HOW  ABOUT  A  TRIM?

As a cryptologist for 18 months in Germany, I learned a lot from our British counterparts.  Here is one example:  Early in World War Two, Britain had a working decryption unit.  The cryptologists there were taxed with reading a rather boring manual.  It was noted that some of these experts never even opened the document, even though "upper crust" management felt that they needed to read some of the important information contained within its covers.

To change that situation, someone thought of a simple solution.  Pictures of naked ladies were issued, to be mixed in with the information to be read by the cryptographers, and similar pictorial updates were issued on a periodic basis.  It worked!  (Or so they said.) At least it got personnel eager to open, and perhaps even read, the manual and its updates.

Many years later, when I was the Branch Chief of an organization that provided miles of data to make Social Security a more meaningful resource for our aging population, I was issued 30 copies of something called "The Trim Manual." (I don't remember what the acronym stood for. Perhaps: "To Record Important Material."  All of the Branch personnel received a copy, which, incidentally, was created by a favorite co-worker named Bob Crum. 

I soon noticed what my British friends noticed many years before -- nobody even opened their document.  So, I decided to follow the Brits' example and get sex involved.

I had lots of pictures copied of ladies in skimpy bathing suits (no nudes in the USA) and had a mixture inserted into the Trim manual of each of my male programmers.  So as to not to be chastised as a sexist person, I had pictures of body-builders in "tights" placed in the manuals of my female programmers.  I called these altered manuals "The Macintosh Edition."  I don't know why.

My staff loved their "Macintosh" editions, and maybe it caused a few of them to use their manuals. Over the years, we received new Trim manuals and I didn't pretty them up as before. But I continued to use  the manual's guidance to help me manage the hundreds of programs that my experts produced. (I kept one copy of the "Macintosh" manual.. its stuck in a box of memorabilia.)

Because I was a constant user of the Trim system to control programs successfully, I was called on often to explain how it was used. .

One day, Social Security Upper Management asked me to brief two Oriental gentlemen on the uses of our Trim system. I was told that Mr. Won and Mr. Tieu (no "Cat in the Hat?") were from either Laos, Cambodia, Korea, or Viet Nam and they spoke excellent English.

I met these gentlemen and proceeded with my spiel.  After a few minutes I noticed that Mr. Won and Mr. Tieu were getting restless and had glassy eyes.  Yes, they didn't know what the hell I was talking about.  I decided that I should stop talking and just show them the tracking forms outlined in the Trim manual.

BINGO!  Now they had some forms to copy and bring home like trophies, which was really just what they wanted in the first place.  I'll bet that copies of our Trim forms are still being used in whatever country these guys came from.

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