Strange Travel Adventures

One of my weirdest travel adventures took place in Chicago. A group of us had flown out early in the day for a meeting with a Chicago company. We were met at the airport by representatives of the Chicago company and taken immediately to our hotel right on the airport grounds. Told that our rooms were not ready yet (as expected), we checked in and checked our luggage. Next, we were taken for an exciting ride in their company helicopter around the city of Chicago, zooming in on buildings and waving to people in office windows. Funny, I am afraid (but brave) of airplanes, but love helicopters. After the "attack the Sears Tower" episode, we were flown out of town to company headquarters for our meetings. As night fell we, of course, had to go out to dinner at a fancy Chicago restaurant. (Oh, the travails of company life.) It was11:30PM or later when we returned to the hotel. A bellman met us at the door and took our checks for our luggage. He came back with it piled on a cart and led each of us to our room. He told me that my room had been changed and traded the key I had for a new one. It was a comfortable room and I slept well that night. But the next morning when it came time to check out, the stereotypical gentleman behind the desk downstairs told me that they had no record of my being at the hotel. After much discussion including my suggestion, rejected. he go see that the room had been used, I wrote my name and business address on a slip of paper and left to catch my plane home.

Several days later at work I received a letter from American Express. It’s said that I had a guaranteed reservation at that hotel but had not used it. Therefore, I would be charged one night room rate. I called both American Express and the hotel and we finally decided, “what the heck” just let American Express charge me and let’s not bother to figure out what happened.

This worked for everyone except the company accountants. When I tried to explain it to them, they threw up their hands and said, “Oh for heaven’s sake, just give us a simple, logical lie, and don’t confuse us with the facts.” I did, but I avoided that hotel from then on.

Over decades of corporate existance, among the conclusions I drew were that accountants will take more shortcuts than a flock of geese.

Executive Training

The following paragraph was dictated using iListen software I received for Christmas. It's great fun seeing what a mush-mouth I must be and correcting all my errors. (Everytime I say "All", the computer thinks I say, "Old". Is there a message there?)


If you strive to be a successful executive, it is best not to be funny. A new technician arrived one morning and I assigned him to a chemist for training. Early that afternoon I saw the chemist standing idly by a lab bench with this new technician standing equally idly beside him. I went up to the chemist and said "What are you going?" The chemist replied that he was waiting for an adhesive to dry. I asked how long he thought that might take. He said that he thought about two hours. I said, "So you are doing nothing and you are teaching your new technician how to do that? I suspect he learned that before today." (Tough talk, huh?) Instead of the remorseful answer I expected , they both burst out laughing. I had great difficulty with them from then on. They couldn't seem to take me seriously.

Surprise Motivation

It was a dark and stormy night … NOT. Actually, it was a crisp cold, sunny Saturday afternoon. It was after football season and before baseball season. With no lawn to mow nor garden to plow and nothing to watch on television, I was sitting at the kitchen table making idle conversation with my wife. I decided to clean out my wallet. My credit cards, membership cards, gas cards, were soon spread out on the table while I decided which should go back to the wallet and which would do just as much good in my bureau drawer. (Now the following will give you a clue how long ago it was.) My wife looked at the table and said, “Why is your ESSO card different than mine?” She got out her card and we studied them for an embarrassing long while before we noticed the obvious difference. Hers had someone else's name on it.

We lived in a fairly small town and so I took a chance and looked in the phone book. Sure enough, he was listed. I called, but he wasn’t home so I explained to his wife that apparently the cards had been switched at a gas station. (In N.J. you weren’t allowed to pump gas for yourself. You stayed in the car and an attendant took your card, pumped the gas, and then gave you back the card. If two or more were getting gas at the same time, cards could easily get switched.) She said she would have her husband call when he got home. But he didn’t call; he arrived at the front door soon after, all flustered. He had my wife’s card and we switched. But he wasn’t through. He had his Esso bills for the last two months with him and nothing would do but that we figure out who owed who, how much.

The next month he was back again with his bill and we settled up again. The third time he came it was to say that there were no charges on his bill that weren’t his. He wanted to see our bill to be sure that none of his charges were on it. There weren’t. I was by then a little annoyed that he had made such a big deal out of a few dollars. Gas was cheap then. I made a not-too-friendly comment about being glad we had settled the mix-up without having gotten Esso involved in it. He practically gushed about how happy he was. He turned to leave, then returned and standing very close, in a hushed voice, he said, ”You see, I am a manager in the credit department of ESSO”.


PS For those reading this outside the US. The brand name "Esso" was changed to "Exxon" in 1972.

Hide in Public

More Than Donuts just posted a beautiful piece about New York City. She relates how NY residents see the city differently (or not at all) depending on their state of mind. Thus there are a limitless number of NY’s. Add to those, the NY observed by the commuters at various times of their days, and the sensations that New York generates are infinite.

