The secret of good comedy: timing

Jimmy Huddersfield, lately our Stock Procurement Manager, has been retired a week now, with no visible likelihood of his being replaced. So it's been decided that now would be a good moment at which to start spending the book fund, which has been kept on ice for the past five months while management team decided how it was going to get spent. I walked into the end of what was obviously a long and very acrimonious conversation between T. Aldous and the accession team:

"You knew when Jimmy was retiring, so why didn't you get all this lot ordered when he was still around to get it done?"

"Management Team were discussing the best way to spend the money so we couldn't do it while Jimmy was here."

"Well, how are you going to spend the money?"

"We're not sure yet. I've got some ideas that I want to talk through with Mary when she gets back from holiday."

"You could buy some Balkan trade directories. That would soon solve the problem."