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aas in aeGis;Gas in Gnu
longer be responsible for the subdivision of requests from, and distri- butions to, my originally assigned sector of the legal establishment, the firms that started with M. That might not sound like much, but I hasten to remind you that the most frequent first letter of law firm names was M, with S a close second. (My talents had evidently been recognized very early on.)
To return, however, to the pinnacle of responsibility, alphabetical distribution itself: Each day I had watched and listened with awe as the office manager would take center stage in the bull pen that was in the center of the office, dip his hand into a vast heap of documents and tele- phone request slips, and then intone the first initial of the name of the law firm on the document or slip that he had fished out. The person with the responsibility to subsort a particular letter group, so that each firm would get its proper package, would run to the center of the room, take the article, and return to his or her own area to ready the papers in pack- ets for delivery to the client firm. If the firm was, say, Mendes & Mount, the manager would bellow, “M like in Mary.” If the firm was Dewey Bal- lantine, the yell would go out, “D like in David.” If it was Strassen Spielberg Fried and Frank, “S like in Sam.” You get the point (and prob- ably did when I referred to Mendes & Mount, but this was such an enjoyable part of my experience at United that I wished to savor it).
I felt that my Amherst education, albeit abbreviated, had prepared me for the task at hand, but the same education, coupled, I assumed, by a certain warping in my personality, perhaps even an insufficient quan- tity of respect, led me to wish to place my imprint on matters. For starters, there was no way in which “A like in apple” could issue from my lips. “A as in apple” was more my speed, but that was not sufficient. I just could not resist trying to put together my own code, one that would be easier for all to deal with. Thus, I spent some time developing my own call-out system, which, I’m disappointed to have to admit, I never quite put into full operation: “A as in aegis,” “G as in gnu,” “H as in honor,” “J as in junta,” “K as in knife,” “M as in mnemonic,” “O as in Oedipus,” “P as in pterodactyl,” and, my favorite, “W as in why.” So, you can see why I was a big success at United.
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