There's always some idiot that comes charging in with an insignificant detail that means nothing.

I mentioned the term 'Drank the Kool-aid' like the suckers at Jonestown.

Some mousy little bean counter type came out and said, "It was really Flavor-Aid, you know."

Yeah. OK.

Flavor-Aid, Kool-Aid, what's the difference? 

One of the biggest bean counter stories I have is the time I almost got fired for giving a dockman something we were getting ready to throw away. It was a partial can of paint.

Good paint is and was fairly expensive and marine grade paint is even more expensive but no matter how expensive the initial cost of something is, the leftovers are just that. They are leftovers.

Anyway, I gave a leftover can of paint to a dockman and caught holy hell for it and was lucky to keep my job.

Needless to say, I was madder than hell over it and decided to keep score of what I got in return for the paint.

The dockman painted his garage doow with the paint and for the next decade always had something good to say when I docked. We got all sorts of little favors from him and a couple of stupid things 'went away'.

Over time we got thousands of dollars worth of little favors and later on at a seminar I told the CEO about it and his eyes opened wide.

"One lousy leftover can of paint that almost got me fired," I said. "The goodwill created by that saved us thousands."

Later that afternoon he gave us a talk about creating good will with our customers but had the decency not to attribute it to me.

If the bean counter had his way I would have been canned for turning a throwaway can of paint into what wound up saving the company WELL over $100K over the years.

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Today is my last full day of work.

Tomorrow I get on the bird home for the last time.

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