This is a true story. (TQM = Total Quality Management, in case you don't know the latest buzzword) I wrote a glowing recommendation to a scholarship program for one of the most outstanding high school students I have ever known. Since it was a week before the deadline, I asked the secretary to send it "Priority Mail." She attached a postage meter card and delivered it to the campus post office for metering and mailing. The day after the deadline, my letter of recommendation came back to me for lack of postage. I was furious. After I called the scholarship program and arranged for them to accept a FAXed recommendation a day late, I went to the post office, Priority Mail envelope in hand. With my anger under control, I told the manager how someone's carelessness had nearly cost a young person $10,000 and had caused me a lot of unnecessary work. Rather than showing concern for eliminating future occurrences of the same problem, the manager, somewhat defensively, came up with several explanations for what might have gone wrong, each more creative than the last. Frustrated, I indicated that I didn't care why it happened. I just wanted her to make sure that it didn't happen again -- to anybody. Finally, she began to get my message. "When was it mailed?" she asked. "Last Tuesday," I told her. "Oh," she said. "I wasn't here that day. I was at a TQM Seminar."
(From the "Rest" of RHF)