Richard Greedmore, CEO of MegaCorp Unlimited, had one guiding principle: the dividend must go up. It didn’t matter if the company was selling actual products or just the illusion of productivity—shareholders needed their quarterly dopamine hit.
One crisp morning, as Richard strutted out of his 97th-floor office (which had a view of the poor, for motivational purposes), he spotted a homeless man outside the building fumbling with a cup of change. A nickel rolled away, followed by a rogue dime. Richard’s eyes widened.
“Loose capital!” he gasped.
Without hesitation, he dove from the steps like a linebacker chasing a bonus. He snatched the nickel mid-roll and tackled the dime just before it hit the gutter. Passersby watched in horror and confusion as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wrestled a penny from a pigeon.
“Every cent counts!” he shouted, holding the coins aloft like trophies. “This is shareholder value!”
He rushed back inside, burst into the finance department, and slammed the coins on the table.
“Add this to the dividend pool. We’re going up 0.0000000003% this quarter!”
The CFO blinked. “Sir, that’s... less than the cost of the paper we’d need to announce it.”
“Then announce it digitally!” Richard barked. “We’ll save on toner!”
From that day forward, MegaCorp instituted the “Street Sweep Initiative,” where interns were deployed to scour sidewalks for spare change. The company’s stock rose 0.0001%, and Richard was hailed as a visionary.
Meanwhile, the homeless man was hired as Chief Revenue Scout, earning minimum wage and stock options—vested over 97 years.