Jennings entered the boardroom nervously.  Ten men, each old enough to be his grandfather, turned to watch him.  He was acutely aware of how cheap his suit was, how young he looked, how much he shook.  He didn’t recognise any of them.  They floated through life on a different plane to a lowly accounts clerk like him.

Except for Young Mister Jones.  He was Young Mister Jones to everyone, even though he must be in his fifties.  His grandfather had founded the store, his father had overseen its growth in size, and Young Mister Jones had seen it expand into a dozen different cities.  Young Mister Jones toured the shop floor at least once a week.  Woe betide you if there was the slightest thing wrong in your department.  He saw every mispriced item, every crooked tie, every speck of dust.  But how blessed you were if he smiled and talked to you.  How blessed, and how cursed.

Jennings, not for the first time, wished he had kept his mouth shut when Young Mister Jones had asked him what the takings were like.  Surely he had just been making conversation, at a lost as to what to say to an accounts clerk.  Jennings should have just said politely, “Everything is fine, sir.”  Even a silent shrug would have been better.  But, no, he had to open his mouth about his Big Idea, and Young Mister Jones had required him to present it to the board.

But, hidden under the fear, there was elation.  There was the deep-buried ancestor who had screamed down the steppes, revelling in the blood of his enemies.  There was the ambitious merchant who lusted over the chance to make money.  There was the ego that knew that, given the chance, he could be so much more than just an accounts clerk.

“Ah, gentlemen.  This here is ... um ...?”  Young Mr Jones  raised his eyebrows in query.

Jennings opened his mouth and squeaked.  He cleared his throat, and this time managed, “Jennings.”

“This is Jennings, who has a brand new idea on how to make Jones Department Store more money, and I think we’re all in favour of that, eh?”  There was a polite chuckle from the board.   “I’m all for our staff thinking up ideas about the business.  After all, they face the customer much more than we do.”  Young Mister Jones indicated the foot of the long, mahogany table.   “Off you go, young man.  Tell us all about it.”

Jennings walked up to the table, his knees weak with terror.  He placed the briefcase, bought especially for this occasion, on the polished surface and opened the clasp with shaking fingers.  This was it.  He had agonised for days on how to present this idea.  He hoped the approach he had decided on was going to work.

He removed a garish red tie from the case.  “This is a tie that my aunt bought me for Christmas.”

“It’s ... um ... very nice,” ventured one of the board members.

Jennings raised his eyebrows in surprise.  “Do you really think so, sir?  I think it’s hideous.  I mean, I would never wear something like this to work, and, well, it’s not the sort of thing I’d wear in my time off either.”

“We give you fellows time off?” joked someone.  There was another chuckle.  Jennings thought it a little less polite than the one Young Mister Jones elicited.

Jennings dug into his bag again.  “For my birthday she bought me this aftershave.  It smells of, well, it’s meant to smell of flowers, but really it smells like old ladies.  It’s really not what I wanted, but of course, I love her, and she loves me, so we both pretend that it’s just what I always wanted.  But the point is, she has no idea what a young man like me wants as a gift.  How could she?  Similarly, I have no idea what to get her.

“How many of you, gentlemen, have been faced with the quandary of what to buy for a nephew, a granddaughter, even a parent?  You want to get them something that they’ll truly appreciate, but you don’t know what that might be.  These are the nineteen- twenties, gentlemen.  Life, society, the world is changing faster than ever before in the history of mankind.  How can we know what people of a different generation really want?

“So what do we do?  Give them a ten-bob note?  A postal order?”  Jennings was pleased to note a couple of embarrassed looks around the table.  “Though we may mean well, what does that say to little Johnny?  What does he think about his favourite uncle?  ‘He couldn’t be bothered to get me what I wanted,’ that’s what.

“Which brings me to this.  I’ve taken the liberty of making a prototype of my idea.  Jenny ...  I mean, one of my colleagues, she is a bit of an artist and inked up these.”  He passed out the sheets of paper he had prepared.

“I call it, ‘the Gift Voucher!’”  He waited triumphantly, as the board passed the vouchers around the table.

“It’s ... um ... it’s ... nicely drawn,” ventured somebody.

“Yes, but what is it?” asked Young Mister Jones.

“It’s a Gift Voucher, sir.  If someone wants to buy something for a nephew, or someone, and they don’t know what to buy, well, they can buy one of these.”  The board continued to look puzzled.

“We sell them, let’s say, a ten shilling gift voucher.  They give it to their nephew.  The nephew comes into Jones Department Store, and spends it as though it was money.  The nephew gets exactly what he wants, the aunt feels good knowing this, and we get the ten shillings.”

The board members looked at each other, unsure.  Then they turned to Young Mister Jones.

Young Mister Jones looked at Jennings with a puzzled expression, and then began slowly, “So, instead of giving my nephew a ten shilling note, which he can spend in any shop in the land, or a ten shilling postal order, that he can cash at any post office, I give him this voucher, that he can spend nowhere else but in this store?”  Jennings nodded eagerly.

“Sorry, young man.  I don’t get it.  I can think of no earthly reason why I would buy one of these instead of just dropping half a crown into his hand.  But thank you so much for sharing your idea.  Good effort.”

And the board smiled indulgently at Jennings as he blushingly gathered his things and left