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Show ) PET PEEVE J) THAVE found a sure-fire method of dictating business letters to my secretary. I simply lock my office door, chain her to a desk, take the telephone off the hook, and stuff cotton In my ears. There is a sound and practical reason for each of these practices, but I don't think it would work for most office people because my secretary (after much work upon my part) is thoroughly convinced she couldn't get a job elsewhere if she tried and that if she did try I would murder her before she got out of the building. But to get back to the reasons I take such drastic steps when I am about to take care of my correspondence: corre-spondence: 1. I lock the door to keep out the office gossip who invariably intrudes in-trudes by sticking her head in the doorway and making some remark like: "Isabelle, honey, pull your skirt down." It's distracting! 2. I chain her to the desk because be-cause she wastes pencils if I don't. In a half an hour session she will jump up fifteen times to sharpen fifteen different pencils. Now I let her chew the ends. j 3. I take the telephone off the I hook not to delay business calls, but so I won't have to listen to her conversations with her husband. It wouldn't be so bad if I could hear what he says, but her remarks fill me with so much curiosity I can't concentrate. I can't figure out which one is the moron. 4. And I stuff my ears with cotton cot-ton so I can't hear her catty remarks re-marks about this column or some of my letters. Once I was dictating a letter to a nationally-known columnist col-umnist when she up and says, "Gee, "My Pet Peeve" wasn't up to par last week, Mr. B." I must have exploded because an unflattering remark slipped into my dictation. As a result the columnist col-umnist cancelled his contract with our syndicate and the boss has i been unhappy with me every since. |