“While the interdepartmental assistant’s distributing the forms, I want to hear your input. What else can we do to make HiTek a better place?”

Eliminate staff meetings, I thought, but didn’t say it. I may not be as well versed as Gina is in Meeting Survival, but I do know enough not to raise my hand. All it does is get you put on a committee.

Apparently everybody else knew it, too.

“Staff Input is the cornerstone of HiTek,” he said.

Still nothing.

“Anybody?” Management said, looking GRIM. He brightened. “Ah, at last, someone who’s not afraid to stand out in a crowd.”

Everybody turned to look.

It was Flip. “The interdepartmental assistant has way too many duties,” she said, flipping her hank of hair.

“You see,” Management said, pointing at her. “That’s the kind of problem-solving attitude that GRIM is all about. What solution do you suggest?”

“A different job title,” Flip said. “And an assistant.”

I looked across the room at Dr. O’Reilly. He had his head in his hands.

“Okay. Other ideas?”

Forty hands shot up. I looked at the waving hands and thought about the Pied Piper and his rats. And about hair-bobbing. Most hair fads are a clear case of follow-the-Piper. Bo Derek, Dorothy Hamill, Jackie Kennedy, had all started hairstyle fads, and they were by no means the first. Madame de Pompadour had been responsible for those enormous powdered wigs with sailing ships and famous artillery battles in them, and Veronica Lake for millions of American women being unable to see out of one eye.

So it was logical that hair-bobbing had been started by somebody, only who? Isadora Duncan had bobbed her hair in the early 1900s, and several suffragettes had bobbed theirs (and put on men’s clothes) long before that, but neither had attracted any followers to speak of.