February 27, 2019 – Chocolate in TWO ACTS

         I blogged about my chocolate awake-ness if I eat chocolate after about 10:00 a.m. in the morning yesterday in the midst of a power outage.

         When I am offered delicious, quality chocolate after mid-morning and I decline, I get some snappy remarks such as:

         “More for me then.”

         “Oh, you poor, poor dear.”

         “Thank God, I don’t have that problem.”

ACT ONE:

         Years ago I was a Kelly Girl.  Yes, Kelly Girl – before it became Kelly Services.  It was actually a fun time for me – temporary help in fortune 100 companies in several different states.  I could interview the company from inside before I even wanted to apply to a job with them.  I was sent on one-day assignments, weekly assignments, sometimes even monthly reoccurring assignments. I worked in Minnesota, New Jersey, Florida, and South Carolina as a Kelly Girl and it was one of the best things I ever did in my working career.

         Once in New Jersey, back in the mid 1980s I was sent to the Lindt Chocolate distribution center in the Fairfield Area of New Jersey. An older, quiet gentlemen in a dark suit met me in the lobby and we had a quiet chat in his office.  One of his key employees was out sick on extended illness and he needed assistance in his sales department. 

         His accounts receivable aging was past 180 days and he wanted me to concentrate on telephoning customers to bring them current.  This was his first experience with Kelly Girl and he was a little apprehensive about outside help.  By then, I had earned the personal nickname of a “DO IT GAL” with Kelly and they sent me out for this high paying assignment that needed high caliber office skills.

         I was shown to the absent gals’ desk in the middle of an open-seating office and handed a stack of overdue invoices.  I was shown where the invoices were filed and instructed when I finished with that group, refile them and continue down through the alphabet from A to Z.  I was directed to telephone the oldest accounts first, those past 180 days.  The Manager told me to say I was new and helping out if the customers asked.  He didn’t want them to know I was a temporary Kelly Girl.

         Phone call after phone call I spoke with the customer’s accounts payable person regarding the past due balances and within an hour discovered that it was merely a matter of returned stock to the warehouse and credit invoices had not been issued to the their outstanding invoice.  Lindt’s customers wanted their credits applied prior to paying the balance on their invoices.  By then I had phoned dozens of customers and advised them I would track down their credits, get them posted and follow up with a telephone call.

         The manager came by and asked how I was doing and we went into his office to discuss the matter quietly.

         “She’s the only one who does the credit invoices,”  he paused a moment and lifted the phone and dialed a number and asked the shipping manager to step up to his office.

         During our wait, I struck up a conversation and asked about how many different varieties of chocolate he had.  He easily talked about the warehouse and the different types of chocolates, especially the newest ones.

         During the gal’s six-month battle with her illness it appeared she'd fallen behind on issuing credit invoices. The shipping manager said he’d given her the return shipment bills of lading. He handed his hand written roster to the Manager.          

         Without a word, we all rose from our seats and walked to her desk where the shipping manager opened the overstuffed bottom drawer with difficulty. Many papers curled back into the recesses of the drawer cavity.

         “No problem.”  I said cheerfully, and pulled them out and stacked them on the desk, “I’ll put them in date order first.”

         The shipping manager retrieved an empty box for me and proceeded to take the bottom drawer out of the desk and fished out the rolled up papers in the cavity.  The manager found one of those Pendaflex Sort All Sorters for me to use.

         I made fast work of getting those squirrelled away papers in date order.

         The manager showed me how to verify the returns with the incoming shipping manager’s log, type up credit invoices, post the credits against the outstanding invoices and mail copies to the customers to get a handle on the situation.  This took place way before computer days.  This place was a paper office done the old-fashioned way with carbon sets and hard copy filing systems.

         That process took about a week and a half and then I proceeded to make telephone calls to follow up aging on those customers who had delayed credit invoices. Payments came in quickly.  When I left the Lindt warehouse temporary Kelly Girl job, a few weeks later, the accounts receivable aging was down to 45 days, where it had been prior the gal’s illness.

         Kelly Girl hoped the manager would hire me full time and made overtures to him.  But, alas, the gal was a long time employee and she was well enough to return to work.

         On the last day of my assignment  I was taken out into the shipping area by the manager.

         “I can’t offer you a job, but I know I can thank you in a special way for a job extremely well done.”

         He handed me an empty carton to carry and we walked through the warehouse. When there was an open case of chocolate bars, he’d stop and grab a bar or two and tossed them in the box.

         When I’d say, “Ohhh, that looks good,” he’d smile and add an extra bar of the same kind.

         “That is plenty,” I complained shifting the weight a bit on my hip.

         “One more row down here,” he said with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and he tossed in a several more bars.

         At the end of the row, he took the box from me, lapped and tucked the box top and carried it for me to retrieve my purse, and then walked me to my waiting car.

         He thanked me profusely again told me he’d called Kelly Girl and given them his high praise.

         “Thank you, I can’t imagine I will eat all this,” I gushed with delight.

         He chuckled, “You will in six months or a year, keep them cool in the refrigerator.”

That is how I became a devoted Lindt chocolate

customer!

ACT TWO:

         At my last Kelly Girl situation, I accepted a job in South Carolina as a legal secretary at a prestigious law firm.

         Law offices are sometimes tense.  I’d escape with a cup of coffee to the ladies’ room every once in a while when everyone was coming at me with unforeseen deadlines.  I’d take a few moments to shake off the stress and then go back to work.

         I found that a quality chocolate bar worked even better  than coffee and every payday I’d go by the Fresh Market which has an extensive collection of my favorite chocolate – Lindt or Lindor.

         I’d pay the quality price and hide them in the back of my top desk drawer for emergencies.  When I ate the last one, I’d re-stock.

         Soon everyone one in the office knew I kept quality chocolates for “emergency stress situations.”  Occasionally, a fellow secretary would ask, “Can I have one of your bars – I am having a chocolate attack?”  I was gracious, they always replaced it with a like chocolate bar a day or two later.

         One extremely stressful afternoon, I reached into my chocolate bar stash and found only a yellow post it note reading:

         “I owe you – Randy.”

         That didn’t do it for me – I was in a crunch – I had a deadline to meet – I needed some energy, now. I was stressed.

         I walked to attorney Randy’s office and stood there with the yellow sticky note held out to him on the tip of my finger.  He was speaking on the telephone.  When he hung up, he said,

         “You caught me, I forgot to replace your chocolate.” He blushed.

         The attorney I worked with came up behind me and witnessed my action and started to tease the overweight Randy. 

         “Quick, run out and get her replacement chocolate or we won’t get any work done around here this afternoon.”

         Randy quickly grabbed his keys and his suit jacket.

         I called after him, “It has to be LINDT or LINDOR”

         He stopped a moment and turned.  Before Randy even asked, my attorney called, “Fresh Market.”