Stories
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Small diamonds were welded into the work-rests so that rondels rested on diamonds instead of carboloid. Pot holes took a lot longer to develop and the machines were quite profitable. They ran twenty-four hours a day.
Turning left from the shipping room, a protruding half wall separated the lunch room from a wide but open area in the further hall, in front of a wall with the door to the offices. In this space was a giant desk heaped with papers about three feet tall. This was the sole salesman's office. The sales guy, in his forties, dark hair and balding, short and pudgy with hairy knuckles, usually a Hawaiian type short-sleeve shirt, brown slacks and shoes, was on the phone all day, the horn perpetually crunched between his shoulder and his neck, and whenever he needed some paper work for reference, he would leap from his roller swivel chair and dive into the enormous pile of papers, retrieve what he needed in about 30 seconds and continue his sales talk. He was in full view of us all as we walked by to the toilet or to get a soda. One time there was an inspection by a bunch of executives from Sears. When they saw this seemingly half-assed operation they screamed bloody murder. So they fired the salesman. They cleaned up the desk had someone file all the papers and they hired a new guy. But that didn't last long. They already had-had the best damn salesman in the state, so after a couple of weeks they fired the new guy and brought paper-trail back, and the desk went back to the way it had been, piled to the ceiling. Meanwhile a lot of consternation there.
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