Jan. 3, 1989: Colin’s not much of a process guy


Like’s been said before, all kinds wind up working for the company. Example of that is Colin, guy who writes most of the big coin catalogs. Colin’s about the smartest guy in the world, but people who aren’t nearly as smart take one look at him and figure he’s dumber’n a bag of hammers. Not that there aren’t some things that Colin does in the course of a day that aren’t indeed dumber than a bag of hammers, bag and all. Like for instance, sometimes he mixes up his lunch with his work and starts writing on his summer-sausage sandwich and taking a mouthful of papers. Doesn’t get too far with either, but just the idea that you could confuse a summer-sausage sandwich with a page of Chinese cash is enough to get the absent-minded-professor talk, at least, going around.

Just about everybody likes Colin, mainly because they understand, having done close to most of these things themselves. O’Strowsky likes him much as anyone because O’Strowsky’s first job at the company was working for Colin doing the coin magazines. Colin pretty much let O’Strowsky alone except for giving him hot tips that mostly involved Colin’s buddies, gin-and-tonics, Chinese coins, and calling pay telephones at 3 a.m. Singapore time. Nothing much came of these hot tips but O’Strowsky had fun chasing them down. It was nothing like real journalism but almost like real journalism, the way O’Strowsky describes it.

O’Strowsky likes going up front and visiting with Colin after he gets off deadline because he says he needs a shot of intellectualism, which is one of the little ways he has of telling us what he thinks of us, brain-wise. We try to like O’Strowsky much as anyone else around here but he doesn’t always make it easy.

Me, I think I could use a shot of intellectualism too, so I tag along with O’Strowsky next time he goes up to talk with Colin. Not having been a coin guy myself I don’t know much about Colin’s operation except he does the big coin catalog which is the biggest and most prestigious thing this company does, if you ask the coin guys about it. As kind of an impartial judge myself I’d have to say it’s complete enough, and big as you’d ever want one of these things to be. Set you right up if there’s any table you can’t quite reach, that’s for sure.

Colin’s operation sits behind a row of floor-to-ceiling cabinets, so from the hall you can’t see what’s going on. Makes you think of one of those backroom operations where they put up a false front of a laundry or flower shop only here the cabinets are up so no one can see what a mess Colin’s desk is.

Colin’s desk is actually a couple of desks – two or three, depending on if you count the filing cabinets with a piece of quarter-inch plywood across the top. No matter the final number, they’re all covered with at least two feet of paper, not neatly stacked paper but a mountain range of paper with peaks and valleys that stretch across the available space, landscaped with pictures and letterhead and page dummies, with drumlins and moraines and outcroppings and a breathtaking bridge across the top of his terminal. It’s something, all right, and those of us who know paper think it’s more impressive than a big coin catalog. Most of us are disorganized to a degree. Sort of comes with the territory, prerequisite for working here. But this is disorganization on a master scale. Nothing you can do but step back and try to drink it in. Never again in your lifetime, you figure.

I can’t speak real clear in the presence of such greatness, so I sort of stammer out, “So how – what – I mean, how’d you wind up here?”

Every piece of Colin’s shape is out of control, from his height to his hair to his stomach to his beard to his shirt, which tells me more than I need to know about the blue-plate special at the Crystal. His voice is a rumble, a belch with enunciation. I like him.

“Say O’Strowsky dragged you up here? Make it seem like some sort of expedition,” he says to me by way of introduction.

“O’Strowsky’s back there questioning the intellectual manhood of anyone who doesn’t come up and see you,” I say. “Figured I had no choice.”

Colin lets go a belch-rumble of a laugh, sits down facing his left-hand desk, reaches into the foothills of that mountain range, pulls out a picture, writes something on the back, then hands the picture to us. “Easter Island stone money,” he says. “Islanders used to wear it around their necks, trade it for cattle. Can’t put a price on it, of course, but they don’t need to know it. Collectors, I mean.”

“So you put a price on it?” I ask.

“Course. No one’s gonna check it except those what already have it, and for them it’s like warm milk, makes them feel good. Them that wants to buy it already have a price in mind they’re willing to pay, and could give a damn what a catalog says. Funny thing, the way it is with stuff like this. You put it in knowing no one will ever refer to it, but you leave it out and people write ‘cause you’re not being complete. Damnedest business in the world. Damnedest.”

“What’d you do before?”

“Insurance, if you can believe it,” he says, and I can believe it because everyone has a past that doesn’t go along with what they are now, like the plates shifted between their old life and this one. “Actuary. Know what an actuary is, doncha?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Actuary’s someone who tells you when you’re gonna die.”

“Or when your house is gonna burn down or your car is gonna get wrecked, yeah. How much your insurance is gonna cost you, mostly. Thing about actuaries – thing about insurance – is it’s all the process. How you get there’s more important than getting there. ‘s like there’s ten thousand ways to get from here to Buffalo – more, when you figure out the variations – take a turn here, go straight there. Hundred thousand ways to get from here to Buffalo. Insurance company just wants to know the shortest. Shortest and cheapest. Nothing else matters. Not the most scenic, historic, one with the best restaurants, none of that. Just shortest and cheapest. It’s the process. Follow the process, get you to shortest and cheapest. Used to check my process all along to make sure I was doing steps in the right order, following their procedures, not leaving anything out. Me, if you can believe it, having to buckle down and do everything strictly by the book.

“I got around that quick enough. Figured out enough to bluff the checkpoints and just made up the insurance rates from there. It’s an art anyway. Don’t let all the process people tell you different. Insurance rates is an art, just like coin catalogs is an art, just like anything else they haven’t computerized and castrated is an art. Guys selling the insurance said my rates were easier to sell than hot buttermilk biscuits. Insurance company made money, like insurance companies like to do, they were head-over-heels in love with their swell process, and all I was doing was figuring what rates should be without following any process except the one up here” – and he tapped a wild clump of hair with a foot-long of a finger. “’s an art, I tell ya.”

“Like to say the insurance company went all to hell after I came here, but truth is salesmen are still selling and the company’s still making money. Takes more than me leaving to knock the pins out from under an insurance company. Got a Christmas card from one of my old chums back there, said they put in whole new processes this year and things run smoother than ever. Smoother than ever! Ain’t life grand?

“Ah, what the hell. ‘s good here. No process whatsoever here, not in this department. Asked the old guy if he had a process to do any a’these catalogs and he said, ‘Just do ‘em the way makes sense to you.’ That changes. Some years I think it makes more sense doin’ ‘em chronologically, other years makes more sense doin’ ‘em by denomination or metal content. Some years I go by continent, other years I go straight alphabetically. Some years I do the pictures first, some years I write the words. No one minds, long as girls in production get it on time and there’s a place in back of the book where people can go to look up their coins. Not the shortest or the cheapest, but everyone gets along with it fine.”

This is what it means to be a satisfied man, I’m thinking, so before I get too overcome with admiration I tell Colin I’ll see him around and truck back to the department. Almost makes me wish I’d had a past in insurance and a mess of insurance processes to run away from.