Labor Pains

"I'm sorry Willy, I just can't seem to make it work."

Sir Truus was sitting in a chair in front of the desk of Willy Wonka; beside him sat Bob Wilkinson. He hated to admit defeat in anything, but it was better to break the news to his senior partner now before any more time was wasted. "I've tried every trick I can think of, every trick anyone has though of, and I still keep failing."

"If you can't do it, then it's a thing that can't be done" Willy consoled him. "I know you tried your best. Throughout history man has always wanted to take wing and fly, but science had to catch up with that dream before it could happen. It did lead to some spectacular failures, though. We haven't always come out on top with some of our own efforts" he said with a wry smile.

"I know, but it's frustrating. I can feel how to do it, I can even see it in my head but there simply isn't a way to control all of the necessary operations. Even the state of the art Siemens System 4003 we bought can't handle it. Without automating the entire factory, we're still stuck with having to use people as workers."

"And with those workers" Bob chipped in "come the spies. We can't tell them apart from the honest workers when we hire them. Every time we find one, they send in one or two more."

Willy rubbed his eyes. "I know, I know. We've spent all this time building up a wonderful company, inventing new products, creating unique manufacturing processes and forging business partnerships only to have it slowly stolen bit by bit, like a family of mice secreting away seeds out of a farmer's bag. I just don't know what else we can do. Now that you've made me senior partner and the de facto leader of the company, I feel like it's up to me to come up with a solution."

"You don't regret being the leader now, do you?" Sir asked. "Sometimes you act a little crazy."

"We can tell our families that we have to take up more of the load from you. They'll understand" Bob added.

"No, no, I won't have that. You both have swell families and need to spend time with them. No, we agreed before I'm the face of the company as much as I'd prefer not to be. You'd close yourself in a room and rave a little too if you were in my position; like a boiler, you have to let off some steam every now and then unless you really want to have problems. It's not that I hate the good and honest workers that we have, but the bad eggs sneak in with them. It's a nightmare I have every time I fall asleep, and that's a rare enough event as it is." The last few years had proven to be a time of great opportunity and expansion, but with it the competition took every chance to steal Willy's innovative ideas and duplicated them for their own companies. The strain and pressure was such that Willy occasionally ranted in the privacy of his office just to let off pressure; it was never directed at anyone because Willy was not the belittling type.

"And we can't use robots or full automation" Sir noted.

"It's the people" Bob mused out loud. "Too bad we can't ship the work out to Loompaland to have it done. They're hard workers and could really use the jobs."

"What is Loopaland?" Willy asked.

"Not Loopaland...Loompaland. Home of a tribe called Oompa-Loompas. They're a small tribe, and under severe threat of being killed off. I was just reading about them in National Geography Weekly."

"Why are they threatened?" Willy asked, interested. "I don't read the papers any more, the news in there makes a person just want to crawl into bed and not come out again sometimes. Well, unless it's an article about bedbugs or something. Or toxic pillowcases. You were saying?"

Bob went on. "Well, these Oompas live in a kind of remote wild country with a lot of dangerous animals with names like Wangdoodles and Snozzwangers. There are some areas that aren't so bad, but the wildlife has pushed the Oompas out to the border of some rather desolate areas. They're actually prey for some of these beasts, and being pacifists they're getting picked off rather than fighting back. Like seeds out of that bag you were talking about."

"How do we even know about them? I've never heard of them" Sir asked.

"I guess there was this flower company called Gala Spectrum that was researching some new products when they came across the Oompas by accident. They notified some scientists that went and made contact with the tribe. It was all in the article. Do you want me to bring in the magazine? Willy? WILLY!"

Willy snapped out of his thoughts. "Magazine? Oh, the article. Yes, certainly. Sounds like fascinating reading. Living in a world of pure imagination won't work if you're on the menu for dinner. They're hard workers and need some help?" His mental gears began turning with the problem. "I've got an idea that I'd like to throw at you two..."

...

Three weeks later Willy returned to the factory and rejoined Sir and Bob in his office.

"It's set up; the Oompas are in complete agreement with the arrangements. It's going to work out even better than we imagined, I think. Did you know that they practically worship chocolate?" Willy was giddy with excitement.

"That sure works out" Bob said. "What do we need to do?"

"There are a million things to do, but we can't do them all at once; I've already arranged transportation here when the time comes. Let me pass on a few things to you now that I've met them. They're all very short, much shorter than you Sir. They all have green hair, so don't be surprised. You won't be able to tell the difference between the men and the women at first; I still make a mistake sometimes. And don't be shocked when their skin turns orange."

"You mean they get sunburned easily?" asked Sir. "Or do you plan on trying to get rid of those last truckloads of Tang?"

"No. Their skin starts out like ours, but when they get enough chocolate it turns orange for some reason. They have a saying that 'An orange Oompa is a happy Oompa', at least until he's been eaten apparently."

"I can accept that" Bob said. "Not the getting eaten part, but the color doesn't matter to me. As long as they're good people, I'll get along with them fine."

"Me too" said Sir. "Any engineers in the bunch?"

"I don't know, that's a little too specific for what I found out so far. But that's good, I knew you both would be okay with them. But here's the real shocker; we're closing down the factory indefinitely."

"WHAT?" they both exclaimed at once.

"Think about it. Everything is going to have to be retooled for their dimensions, and we're going to need places for them to live on the factory grounds and be able to take care of all their needs; food, shelter, clothing, education and training. If we throw them out into the world their culture will disappear almost overnight. Speaking of culture, they absolutely love music and practically went bananas over my whistle. Well, actually they've never heard of bananas before but they went snozzleberries over it. Both of you will probably have songs written about you within a day of them being here. Might be a special dance to go with it too, hard to say."

"How long?" Bob asked.

"The songs usually last about three minutes or so" Willy answered.

"No Willy, I mean how long will we be closed?"

"No idea. As long as it takes, but it's going to be a while. We'll get everything ready and then bring them in under cover of night with our trucks. We'll be the only people that will know they're here when the time comes, plus a few extra people that we trust; maybe after everything settles down we can have a press release or something. In the meantime I have to get accounting to get all the accounts closed out until further notice. And legal will have to get involved I suppose. Oh, so much to do..."

"...so little time" Sir and Bob raced to finish the sentence before Willy mangled it again.

"I do seem to get that wrong quite a bit" Willy grinned. "I'm sure you both have a couple people you can trust completely to help you get things done. Remember, secrecy as much as possible while we get things ready for our new phase. I think I've got a few new ideas for the factory while we're redesigning it."

"Do you have people you can trust?" Bob asked.

Willy put his hands on both their shoulders. "I'm looking at the two most important ones. Oh, and Sir" Willy continued as he turned directly to his friend. "I got an idea for something while I was gone that you're going to love. How would you go about making an elevator that can go to any room in the factory at the push of a button?"

Sir's face was overcome with an enormous grin as his brain began to assemble bits and pieces together. "Let's see. First, you'd need to..."

The End

A/N: I really liked the computer scene in the movie, but didn't want to show Sir having some of the same frustration so it's just mentioned in passing.

This story wasn't planned, but I wanted one more to fit between the fruitcake and the movie. If that makes no sense, refer to the Series section of my profile. In any case I could have elaborated on my imagined meeting of Willy and the Oompas in their homeland but that wasn't the crux of the story and would have taken up too large a balance of the tale.