{"id":1240,"date":"2018-09-05T13:07:36","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T13:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2018-09-05T13:07:36","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T13:07:36","slug":"rainy-day-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=1240","title":{"rendered":"Rainy Day Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

A number of years ago, when I was working for the government, we received a memo stating that any gratuity we received while on official business was the property of the government and not to be used for personal gain.
\nThis was about the time the airlines were beginning their \u201cfrequent flyer\u201d programs that included points that could be used for free tickets, etc.
\nMost of us traveled quite a bit and some people were upset that they wouldn\u2019t be getting what they were \u201centitled to.\u201d My personal view was, and is, that the government was paying for the ticket, so any benefits should<\/em> go to them. Those rules changed so often over the years, I have no idea what the policy might be today.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, a few days after receiving the memo, I flew to San Francisco and rented a car from National Car Rental. At the time National was having a promotion to increase business by offering free gifts with each transaction. After checking in at the rental counter and completing the paperwork, they handed me my rental agreement \u2014 and an umbrella. It was bright green with the National emblem on it. I pushed it back and told them that I couldn\u2019t accept the gift because I was traveling on official business using government funds. They pushed it back to me and said that that didn\u2019t matter to them and they were under instructions to give one to everyone that rented a car. We repeated that routine a few times and finally I gave up and left with the umbrella.<\/p>\n

When I returned from my trip, I filled out all my accounting paperwork and sent it to the travel people \u2014 with the umbrella attached.
\nWithin a few days I got a phone call asking why there was an umbrella included with my travel accounting paperwork. I explained that I was following the directions in the memo that we all received that indicated to me that the umbrella belonged to the government. The travel people told me they had no mechanism to handle umbrellas and that I should just keep it. I once again explained that I couldn\u2019t \u2014 the memo I received clearly stated that it belonged to the government.<\/p>\n

Over the next couple of weeks I received numerous phone calls from offices that I never even knew existed, asking why the umbrella was being sent to them and what I expected them to do with it. I always responded that I was just complying with the memo, which by this time I had almost committed to memory in its entirety, including the originating office, date, who signed it, etc.<\/p>\n

Three or four months after submitting the umbrella to the \u201cgovernment\u201d it came back to me via inter-office mail. It must have had 30 or 40 \u201crouting slips\u201d attached to it\u2026 most of them said, \u201cwhat is this and why it being sent to me?\u201d or, \u201cwhy and I getting this?\u201d or, \u201cwhat am I supposed to do with this?\u201d
\nWell, you get the idea \u2014 there obviously was no mechanism in place to support gratuities we received while on official business that rightly belonged to the government.<\/p>\n

I just gave up on the umbrella and hung it in the coat room to become the \u201coffice umbrella\u201d in case anyone got stuck and needed one. The umbrella was there a couple of days before someone stole it.
\nThe point is that there is no point\u2026 when you write a blog about nothing, you don\u2019t need a point
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A number of years ago, when I was working for the government, we received a memo stating that any gratuity we received while on official business was the property of the government and not to be used for personal gain. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1241,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}