Letter to the Head Man

11-8-76

 

The Head Man
National Linen Service
P.O. Box 5324
Dallas, TX 75222

Dear Head Man:

I am writing directly to you, whoever you are, to register a complaint against your firm and to terminate the service you have provided to us for the past two and a half years.  I could easily have called to ask your name, but, judging from past experiences when I tried to deal with your people on the phone, I doubt it would have been worthwhile.

 On October 14, I called to inquire about the monthly bill you sent.  It was for $26.25.  We had been charged $5.25 for five service calls, each of which involved delivery of one toll towel.  I questioned the amount because previously we had been charged $1.52/visit and our monthly bill ran in the neighborhood of $6-7.00.  I called about noon and was put through to your bookkeeping department.  A woman answered and listened to my inquiry, after which she tried to connect me with the service department.  They were apparently out to lunch, however, and she assured me that she would have them call me right after lunch.  When I hadn't received any word by 3:30 p.m., I called again and this time I got through to the service department.  The man listened to my story again, said he would have to go through the records and look it up, but promised to call me back.

By Tuesday of the following week, I had still received no reply, so I called again. The receptionist at first said the head bookkeeper was in a meeting and would call me back, but I insisted that I needed to talk to somebody right then.  The same woman I had talked to the first time then came on the line and said, " What is your problem, sir?"

I explained it again to her, and she said she would send a salesman out to our shop, "either today or tomorrow," to straighten things out.

Three days later, on October 22, the salesman had still not shown up, but I happened to be present when the delivery was made.  As luck would have it, (at least I thought it was lucky), a supervisor was accompanying the delivery man.  I cornered him, showed him the bill, and once again explained the story.

"We have started charge a $5.00 minimum charge," he said.

"Why weren't we informed of this in advance?" I asked. We received no notice of any increase.

I told him that it wasn't worth $26.00 per month for four towels and I said we wanted to terminate the service. He then got on the phone to someone with your company and worked out a deal whereby your routman would deliver two towels every other week and we would be charged at the old rate of $1.52/towel.

"What about this bill for $26.25?" I asked.

"Just hold on to it.  Don't pay it yet, and we'll send out a salesman to adjust it for you."

And that's what I did.  I was happy with the compromise and the supervisor seemed pleased about it too.  It was a pleasure for me to do business with someone finally who could get things done.

However...

No salesman ever called.

On Friday, November 5, we received another bill from you, with the $26.25 carried over as past due, and an additional two $5.25 charged for towel deliveries.

But the thing that finally clinched it for me was the gummed sticker that you had affixed to the center of the bill.  It says:

    We are subscribers to Commercial Collection Division Dun & Bradstree, Inc.

A pox upon you and your whole organization, sir.  I am through with you.

I have sent a check for all the charges you have billed us for in a separate envelope.  That should ease your pain.

But now I have an ultimatum to issue to you:

If you don't have that towel dispenser removed from our shop by Friday, November 12, I will remove it myself and you can pick it up from the sidewalk outside at your convenience.

                                                    A very irate,

                                                    Roger L. Deen
                                                    for Swiss Coiffures
                                                    305 W. Centerville Rd.
                                                    Garland, TX 75041 

Southern Seas

One of these days (just wait and see)
I'll sail away to a southern sea.

I'll find an island with a palm-lined coast;
I'll lie on sand as warm as toast.

I'll eat papaya and abalone stew;
I'll top it all off with a mango or two.

I'll drink spring water and coconut wine.
I'll pick big berries right off the vine.

I'll swim in the sea, but I'll never bathe;
I'll race with dolphins from wave to wave.

I'll live in a hut without any doors,
I'll sleep in a shack without any floors.

I'll have some friends (maybe one or two)
On the next isle over, just out of view.

I'll invite 'em all when the weather's fine
To come help drink some coconut wine.

We'll dive for pearls and sunken loot;
We'll sing and dance and holler and hoot.

We'll wear grass clothes or none at all
We'll swing through trees; we'll have a ball.

So if you wake one fine spring morn,
And find me gone, don't weep or mourn.

Don't fret yourself; and don't be sad;
Think instead of the times we've had.

Just smile to yourself and know I'm free,
Sailing somewhere on a southern sea.

