CLONING : An Alternative Solution for Outsourcing in a Recessive Economy

Article from Entrepreneur Forever, by Felco Armanias

After my article last issue about the healing, holistic, and productive effects of consuming Tofu, I thought I would turn my attention to some of the more ingenious business ideas that are cropping up all over the place in our current economy.

These are regular small business owners, who, faced with a difficult economy and low sales, have improvised to come out on top.

What follows is my interview with one of these business owners: Layne Huber, owner of a small graphic design company called HuberGraphics, based out of Calgary, Canada.

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Felco: Good morning, and thank you so much for being willing to allow me this interview.

Layne: Hey, no problem. I've read your work before, and I'm happy to help out the small business community in any way I can.

Felco: That's great, and believe me, we all appreciate your attitude. Now, why don't you tell us about this concept of Clone Outsourcing and about its inspiration?

Layne: Well, it was simple really. My company is a sole proprietorship, and while I had a fair amount of work, and the taxes weren't bad, it was still hard to stay on top of everything, and actually move forward as a company. You have to balance development with cash right?

Anyway, I was thinking about how to make it all jive, and that I couldn't really afford to outsource the work, when I saw this ad from the local high school advertising their new cloning program, and it just kinda hit me: Why not clone myself, and get the extra help I needed? Imagine how easy it would be to have a helpers who thought along the same lines as I did, but would be able to concentrate on different areas.

Felco: Wow, I'm impressed! It's takes a certain kind of person to come up with such a concept.

Layne: Thanks.

Felco: So, how many of them are you?

Layne: Five. No, wait . . . Six. Yeah, six of us.

Felco: That's quite a group. How do you differentiate between each of you?

Layne: I admit that that was one thing I hadn't really considered ahead of time. And it took some time to get used to. At first we tried using Superhero names, but that idea wasn't really viable, as everyone wanted to be Batman or Wolverine, and nobody would really settle for Superman or Robin. So instead we kind of just took arbritrary names according to what our focus was in the company.

So, to my right we have Sparky, who is our computer tech guy. . .

Sparky: Yo.

Layne: Monk, Short for Code Monkey, as he works on all our websites.

Monk: Hey.

Layne: English, our writer, and proof-reader.

English: How do you do.

Layne: Then Graphite, our artist, and finally Sahib.

Felco: Sahib? I thought that their names all refered to a certain area in your company.

Layne: Oh, Sahib is in charge of our customer service. Answers the phone mainly.

Felco: I see. But how do you tell each other apart?

Layne: Clothes mostly. We all try to wear something different, and then we have different variations in hair, as well as facial hair. Graphite here has more of a pencil shape soul patch. English is clean shaven, and Sahib has a mustache.

Felco: I see. But as far as I can see, there are only five clones. You said there was a sixth?

Layne: Oh yeah. Him. We don't like to talk about him. He hit it big in a Ponzi Scheme and ended up a millionaire. Left soon after. He was always a bit of a jerk really.

Felco: Ah. Well, I can easily think how this set up would be greatly advantageous. Are there any disadvantages to cloning yourself six times?

Layne: Well, as it turns out, it's a bit illegal and for two reasons:

Firstly, there is some debate about the moral implications of cloning itself. And while it's outlawed in Canada, I personally don't think it's really a problem, as I'm cloning myself. Maybe if it was a cow or sheep or something. Though I wouldn't feel bad about the sheep really. I hate sheep.

And secondly because, as clones, they don't have birth certificates. Only these little tags here that say: "Property of Higgleton High" but for some reason the government won't take them as ID. That means that I'm the only one who has a Social Insurance Number, and thus can legally work. So what we have to do instead, is do it all under the pretense that it's only the one of us that's doing the work.

Therefore we only have one private email address, and have to try to keep track of each others vocabulary and whatnot. If Sahib is going to be using the word "Insepid" a lot, than he has to write it down in a Google Document, which we then all read every week and sync our vocabularies. It also makes relationships difficult, as we can't be more than one person, and thus have to tell each other as much as possible about each day as we can, so we know how to react to circumstances, or conversations we end up in. Usually though, if we make a mistake and repeat something that one of us said the day before, we can just blame a bad memory. Works great.

Felco: Now, what about the possible consequences of making clones of yourself. It seems like in everything I've ever heard or seen, the clones always end up evil and twisted. Does this worry you at all? Are you afraid that one of them might kill you in your sleep and take your place?

Layne: Ha ha! No no, of course not. These fellows are like my brothers. They wouldn't hurt a fly, and they definitely wouldn't hurt me. We're like a hockey team almost, just we run a small business. And of course they don't eat kittens. You can't believe everything you hear.

Felco: Glad to hear it. That puts my mind at ease. I just have one last question. If this cloning outsourcing plan is illegal, aren't you worried about going public with it? Won't you run into some serious backlash?

Layne: Well, originally, Layne wanted the plan to be that we . . .

Felco: Wait. I thought you said you were Layne.

Clone: . . .

Felco: . . .

Clone: You don't understand! He was keeping us under wraps! Do you have any idea how hard it is to feed six people one person's serving of dessert? We had to go public! He was holding us back from tremendous destinies! We had to . . .

Felco: I think this interview is over.

*** Disclaimer***

Despite the nature of this article, I, the author, do not agree with cloning Humans, and never have participated in any way.  I also do not condone the murder of someone else in order to achieve success.