High-mileage mug

Is there a higher-mileage mug in Woodstock?

Here's my favorite coffee mug, which I acquired in Lakewood, Colorado in October 1983.Since then this mug has traveled more than 12,000 car miles with me.

I remember the week well, when I acquired the mug. I was working as the new general manager for a friend's company - a job that lasted only 7-10 days. One of the salesmen had called on an artist near Greeley and had traded $100 of the company's products to the artist by a box of mugs. This was the one I wanted.

The salesman had to account for the $100 sale, so he offered these mugs to all the employees. I think this one cost me $4.

Why did the job last only 7-10 days? The sales manager had wanted the promotion to G.M., but the owner hired me, instead. Within days the sales manager went to the owner and told him that he, and the ten salesman, were all going to quit if Tom didn't get rid of me.

I remember the first two things I did that irritated the sales manager and some of the employees. In the lobby of the company office was a cartoon of one character giving another the "bird", and I told them that cartoon was coming down. Strike 1.

Then one afternoon new phone directories were delivered and dumped in the middle of the entrance to the office. The shrink-wrapped phone books had been opened, and a few of the employees had taken their own directories, leaving the rest in the middle of the floor. When I returned from lunch, I picked them all up and moved them to a safer location.

Later we had a short meeting and I asked whose job it was to move them. "Not mine," every other employee chipped in. I told them that I thought it was the job of the first person who saw they were in the way. Strike 2.

The owner and I had lunch the next day, and I remember his words. "You have a serious problem already." I had known him for 12 years and waited for him to continue. "First of all, you could at least look like you care. Besides, you are too happy too much of the time." Then he told me about the threat from the sales manager and salesmen. I told him he couldn't afford to have them all quit; he'd be out of business. I asked him if he wanted me to leave from lunch and not return to the office. "No, stay 'til Friday. I don't want them to think they ran you off."

Our friendship continued and I later worked for him at his national headquarters in 1992-93. He hired me to produce a 36-page, four-color catalog of the company's products, because the president and he had been unable to get the employees to start on it. Got the job done, too. - under budget and only three days late.