The Craft of Napping

Guppies at work are bored a lot. Boredom leads to drowsiness, and drowsiness leads to naps. Since management generally disapproves of sleeping on the job, Guppies must develop good clandestine napping skills to get the rest they need to be sharp and alert after work when their real day begins. Napping is about equal parts art and craft; the art you are born with, but the craft can be learned. Here, then, are the basic principles for the craft of napping:

Achieve a Stable Posture

This is the first principle of napping on the job. Part of the great attraction to napping is the relaxation response that occurs when all of your muscles let go as you drift peacefully off into the arms of Morpheus. But when this happens, unless you are either lying down or are in a structurally sound position with bones bracing and supporting your body parts, you are likely to experience some sort of collapse. Nothing detracts from a good nap more than falling out of your chair, or dashing your face painfully into the keyboard--both considered extremely poor form, by the way.

To prevent these sorts of embarrassing disasters, learn to use triangles in your nap postures. The triangle and its relative the pyramid are the strongest, most stable of the geometric shapes; if you ensure that your head and upper body are supported by triangles, you can snooze for hours in rock-solid security. There are many triangular postures--some quite daring and exotic and recommended for experienced nappers only--but the most basic is the old chin-in-the-hands position: lean forward, place your elbows on the desk at about shoulder width, and place your chin on the joined heels of your two hands with the fingers resting comfortably on each cheek. Your face should point to your terminal, as if you are studying something intently on the screen. This is a tried-and-true technique and, if other conditions are right, will give you many hours of peaceful slumber.

Select the Napping Site Carefully

It is perfectly acceptable to sleep at your desk if you have a modest amount of privacy from bosses or nosey passersby, but if your desk is exposed, you may have to select another nap site.

Bathrooms are good for naps, but sitting on a commode for long periods tends to make your legs fall asleep. The danger is that the company will call a surprise fire drill and you will have to be carried out of the building. Sleeping in the bathroom also can be hazardous if you tend toward hemorrhoids. I once worked with a man who spent at least four hours of every work day locked in a stall in the bathroom, sound asleep. He complained a lot about hemorrhoids, and we speculated that he used them for a snooze alarm. The theory was that he sat on the commode and slept until his hemorrhoids hit the water; the shock would wake him up so he could return to his desk for a while until the next nap attack struck.

Have Explanations Handy

Sooner or later, somebody is going to catch you napping. When that happens, it helps--particulary if the catcher is a boss--to have a plausible explanation ready. If all else fails, claim narcolepsy.

Great Nappers I Have Known

In my thirty years as a Guppie, I've had the opportunity to observe many nappers and their techniques. Three stand out in my memory for their creativity and style.

Leroy

Leroy and I shared a cube in a secure area that was protected by a locked door, so surprise visits from the boss were not a problem. A couple of illustrators worked in the cube next to ours, and they insisted that the overhead lights be kept off because reflections on their CAD screens gave them headaches.

It was nap heaven.

I drifted peacefully in and out of consciousness for several days, delighted and well-rested in my new surroundings, before a curious sound intruded to disturb my naps. I began to notice that every few minutes a short beep sounded. It wasn't loud, but it was like a leaky faucet--I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. At first I was mystified; I thought the illustrators must be doing it, but I soon discovered that it came from Leroy's direction. I turned around quietly (we sat back-to-back) and watched him. He seemed to be working. He was leaning back in his chair, his left hand supporting his chin in a good napping position, but his right hand was on the keyboard and he seemed to be scrolling up through a file looking for something. Suddenly, the scrolling stopped at the top of the file, and the terminal emitted the offending beep. Leroy, as if treated to an electric shock, immediately roused up and took a quick look around to ensure nobody had sneaked up on him. He then placed his finger on the right arrow key and began scrolling back down through the file while he went back to sleep. When it hit the end of the file, it beeped again, rousing Leroy for another quick perimeter check before he reversed the process again. He spent all day scrolling up and down through the same document and getting lots of rest.

Harvey

I shared an office with Harvey back in the days before computers, when we wrote everything by hand on yellow legal pads. He was the best napper I've ever seen; he was always on the verge of taking one. He took a morning nap, and an afternoon nap, and during lunch he put his head down on the desk and took a lunch nap. To Harvey, napping was a devine right. He made little effort to conceal it when he felt the urge to doze. I've seen him sit reared back in his office chair, arms hanging straight down on either side almost to the floor, head lolled back so that he faced the ceiling, slack jawed, mouth open, snoring like a dirt bike, and not giving a damn who walked by and saw him. The man was a master.

