April 19, 1989
Dear Everyone:
Today is the anniversary of the first day of the First American Revolutionary War. Yesterday was the anniversary of the San Francisco Shake and Bake. Or, as Herb Caen put it, “The only fire ever to register 8.3 on the Richter Scale.”
Happy Anniversary.
I spent an exhausting morning pushing Savings Bonds. I have 18 people (including myself) to convince to either sign up or increase their deductions. Actually, it may be 17. One person seems to have left the company, but her co-workers are being so discreet about it that I can’t find out if she quit (or got fired) or simply transferred to somewhere else. I have to talk to her (former) boss this afternoon to get the straight dope.
I’ve already spoken with all but one of the other 17 at least once, but I’ll have to follow up on most of them. The toughest was the head of the Credit Union. He started out with “maybe you can convince me.”
So, I went all the way through my pitch, with him smiling and nodding along the way; then when I’d run out of things to say (how much can you say about Savings Bonds?), he said that he still wasn’t going to sign up for them – but had I ever considered working for the Credit Union?
He liked my pitch! I should have said, “Make me an offer.”
I’ve also been following up on last February’s follow up on last October’s Destruction Review. People really don’t want to make decisions about their boxes. That’s why they sent them to the Records Center in the first place: so they wouldn’t have to decide about throwing stuff away. Think of the Records Center as a sort of interim waste basket.
Speaking of waste baskets, I went to Costco last Monday. I bought a box of waste basket bags – 500 count. I wrote the date on the box. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to go through 500 medium size garbage bags. The other thing I got done last Monday, besides getting through a lot of deferred viewing on the VCR, was to clean out my box of newspapers. I let them pile up until they bump into the bottom shelf in the pantry, then I take them across the street to the collection site. The hard part, of course, is getting them all into the car to take them across the street. When you pick up a handful, and the next headline you see in the box reads “Bush Wins It – Big Margin” and you have to look at the date to see if they’re talking about the election or the primary, you know that you’ve been keeping your newspapers too long.
The reason I was able to get all this done on Monday was because I’d taken Monday as a vacation day. I was supposed to take NEXT Monday off, but there’s a meeting with ETD (“Enabling Technogiggles Department”) that I have to attend and next Monday seems to be the only time that all of the participants can get together; so I switched the dates. I’ll know more about ETD next week.
I’ve moved working on my Letter to lunch time on Wednesdays instead of Thursdays because I’m too tired after the Thursday Morning Meeting that we have every week to write anything coherent. Keeping up with “Holtz” is like mentally chasing a squirrel. A very energetic squirrel.
Last week we moved at a pretty fair clip. We got through not one, but two scenarios. “Holtz” seems to think that if we can just cover any and all bases, make the program as complex as possible, the computer will do everything but make lunch for us. He doesn’t seem to realize that if the system is as complex as he wants it to be, it’ll paralyze itself.
Oh well, life goes on. I brought the last of “Jeannie’s” 3,650 pennies, 120 nickels and 50 dimes into the Credit Union last Friday. Which means my savings account is $47.50 richer.
Maybe I should use it to buy a Bond.
Love, as always,
Pete
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