bieber As Long As You Love Me ringtone. She answered and spoke for twenty-six minutes and eleven seconds with someone who was, it appeared, a female friend, about a variety of subjects, beginning with where she was, what she was doing, why she was doing it, who I am, why she was talking to me, what I jerk I am, what a bunch of jerks the people in Washington DC are, and what a bunch of jerks everybody on the East Coast turned out to be, and why they’re a bunch of jerks, including how they dress, what they eat, how they talk, and their tastes in music, television, YouTube videos, online games and movies. Poppy then moved on to discuss what her interlocutor was doing, why they were doing that, when they would be done, what they planned to do afterwards, when she, Poppy, would be returning to California, what her plans were when she arrived, which cute guys she had met in Washington DC (none), what cool clothes could be bought in Washington DC (none), where a decent pair of shoes is available in Washington DC (nowhere), did her iPhone Maps work okay in Washington DC (never speak ill of Apple, it seems – she rapidly changed the subject to how all the restaurants in Washington DC are totally lame and serve terrible food, so who cares if you can’t find them anyhow?). The conversation then moved on to when would she start tweeting again this afternoon, because she hadn’t done so in over an hour, when would she update her Facebook page since she hadn’t done so since this morning, did she know that somebody named Trevor (presumably her boyfriend) has been sexting somebody named Brittany; what a [expletive] Brittany is, what a slut Brittany is, what a sloppy drunk Brittany is, how big Brittany’s backside is, how small Brittany’s chest is, how dingy Brittany’s teeth are and hasn’t she ever heard about whitening anyway; how dorky Brittany’s split-ended hairstyle is; and, how Brittany’s such a hopeless dweeb, she went out an bought an Android phone; and, of course, how bad Android phones suck, why they suck, how stupid people who buy Android phones are, how clueless people who buy Android phones are, and how Brittany buying one just proves how stupid and clueless Brittany is.
I have little doubt that the conversation would have continued even longer, but suddenly, Poppy announced, “Oh, crap, my battery’s almost dead! I’ll call you back later,” and quickly grabbed an iPhone charger from her purse. “Where?” Poppy implored, looking around anxiously, an iPhone 5 in her left hand and the charger in her right.
“Over there,” I pointed behind the couch. “Just follow the floor lamp cord to the outlet.”
“Well,” she huffed, obviously a bit irritated by inconvenience, as she sat again in the chair directly in front of my desk, “as you can see, I’ve been really, really busy.”
“Quite,” I agreed. “So, as I was saying, in places like Communist China, workers don’t hold organized strikes because they want more benefits or child care and so forth. They strike spontaneously in response to unreasonable, unbearable, inhuman demands made upon them to manufacture products like the iPhone 5.”
“Tim says all those workers are peasants from the Chinese countryside who are glad to have jobs that pay fifty-seven dollars a week, and that fifty-seven dollars is one hell of a lot of money in China, too, even if somebody has to work six and a half days of that week to get it,” she protested. “He says that if they didn’t have jobs at Foxconn, they’d all be up to their butts in cold, stinking water fertilized with pee and poo, knee deep in rice paddy mud getting eaten alive by leeches and they’re damn lucky to sit on nice, dry butts in a nice, clean factory making iPhone 5’s instead.”
“Few of us here in Washington would be terribly surprised to hear that’s what Tim Cook really believes,” I assured her. “But according to what can be determined outside of China, the current Foxconn strike was the upshot of a conflict between the workers who make the iPhones and the workers who inspect them. It seems that Foxconn management, in response to… ahem, well, in response to orders from Apple, Inc., took steps to increase the level of inspection scrutiny…”
“We had to,” she interjected. “Tim says we were getting complaints about product quality from our customers! If you pay six hundred and forty-nine dollars for an iPhone 5, you have a right to expect the highest quality!”
“No one would argue with that,” I conceded. “And increasing the level and intensity of product inspection is definitely an essential part of the solution. But you don’t do that alone. You don’t do it without also either increasing the number of workers making the product or slowing down the assembly lines a sufficient amount to allow the existing work force to produce higher quality iPhones.”
“But wouldn’t hiring more workers or slowing down the assembly lines cut into Apple’s profits?” Poppy argued.
“Do you know,” I sought to verify, “how much it costs Apple to manufacture the iPhone 5?”
“Um… no… I don’t,” she admitted.
“It costs Apple two hundred and nine dollars to manufacture an iPhone 5 at a Foxconn factory in China,” I informed her, “while they retail for at least five hundred dollars and often sell for more than seven hundred.”
“Okay,” she nodded, “and that’s why Apple is the biggest, most profitable corporation in history.”
“Come now,” I prodded, “isn’t there enough room in a two hundred and forty percent markup for a little mercy, for a little humanity, for a display of somewhat less naked greed? Between manufacturing costs and minimum retail, Apple makes a margin of two-hundred and ninety-one dollars on every iPhone 5 it sells. But Apple spends over fourteen dollars per iPhone 5 just advertising them…”
“Who told you that?” Poppy shouted.
“And another twenty in shipping, handling and retail overhead…”
“That’s proprietary!” Poppy yelled. “You’d better not tell anyone! And besides, I think it’s more than that, anyway!”
“Apple and Foxconn,” I cautioned, “cannot continue treating Chinese workers as if they were robots. You have to realize, these are people, not machines.”
“We know that!” Poppy barked. “And we also know that assembling iPhones using Chinese people is cheaper than assembling iPhones using Japanese robots! And that’s the reason we do it!”
“The fact remains, if Apple would just spend another eight or ten lousy bucks manufacturing the iPhone 5 in the first place,” I persisted, “China – or the Foxconn factories, anyway – would be a Workers’ Paradise beyond Chairman Mao Zedong’s wildest dreams.”
“I knew it,” she accused, “you’re a Communist!”
“No,” I rejoindered, “but Apple does business with people who call themselves Communists. Look, we’re talking about paying an additional five to seven percent to make widgets that…”
“Don’t call the iPhone 5 a widget!” Poppy railed. “The iPhone 5 is special! The iPhone 5 is unique! And the iPhone 5 is patented! It’s patented up the wazoo! The iPhone 5 is high tech, high profile, high impact and high margin! It’s…”
Just then, her iPhone 5 played its high annoyance ring tone once again, at which she bolted up and ran to answer it with a response that would have made Professor Ivan Petrovich Pavlov extremely proud. Then she yakked on it without pause until her time expired, at which point I dropped a hint by getting up and walking out the door.
“Gretchen,” I requested of my private secretary as I entered the reception area, “though the consultation is concluded, our client remains engaged in a cell phone conversation in my office. Would you please go in there and keep an eye on her so she doesn’t steal anything? Meanwhile, I’m going out for a drink.”
“Sure, Mr. Collins,” Gretchen said with a sympathetic smile. “But if she’s still here when you get back, you will help me throw her out, won’t you?”
“If she’s still here when I get back,” I promised, “I’ll call the police and have her ejected for loitering.”