But for his most entertaining nap sessions, Harvey used the bobbing-for-apples technique. I can close my eyes and--if I don't fall asleep--I can still see him: He sits hunched over his desk, pencil touching the pad of paper before him. Slowly his head begins to sink. At first it is a slow, gradual lowering, as if he is trying to get closer to what he is writing. But the lower he goes, the more speed he picks up. Finally, after he has attained terminal velocity, lowering his forehead toward the desk at a frightening speed, he suddenly snaps to a stop and pops back up. But he doesn't recover quite as far as his starting position. He starts another descent, and, like a bouncing ball, each bounce is a little lower in amplitude than the one before. Miraculously, he never descends to the point where his head bumps the desk. At the end, when the bounces have died out, he is sitting with his forehead about three inches above the pad, sound asleep. He starts to snore.

Richard

I shared a cube with Richard right after he retired from the service. His great napping talent was his ability to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation. He loved to talk and tell war stories, so he usually initiated the bullshit sessions. But after he had told his story, and it was your turn to respond with one of your own, he would sit and look you right in the eye and smile and nod as if he were following what you were saying, but his lids would droop and finally close completely. All you could do was stop talking, turn back to your desk and go back to work. After a while, he would wake up and, as if nothing had happened, start telling another war story. I heard later that he was diagnosed with narcolepsy, but it was damned disconcerting to watch him fall asleep while looking you right in the eye.

Cowboying

My first inclination as a lad was to follow the cowboy profession. I discovered cowboying through Saturday double-feature matinees. In those pre-television days, it was customary for parents to deliver their children to the local movie theater on Saturday with a quarter to cover the price of admission and refreshments, and a promise to pick them up three hours hence. It was the high point of the week for the children and the parents, although, I suspect, for slightly different reasons. The only ones who failed to enjoy these weekly rites were the theater employees, who were usually high-school kids working their first jobs to earn money for dates or college or a car. They all aged noticeably by the end of the second feature, and, as a result, the turnover in these jobs was fairly brisk.

There were two distinct and antithetic schools of cowboy thought in those days, each based on the work of one of the two foremost practitioners of the cowboy art: Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. We kids were about evenly divided between those who maintained that Roy could out-shoot, out-ride, out-fight, and out-sing Gene, and those who swore that the opposite was true. Arguments raged frequently between the two constituencies, and friendships sometimes ended abruptly in fisticuffs.

I was a staunch admirer and defender of Rogers--until, that is, one Saturday when he committed the unforgivable sin: he kissed a girl. Sounds of shock, disgust, embarrassment, and derision filled the theater. The Autry admirers hooted and taunted, and we in the Rogers crowd could only sit and take it. Some, unable to bear the humiliation, got up and left the theater. I hunkered down there in the dark and stayed to the end of the picture, but I vowed on the spot to have nothing more to do with The King of the Cowboys.

For a time I threw my allegiance to the Autry camp, but the kissing incident had so tarnished my concept of cowboy life that it was never the same for me again. If there was the remotest possibility that one would have to kiss girls in the course of cowboy work, I wanted no part of it. Of course this attitude soon began to change, but by then it was too late--the time for cowboying had passed and I was never able to get the excitement back.

I've never forgiven Roy for that.

Soldiering

When I was in high school, World War II was still fresh in our minds, the Korean War had just ended, and the draft was a fact of life for young males. Boys who had graduated in previous years, returned to town in spiffy new uniforms with shined shoes and neat haircuts, and I saw how the girls watched them shyly, and how the old folks treated them with a respect that hadn't been there when they were mere damp-eared students like me. Soldiering seemed an exciting and rewarding way to earn one's living, so I announced that the military life was for me, and, shortly after graduating, I enlisted in the Marine Corps.

The problem with soldiering, I soon discovered, was that the Corps did not view my decision to join in the same light that I did. I had naturally assumed--based on the assurances of the local recruiter (a scurrilous class of scoundrels, I later found out, who are notorious and shameless liars)--that the Corps would be exceedingly glad to see me when I reported for boot camp. Indeed, I expected to be welcomed with smiles and, if not open arms, at least handshakes and slaps on the back. I expected some gratitude on their part because I had consented to become one of them.

