2004 Quips of the Year

John Wolz

A Southeastern fastener distributorship has a policy of paying for up to two weeks of an employee”s jury duty. In a “truth is stranger than fiction” story, one employee was arrested, made several court appearances and spent 10 days in jail. Upon returning to work, he expected to be paid for the time because other employees got paid for their court appearances as jurors.
The employee is no longer with the company.

With Bell Fasteners/Vertex Joel Roseman supplied fasteners to distributors for decades and was the associate chair of the National Fastener Distributors Association. In a career change early in 2004, Roseman became a distributor at Arnold Industries Inc. At the spring NFDA meeting he explained a poor round of golf: “I was playing customer golf and I forgot I didn”t have to do that anymore.”

“If they saw our golf clubs they would have seen WMDs,” Southwestern Fastener Associa-tion golf chair Tim Ellis said of the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the association”s golf outing.

Western Association of Fastener Distributors board member Jay Hebert was reporting on the group”s successful conferences at the National Industrial Fastener Show/West and wondered out loud if there would be audience-luring topics for 2005, such as China and fastener prices in recent years. “Not a problem,” former WAFD president Steve Dunham suggested. “Just create another crisis.”

“When I get asked, “How many people work for you?” I sometimes answer, “About half.”” NFDA chair Jimmy Reitinger quipped.

Rapidly rising steel prices made it a tense year for fastener suppliers to the auto industry. “I feel like I”m going to make you not hungry anymore,” automotive supply chain consultant Kim Korth began her pre-luncheon presentation to the Industrial Fasteners Institute and National Fastener Distributors Association.

“Break out the chalkboard,” a session attendee suggested when the PowerPoint presentation wasn”t working at the Southwestern Fastener Association spring conference.

“My first career was a teacher, so I know how to repeat,” speaker Lorrie Mitchell explained a point again at a Southeastern Fastener Association conference.

“Twenty-five percent of husbands kiss their spouses when they leave their house to go to work,” speaker Barry Asmus at the National Fastener Distributors Association said. “And 95% kiss their houses goodbye when they divorce.”

“I know this subject is something none of us want to talk about this early in the morning,” speaker Thomas Anderson of Mid-South Wire acknowledged as he began his presentation on hazardous waste just after breakfast at WireExpo.

“You”re the best manufacturers in the world because you are still here,” Patrick Cleary of the National Association of Manufacturers told WireExpo.

In real estate the old adage rates value by “1. Location. 2. Location and 3. Location.” During an associate member roundtable discussion it was asked why they attend NFDA? One participant quickly responded, “1. Networking 2. Networking and 3. Networking.”

The Mid-West Fastener Associa-tion roasted Nancy Rich upon her 20th anniversary as executive director. At her very first meeting (then the Chicago Bolt, Nut & Screw Association) the speaker didn”t show up and after a few announcements the meeting adjourned to the bar. “I left there thinking either this was an easy job or I”m not long for it. I was wrong on both counts,” Rich reflected.
They recalled Rich hanging up on the FBI “because she thought it was one of our guys playing a joke.”
Rich was pregnant while working at one fastener company and delivered her baby at home just hours after leaving work because it came too quickly to get to the hospital. “The owners were nervous for weeks because of what might have been.”

Futurist Lowell Catlett kept the Specialty Tools & Fasteners Distributors Association laughing even with serious reports on future trends. Technology allows a house to report problems to the owner and soon homeowners will ask, “Why can”t my roof call the contractor?”
Baby boomers will set records for cosmetic surgery, Catlett predicted. And he may join in: “I”m thinking about getting a hair transplant from my ears to my head.”

The Boomerang of the Year award goes to Gloria Crase, the general manager of the National Industrial Fastener Shows. In a March letter to the East regional show exhibitors, Crase suggested they send $10,000 to show management to become platinum sponsors of the show. As a sponsor they would “generate industry goodwill that cannot be measured in dollars,” Crase wrote to exhibitors.
Trouble was that just months earlier an exhibitor complained that show management had no “industry goodwill” because it had never donated a penny for association scholarships.
Crase”s letter boomeranged when it riled more exhibitors. “She showed how far off we are. I thought if [show general partner Jim] Bannister had pulled $10 out of his wallet to donate to the scholarship fund it would have been “industry goodwill.” Now their letter shows they define “industry goodwill” as us sending $10,000 to them.”
No exhibitor bought show management”s $10,000 “goodwill” package for the East show and by autumn the price came down: The show”s website included “industry goodwill” as what exhibitors get with a $1,595 booth.

Runner up for the Boomerang award was a letter from NIFS management claiming their contribution to the U.S. Fastener Quality Act legislative effort was conducting a seminar, which they wrote drew 800 people. The letter drew attention from industry leaders who then realized that not only did the show donate “not a penny” to the FQA effort, but show management”s own numbers indicate the partners collected $16,000 off the seminar.
“If their 800 number was exaggerated it boomeranged by inflating their profits,” one observer noted.

In a STAFDA session on new technology, Steve Epner of Brown Smith Wallace Consulting Group offered advice for 2005: “If we do not change we will fail. If we wait to change We can only follow others. If we embrace change We can survive and lead.” \ �2005 FastenerNews.com