Howdy Ya'll, and welcome back.
It's been a week or two since last we talked, so it's time to catch up, I suppose. Up to this point all my ramblings have been directly concerned with something or other to do with Fabrics to Dye For. Today's installment will be more of the same, but with a little bit of a twist to it. Therein hangs a tale (somebody famous said that, I think), so here's mine:
Way back last year some time, I worked as a buyer for a manufacturer of small airplanes. I've been doing that sort of stuff most of my life, although my previous adventures in that direction pretty much leaned towards Great Big Airplanes, I.e. airliners. It was time for a change though, so off I went to work in the Wonderful World of General Aviation. In all of my former jobs I'd been a raw materials guy, and a processes guy, and a structures guy, but you do a little bit of everything at a small company, so there I was, doing the aforementioned Little Bit of Everything, an endeavor that sometimes involved things I'd never bought before. That said, it came as no great surprise the day I received a purchase requisition to go buy some Finny scissors for our upholstery department. As you know Finny scissors are pretty much top-of-the-heap scissors, although I didn't know it at the time, which means I really didn't know where to buy them either since they weren't an aircraft material, process, or a piece of primary or secondary structure. Fortunately, the requisition had a source on it, replete with contact information. Aha!, said I. A no-brainer! I can cope with a no-brainer---I'm an adult male and that's one of the things we do best---so it's off to the phone to order the scissors. That's pretty much Act 1.
Act 2 ran as follows:
The supplier didn't have the quantity of the particular Finny scissors that we needed in their stock, which meant that said supplier had to go to their distributor to obtain same. The distributor messed up the order and didn't book it, so the scissors never came, thus guaranteeing daily visits from the manager who oversaw the upholstery department. As you may or may not be able to imagine, getting scissors into the company wasn't as high on my list of priorities as certain other commodities were. In fact, on a scale of "If we don't get this on time the whole company will shut down!!!" to ten, the scissors weren't very important at all. The upholstery shop already had scissors; they just didn't have Finny scissors! Add to that a big dollop of my innate procrastination, and you can well understand that The Great Scissor Tragedy of 2007 sat for a while, festering the whole time, which is another way of saying that some of my discussions with the aforementioned manager were somewhat sporty in nature. Entirely counterproductive, but sporty nonetheless. Finally came The Day;
"Hey Boss. What's up?"
"Phil, what's this I hear about scissors?"
"Upholstery thinks they need some."
"Have you bought them yet?"
"Sure, but they aren't here yet. There's a problem at the distribution level."
"Go fix the problem, and do it now. Don't do anything else until we can assure them they'll be swimming in scissors. Scissors, for crying out loud. How can we possibly have a manager upset over scissors?"
I thought about that question for a minute, but didn't give the answer I really wanted to. It was a respect thing, because my boss was (and still is, as far as I know) a Seriously Good Guy.
"Right, Boss. Scissors. I shall Work the Problem."
So I went off to do same. A quick e-mail to the supplier revealed several things: The person I'd talked to thought my name was Richard (because that was the name on the corporate card); the scissors were still hung up at the distributor, and an apology was in order. It was an innocuous beginning, but it led to a series of e-mails that led, in turn, to a phone call which, in turn, led to other phone calls, which led to a supplier visit to Austin, which led to other visits, which in turn takes us to Act 3.
Jenny and I got married last weekend. It was a wonderful day, maybe the Best Day of my life to date, and looks to be only the beginning of an equally wonderful life together. I'm happy. Jenny's happy.
I think there may be a photo of the event around here someplace. I'd like to share it with you, but Jenny's going to have to do that for me since I don't have a clue, not the slightest clue, how to do it, which means that you may or may not get to see it---that all depends on Jenny. (If she does append a picture to this, you might want to remember that we're reenactors, which explains our somewhat dated attire.)
And there you have it! Many thanks to Galadriel, Patrick, Gay, Grace, Jan, Dennis, Frank, and Pam. I've never been happier. Yippee-yi-yo-ki-yay!!!
hasta bye bye,
phil
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