I think the best memories may arise from little out of place things one sees, knows they are there, and accepts as a part of the city. A fellow named Joe and I used to walk downtown once or twice a week. We went south on Park Ave to about 34th St. Then cross town to Herald Sq. and duck into the Hudson Tubes to Jersey. On the cross-town street, I think it was 34th, there was a large, staid, old bank. Beside the road they had trees planted in very large containers (pots). One evening we noticed a small marijuana plant which had taken root in one of the containers. We amused ourselves by wondering if “pot” planted in a “pot” qualified as a “potted plant” -- and variations. All summer we would walk by that plant and occasionally comment on its growth. Many thousands of New Yorkers walked by that plant every day. Probably a conservative 95% knew what a marijuana plant looked like. I hesitate to understate an estimate of the percentage that used pot. But yet it grew undisturbed. Did it suggest that that the locals believed that rights were attached to “As he sows, so shall he reap?” Some one sowed and it was his right to reap?

Anyway, come fall, one week the plant was gone. In a small town you might ask around and try to determine who did it. In NY, it was gone and that was the end of the story.

Career Buster

After my first promotion in Research and Development, I was in charge of a group responsible for formulating laundry detergents. In those days two factors determined the success of a detergent. First, of course, was how well it cleaned dirty clothes and second was how well it sudsed up. This was before automatic washers and back then lots of suds were a virtue. Before long a new machine, the front-loading Bendix, appeared on the scene. Simultaneously, the low sudsing detergent "All" had a market no other popular detergent could touch. Those were fighting words and we had to hustle to develop a competitive product. When we thought we had one, the top brass was invited to watch a demonstration early one morning. My boss’ boss’ boss’ boss was to do the demonstration in the “laundry lab” where we had a big assortment of washing machines. It was a big moment for me because the plan included introducing me to the CEO and the other big- wigs.

Matching loads of laundry were put in our pair of Bendix machines. "All" was added to one machine and our new wonderful formula to the other. Hot water was added to both and the wash cycles started. On schedule, the foam rose to the middle of the widows. Not scheduled, the foam rose to the top of the window of our product’s machine. The suds kept rising and soon were pouring out the little hole on top where the detergent was normally put in. As the suds started to cover the floor around the Bendix, the CEO and his cohorts quietly left the lab and crossed the bridge to their offices.

Such embarrassment does not go down well with the semi-brass who started a big investigation. Our formula easily proved its innocence in more tests where it behaved as we intended. After many days, this was what was discovered. The laundry lab was in a factory building. Down stairs were a variety of filling lines that were staffed by women. Business was good and the lines were running a night shift. Some of the women considered it a perk to bring their family laundry to work with them. During their breaks or before their shift started, they would sneak up to the laboratory and use the machines to do the week’s laundry. Some gal had decided to try out a new Bendix the night before our dog and pony show. She didn’t know that it required a special detergent and grabbed a box of Tide off the shelf. No one thought to clean out the machines in the morning and BINGO! We had a foaming Bendix. I was far enough down the food chain to think it was pretty clever of the production ladies and to laugh about it. But, oh, the inter-departmental wars that broke out. Thus do careers collapse!

Taking Home Company Pencils and...

Back in the 1950’s corporate life more closely resembled the ideal “one big happy family” than later when computers largely replaced face-to-face communications. Personalities played a bigger role and, perhaps, more real friendships were formed. At least, I will use that as my excuse for the favors that were traded back and forth between departments. For instance, my section had lots of product where the packages were opened, but only a dollop of product removed for testing. There was no accountability and that product found its way home in many a briefcase. I once asked the engineers to make me a little dolly that a two-draw file could ride on. I got a lot of phone inquiries and I could pull the file over close when on the phone – and push it away when I needed the floor space. Now visualize me involved in a diligent search with the file more or less between my legs, feet close together – sole to sole. Now visualize me pulling the top drawer all the way out and the whole business tipping forward and the bottom drawer sliding out and slicing both my ankles. Next, picture my secretary driving me home and then to my doctor’s for stitches in both ankles.

After that adventure I established that I was not a fast learner. We had purchased a new home and the lawn had been seeded after we moved in. It was a hot summer and it was a struggle to get that seed growing into a lush lawn. It took lots of expensive watering to achieve that objective. The next summer it continued to drink water at an embarrassing rate. It was then my mouse trap mind snapped. There was a beautiful little creek that ran by the back and side of our property. Its babbling was a delight to go to sleep to, but all that “free” water was just running down to where ever water runs down to from New Jersey hills. I hustled into the engineers and described my idea. Within a week I had a small pump complete with electric motor delivered to the house. Whee! showers of free (almost, water cost more per hour than electricity) water poured onto my thirsty lawn.

Again, my calculations had missed a crucial item. Where did that pretty creek flow before it got to my house? To this day I’m not sure, but it was certainly polluted! . The lush lawn turned brown and never, as long as we lived there, did it regain its pre-pump glory.

The pump did come in handy years later. Our beautiful babbling brook became a raging river during a torrential summer storm. Thr river missed a turn and its course was diverted to one that took it in our back door and out the front door. But that is another story.