It started three years ago. There were new needs - summer, winter, evening wear, casual wear. Lots of new 'focus areas' to cater to. Plus the availability of budget on tap meant hours spent on shopping websites scouring for deals.
Partnerships were forged with the best websites to stay abreast of the latest styles in town. Some shirts were brought in temporarily on trial but most of them made it to the wardrobe because there was money to be spent and credit points to be earned.
Before long, there were enough in the wardrobe to go a full three months without the need for laundry. Every department had excess in resources - The evening wear section had multiple dark blue shirts. There was a backup maroon shirt with a slightly different weave pattern. Suddenly the shirts were competing for the top drawer fearing getting overlooked in the melee of similar options available. if this was not enough, the wardrobe was then filled with colorful boxes with labels to segregate the apparel. This lead to more shirts getting piled on just to get the boxes looking full.
A couple of years passed. The growth in the collection never slowed... the number was steadily increasing. Trial shirts were still getting inducted into the wardrobe full time.
And then it happened.
The budget suddenly vanished. It was felt the inventory had gotten out of hand. A suitcase materialized and there was a demand from the forces that be - all shirts must be packed in it. There was no way the whole wardrobe would fit and the there was slow realization all around on what that meant - reductions.
It was time for some high level strategy to get the situation under control. The boxes came to the rescue by employing utilization and performance mapping for the shirts. Bell curves and performance matrices were drawn up to measure performance of everything in the wardrobe. A slip in quality was not to be tolerated. The ones that were worn the most and were worn out were moved the the lower box. Some made it to the moderate bucket. Only the ones that had the best fabric and stitching and which were in constant use were sent to the top drawer, the most easy to approach. Suits and blazers were exempt for now. This exercise was to focus on shirts only.
Some had special utility - the shirt that nailed the first visa interview, the one that was worn for a couple of special occasions, and one that had a tear in the sleeve but was instrumental in getting a date; these were spared the lower bin and accomodated up top.
With the sorting and strategizing completed, it was time for the purge.
The first to go were the ones that did the heavy lifting - the worn out ones. They were no longer scalable and were bad for events. The exotic ones made it out safe.
It took three years for the first signs of buyer's remorse but the purge took place in weeks. Were the shirts at fault?
Note : The title is an allusion to 'No Country for Old Men', a cult movie with a theme that suggests the nature of evil has changed, and old value systems no longer apply.
