May 23, 1989
Dear Everyone:
I spent Saturday cutting fabric. After 7 hours I had all of the pieces cut out for one (1) suit. It’s amazing how many pieces go together to make up a simple skirt and matching jacket. No wonder they’re so expensive to buy. They’re labor-intensive.
Labor is the right word. Every muscle in my body hurt on Sunday; but the ones in my back and legs hurt more. All that bending, stretching, etc. I even decided to forego riding my exercise bike until last night (no excuse is too small to avoid exercising). I’m at 7200 miles which puts me at about Zhangwei, China. A big country, China. I’ve been peddling through it for quite a while now.
Speaking of peddling, “Tom Harrison”, one of our “CITC” people working on our Schedule and Box Inventory programs isn’t working on them right now because he’s on vacation. And he really and truly IS touring Great Britain on a bicycle. He even stopped by at the London office and met the people that “Melanie” talks with on the telephone. Talking with these people isn’t all that easy because, as a general rule, just when you get to work in the morning, they’re leaving for the day.
We had some visitors yesterday: 13 businessmen and 1 businesswoman from Japan, complete with interpreter. They were here to see examples of Records Management and ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) had asked if we could show them what a really large file room looks like. Nothing makes “Holtz” happier than a chance to show off our systems, especially since he got himself elected president of the local chapter of ARMA.
So we booked a large conference room and “Melanie” ordered coffee, etc. and I arranged for colored viewgraphs for the overhead projector and “Holtz” gave a remarkably un-garbled presentation on “CRMIS” and “IDHS”, possibly because he had to wait for the interpreter to keep up with him. Normally “Holtz” goes off on flights of fancy, or blurts out tons of unnecessary detail which confuses everyone. But this time he was pretty clear. (Or is it just that I’ve heard it all so many times that it makes sense to me even when it doesn’t?)
“Melanie”, who has a network you wouldn’t believe, got Marketing to give us some packages of golf balls with little red, white and blue “Company” logos printed on them. It seems that golf balls are the gift of choice for presenting to Japanese visitors. Golfing is tremendously popular in Japan. But, because the cost is so high, very few people can afford to actually play the game. In fact, some travel agencies offer a package trip to the U.S. that include golf games and the whole package costs less than it does to play in Japan.
So you give a Japanese visitor golf balls that he probably can’t use with the implication that he has impressed you so much that you are sure that he is affluent enough to play golf any time he wants to.
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that Marketing just happens to have all these golf balls on hand to give out at the drop of a hat. All meetings with the Japanese end with an exchange of gifts. “Alma”, “Melanie” and I each received a pearl pendant necklace. “Rowena” missed out because she had to leave early. I didn’t get to see what the guys got because I had to take off to catch my van. Whatever it was, they (the Japanese) must have had a ton of them because they visited all over the Bay Area and they always had exactly the right number of presents per gender per visit.
This is going to have to be a short letter because we’re having a strategy meeting right after lunch to figure out how we’re going to handle ETD (“Enabling Technogiggles Department”).
The only other thing of great importance is that I am FINALLY starting to input “Exploitation’s” Retention Schedule. I only got this assignment last July. It’s going to come as a bit of a shock to some of these people that just because they think their records are terribly important (to them), that doesn’t mean that they’re “Vital-1”.
“Vital-1” means the document is so important that if it disappeared overnight, the entire Company would go crashing through the sidewalk tomorrow never to arise again. Most of what they keep in their offices is much closer to “Junk” than it is to “Vital-1”.
“Jeannie’s” coming tomorrow! Film at eleven.
Love, as always,
Pete
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