Bite Me

So today I worked on a test golf ball retriever, of sorts. It is a bit like a gill net to be honest. Ok it’s a basket off a kid’s bike with baler twine. It needs a bit of work, but I was able to get 157 balls. Not too bad for a prototype, modifications and testing will continue in the AM.

Luckily I am not burdened with a staff of accounting folks, and to ease the effort even more, there is no one professing to be a “procurement specialist” to bid the entire process out. This of course would result in an inferior product that would loss all the positive economics of said project.

Year’s back our procurement group became centralized out of Los Angeles. Procurement had not only become useless but now they were in fact not even on site to vent to. About this time all the buyers in this group began to sign all their emails and so on with the title of CPM. Certified Purchasing Manager. At the time I was the materials dude for engineering. I made sure you got what you needed when you needed it worked hard not to lose things in the bowels of Procurement. I thought, well I need a title as well, so I began signing all my emails with CPE. A few days later I received an irate call from the head of purchasing, sorry, procurement in Los Angeles. I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty because a: he was an asshole and b: he had me on speakerphone.
He demanded to know what my new title meant and who had given me the authority to use it.

I explained that CPE stood for Cherry Point Expeditor and that the approval process ended with me. He assured me that I would be fired; a year later he left the company and ended up in Backwater Louisiana. A friend of mine retired as the VP for European operations for Lucent. He said when he 1st began working out of university that he had to rotate through several jobs. He concluded that purchasing folks were a lot like military police, if you can’t any place to put them then put them there. There is a God and he has a great sense of humor, if you don’t believe that look around you.

Back to the golf ball hunt. I was driving my cart heading for yet another pond to test my new ball gizmo. I looked up and saw an old dude waving me down. I of course have a huge amount of respect for old duds and headed in his direction. He was clearly agitated.

He demanded to know what I was doing. I was thinking about asking him who dressed him and did he know his hairpiece was crooked. I explained I was doing a research project on run away golf balls. He asked if I knew that it was against the bylaws to take golf balls from the ponds, unless I was collecting them for the “Kids” My 1st thought was what in the world would Jerry’s Kids need golf balls for? Can they actually play golf and if so you might parade some of those out during the Labor Day marathon. It would be quite inspiring. “Little Tommy” is lining up his putt and trying to ignore the wheel track marks left by his playing Partner”.

Anyway, old dud is now waxing on about how he and his buddy Howard have collected balls for years for the youth league at our club. I avoid mentioning that the youth league only began this year, of course he is 70 so perhaps he thinks I’m part of the youth league.

After a bit he gets around to asking me what I am using to retrieve balls. I explain and he informs that he and his buddy have a much better device. I assure him he is God and his buddy Howard most certainly is a close second. He tells me it is ok for me to continue my search if I promise to donate a portion of my ill-gotten gains to the Kids. I assure him that would be happy to do just that. I have found a bunch of range balls and flying pink ladies I will happily donate.