But the sergeant who picked me and seven other enlistees up at the airport, didn't seem glad to see us at all. Instead of welcoming us like future heroes, he treated us like vile members of the criminal class. He remarked--in language that, although certainly colorful, is not suitable for repitition here--that the country was in a sad state when such scum as we were allowed into his Marine Corps. He said that he suspected we were communist agents whose only purpose was to screw up his Marine Corps, but that he was on to our plot and he was going to personally see that we did not succeed.

At first we assumed that he was just having a bad day, but when we got aboard the base we discovered that everybody else in the Corps was apparently having a bad day, too. This mass ill humor persisted the next day, and the next, and the next, until it dawned on me and my fellow recruits that this was how it was going to be every day.

I concluded early on in my tour--that first day, in fact--that my decision to enlist had been a bit hasty, but I was unable to prevail upon the Corps to let me reconsider my contract. I served the entire four years, and it has cured me of any hint of the soldiering urge to this day.

Dreams

I know people who claim they never dream, but I can't imagine a writer who doesn't. Writers deal in dreams, and, as a consequence, I suspect that they dream differently than normal people; they spend so much time inside their own heads that things are bound to be a bit bizarre in there. The solutions that writers seek nearly always come from some deeper resource pool that can often be tapped only after a good (or bad) night's sleep. When you wake in the morning to find the plot solution or word association that eluded you the previous day there awaiting your order, you can bet that during the night, your dream-self went rummaging back through the dusty attic of your subconscious to retrieve it. You may or may not remember the dream, but the night shift has probably put in a good day's work to have it ready for you when you woke.

Most of my best dreams occur in the hour or so just before I arise in the morning, when I meander back and forth across the border between sleep and wakefulness. It is a fertile dream time for me, and I find that my mind sometimes likes to play semi-erotic word association games. A few years ago, in this pre-awakening state, I suddenly found the word "virgin" intruding insistently into my dream thoughts. The word floated in and out through the open jalousies of my mind like a white butterfly. Every time I shooed it outside, and tried to resume my journey toward consciousness, the darn thing would sneak back through a side window and dance white and tantalizing there before me, obscuring everything else. Suddenly, as if to neutralize the confounded thing, another word, a brown furry word, sprang in through a window and grabbed the white apparition in mid air; they fell heavily to the floor in front of me and lay there writhing and struggling, as if demanding my attention, insisting that I recognize some association between the two of them. The other word was "infallible". I was puzzled. Why had these two words juxtaposed themselves in my morning reveries? Then, by changing the spelling, I saw the relationship, and almost laughed aloud in my sleep. The relationship went like this: virgin = inphallible.

Another time, I was again making my hazy way up toward the light, when I saw hundreds of plastic breasts, such as department store manikins have, raining down before me. There was nothing gruesome or particularly erotic about the scene, it just kept forcing itself into my thoughts, insisting that I notice it. I struggled with the meaning of this vision for a while, and was getting nowhere with it when the word "bra" flashed into my mind and established the connection that I had seemingly been tasked to find: bra = breast pockets.

I am one of those who, from time to time, records dreams in a journal. I don't get them all, for dreams are vaporous wispy things that vanish quickly in the light, and sometimes they evaporate before I can capture them on paper. I tend to be cranky on those days when a good dream has escaped.

On five occasions, astounding secrets have been revealed to me in dreams--secrets so profound that I knew immediately I had been given the keys to the universe. On each of these occasions it was as if a rainbow appeared in the heavens with the Universal Answer to Everything writ large across it. I felt overwhelming joy, amazement, and relief that the solution to all of life's problems and mysteries was so simple and obvious. The fear that I would not be able to remember the revealed truth in the morning roused me from the dream just long enough to scribble it on a pad beside the bed. I then plunged happily back to sleep, knowing that when I woke I would save the world.

