One of the reasons I seem to get

so many freebies and favors done is because I am not stupid about it.

Many moons ago there was some now long forgotten and no longer used software a friend of mine purchased a ten pack of. Tom only needed six of them. He got the extra four as part of a package deal. 
Because they were his, he could do with them as he saw fit and gave me one of the ten he had license for. This included the secret code key that I could not figure out with my Marvel Mystery Encoding ring.

He also gave one to Louise because his wife said she could use it. Tom's a pretty generous guy. That left him eight which meant he had two spares.

Louise also got the secret code key.

Of course, Louise decided to share it with a few of her friends and a few days later when Tom went to install the software on his machines it wouldn't take because Louise had passed it around. Tom had bought ten programs, used four, given away two and figured he had four left.

Needless to say, he was flabberghasted and called me. I reported I had only used the one he gave me and kept quiet about it.

He had his wife call Louise. She reported that Louise had not only given the code to three of her friends, but to Hippie Al who promptly posted it on some on line hackers net. Poor Tom didn't stand a chance.

This part of the story has a happy ending, though. Tom's wife is a tiger and promptly went after Louise and got her to cough up for a five pack of the software. There was almost a cat fight over it and Tom's wife marched Louise straight down to the office store and made her put the five pack on her credit card.

Tom also pinned a jacket on Louise and she probably hasn't gotten too many freebies over the years.

Although this is small, it serves as an example. Some years ago I used to get the safety guys to save me a few of the out dated chemical light sticks  from our survival suits. I'd toss them into a box. Come Halloween I'd hand them out to a couple of the mothers on the street to pin to their little kids on Halloween.

The kids seemed to like them and they could be seen by motorists after dark so it was a win/win situation.

The truth is I was pretty selective about who I handed these out to simply to avoid getting a bunch of calls from the neighborhood mothers. I actually handed them out, for the most part to the fathers. They were admonished not to tell anyone where they got them lest the supply instantly dry up.

Everyone kept quiet about it and I did that for several years until the policy at work changed and they could no longer give them to me.

Over the years I have seen any number ot things magically disappear because the recipients didn't know well enough to keep their mouths shut.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY