The cashless society

HAVING failed to pay its workers any cash wages for 13 months, the Akhtuba factory in Volgograd decided to pay them for February in kind. Unfortunately for the workers, the kind of product Akhtuba had to hand was “the Adam”, a rubber dildo, into the making of which the firm had diversified in 1993 when it ran out of customers for its marine navigation equipment. Workers who tried to sell their Adams to the local sex shop found out in ten minutes what it had taken their superiors four years to twig: that the market had moved on to electronic vibrators, and inert dildos were unsaleable even in Volgograd.