I have kept the five secrets in my journal for years now, and periodically I go back and review them. Something happened between the time I saw and understood everything in the dream, and the time I awoke to find the cryptic messages scrawled on the bedside note pad--the simple and obvious meanings that so excited me in the dreams evaporated in the daylight. I still ponder the messages from time to time, and occasionally I catch glimpses of the shadowy meanings behind them, but I cannot quite make them out, and I cannot figure out how to apply them. The gods giveth and the gods taketh away.

As a service to mankind, here are the five great cosmic secrets of the universe, as revealed to me in dreams. Maybe you can figure them out and save the world--but you'd better hurry. Time is running out.

• Ones and nudes are palaces.
• The Bedlam Duchy.
• Twenty-seven thousand dozen puck appointments.
• Bits o' bars and bite buckets.
• They live like Seikhs in shacks that leak like sieves.

Don't ask me.

Fog

Fog always reminds me of Camp Pendleton. I spent four weeks there in the winter of '59, in Charlie Company, 2nd Infantry Training Regiment--ITR for short--learning the basic infantry skills that all Marines know. Every Marine, regardless of his or her job, whether it be mess cook, office pinky, wing wiper, or embassy guard, is trained first to be an infantry rifleman. The Corps demands that all Marines be ready and qualified to man the front line in times of crisis. ITR is every Marine's first stop out of boot camp, and it is where they first begin calling you "Marine", rather than boot, or screw, or maggot, or shit coolie, or any of a dozen other colorful pet names the Corps uses to keep its initiates properly humiliated and humble.

Now, after nearly four decades, images from that time still appear, but always, it seems, out of the fog.

Once, when I was flanking a firewatch post around the company perimeter in the lonely hours before dawn, a ghostly platoon of recon Marines came double-timing out of the thick fog on their customary morning run. They were the Corp's version of the Army's Green Berets and the Navy's Seals. They trained constantly to drop behind enemy lines or to go ashore on an enemy coast undetected to gather information and do mischief. I stood beside the road and watched in awe as they passed, for we had all heard tales of these clandestine warriors and their exploits. Looking neither right nor left, they padded past me into the mist, chanting their macabre anthem in cadence, "RE-con, RE-con, KILL, KILL, KILL."

The foggy dampness seemed to penetrate my field jacket, and I suppressed a sudden shiver as, for the first time it came home to me that we were not just a bunch of grown boys playing John Wayne fantasy war games. This was deadly serious business we were about.

Another time, on a particularly foggy morning, Staff Sergeant Tucker, our head training NCO, called us out onto the company street for roll-call and morning chow formation. Our mess hall was about a mile down the road from our barracks, and we and all the other training companies in the command had to march to and from chow in formation each morning before the day's training started.

After the roll call was completed, Sergeant Tucker called me to the front of the formation. I was right guide for the second platoon, which meant I was a sort of junior platoon leader. I did a quick mental check of recent events to try and anticipate why I was being singled out. I couldn't think of anything I had done that warranted an ass-chewing, but I had been in the Corps long enough to be worried and wary. I double-timed up to him and snapped to quivering attention, as any good boot should.

Sergeant Tucker was Marine to the core. He was a wiry little mule of a man, a Korean War veteran with a raspy voice and a thick, slow, Tennessee drawl that made everything he said sound extremely important.

"Right guide," he said, "Take charge of the formation and march the company to chow. Have them back here ready to go to work by 0730."

I was barely able to blurt out, "Aye, aye, sir". It was unheard of for a trainee to be put in charge of a company. I had marched smaller formations--work details, fire teams, squads, even the platoon a couple of times--and I knew how to call cadence and give the proper commands as well as any DI, but an entire company! And in the fog to boot! Standing at the customary spot at the center of the formation, I could not see the lead platoon on the left nor the last platoon on the right.

I knew that one moment of indecision, or a command issued in error or at the wrong time, could turn a well-drilled, 250-man company into an aimless, meandering mob in the fog. But, by shuttling forward and back along the formation, and always thinking ahead to the next command and maneuver, I managed to get the company to and from chow in good order.

Somewhere within me there is still pride in that nineteen year old kid, not long out of the Ozark mountains of Missouri, barely four months a Marine, and in charge of a 500-legged creature that disappeared into the fog fore and aft and responded to his commands like a finely tuned machine. The fog-muffled crump, crump, crump of 250 boot heels striking the pavement in unison comes back to me now whenever I see fog, and it is heady stuff.