The Competition

Two men, Bob and Bill, were competing for a low-level administrative job at their book distribution company. Their old boss had just retired, and the company was looking to fill the position. The two had basically the same skills, the same seniority, and both were pretty much equally liked by administration and warehouse staff – the latter being what they were. There wasn’t much to choose between the two of them. No one else had applied for the job. The competition could be fierce, if they wanted it to be.

One Competitor

Bob wanted the job. That was for sure. He certainly could use the money, and to kind of retire from all that heavy lifting and loading, although, unobserved, he sometimes used ways of lessening that task so that it was no strain at all. As much as he wanted the job, he did not want to cheat to get it. He had certain abilities that would have made such cheating easy. But he believed in fairness. And using his special gift would not be an act of fairness. He didn’t feel that he could do that, certainly not with Bill

The Other Competitor

Bill very much wanted the job. Not just for the money, not just for the authority it would give him over others, but also for bragging rights at his local bar. That was important to him. When he drank alone, before the others showed up, he tried to think of how best he could sabotage his competitor’s chances of winning. He was a firm believer in the ‘by any means necessary’ approach. His competitor would not suspect a thing

The Week Before the Announcement

The two men had both been interviewed, and both thought that they had done well. They were right. They had. Now they were forced to wait a week before the decision was reached. That was the time when all the administrative players could get together and discuss the matter. They had booked the fancy restaurant down the road for a lunch meeting on the subject. The company would be picking up the bill.

Acts of Sabotage

So Bill planned how best to sabotage Bob’s chances. He figured that if he could rig a spectacular show of Bob’s incompetence, it might just swing the vote in his favour. He was going to cause an avalanche of books to fall down all over the warehouse floor in the area for which Bob was responsible. Bob would get blamed, and Bill would not, could not be suspected.

Everything was ready. One, two, three, go. Bill waited to hear the sound of crashing books. But he heard nothing. He could not understand it. The books should have fallen. He had done what was necessary for that to happen. He would have to try something else, something that would not fail.

One more evening with his being the first to the bar and he came up with an idea that he believed would be foolproof. The company and certainly the administrators were very much against smoking. No employee was allowed to smoke anywhere on company property, and smoking within view of the company building was very much frowned upon as well. Bill would gather some cigarette butts from a hidden alley by the company building, a place where he and others smoked. Then by a means that could not be easily detected, he placed them underneath the table that Bob used as a desk in his section of the warehouse. It was dark and dingy enough there that Bob himself would not notice them. Bill would start a rumour that Bob was smoking at his work-station, and send that rumour as an e-mail that could not be traced to several members of the administrative committee that was making the decision as to who should be promoted. That should work.

A day passed and nothing happened. No administrator came to Bob’s desk to see the planted evidence. That he couldn’t figure. Maybe they were just too lazy to check for themselves. He decided to photograph the butts up close, and then send the picture to the bosses. 

When Bob was taking his break, Bill went to take the picture. But there were no butts there. He knew he had caused the butts to be there. Bob was known to be messy, so he was unlikely to check the appearance of his work-station. As usual, his table/desk was covered with all sorts of papers, old and sadly faded pictures of his wife and children and a few chocolate bar wrappers. But, strangely, there were no cigarette butts beneath the table. It was completely clear and clean down there. 

That evening Bill came up with yet another plan, this one more direct, and, Bill hoped, less likely to fail. He would get Bob to make some anti-administration statements, and tape them while the incriminating words were being spoken. 

The next day Bill walked up to Bob, and asked him whether he had heard anything about who got the job, knowing full well that he had not. Then he asked the leading questions he felt he could get Bob to answer in such a way that he did not have a hope of getting the job.

 “Honestly now, what do you think of the way that they did this. Don’t you think they treated us unfairly by making us wait all this time? Don’t you think that they are generally idiots in how they run things here.”

There was silence at first, very much infuriating Bill. Then Bob spoke, but did not say what Bill wanted him to. He just said “They’re okay. I have no problems with them.”

Bill could not understand it. He had used his best spells to make the books fall, to transport the cigarettes to a space underneath Bob’s desk, and to compel Bob to say something nasty about the administration of the company. But none of the spells had not worked. They had always been successful for him before. Why not now?

Then Bob spoke again. “I could feel with my special senses that you were casting spells against me. I have the same abilities that you have, so I could block all of them.”

Bill stomped away in anger. He was in such haste to leave, he crashed into two of the administrators, knocking them over. He was so mad, he kept on walking, not apologizing or even helping the administrators up. This would count against him at the meeting.

Bob would get the job.

Explanation

You see, Bob and Bill were brothers. And when each one turned twenty one, their father took the coming-of-wizard-age brother aside and told him about his potential for magic and how to activate it. Both brothers were sworn to secrecy, even from each other.