By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
I was sitting in my office earlier this month when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard a high-pitched voice on the other line.
"We're looking for some help in getting information from local children on exactly what they would like for Christmas this year," I heard the voice say.
"Who is this?" I asked, noticing the sounds of hammers and nails in the background.
"We can discuss that later. Let's just say I represent a large business interest from the North," he squeaked. "Would you be willing to help?"
Of course, I replied, realizing that I just might be having a conversation with a real, live elf.
He went on: "We get a lot of letters sent directly to us here at North Pole, Inc. and, frankly, it's overwhelming our mail carrier. We're calling around and asking if some newspapers can help us by printing the letters. We're already subscribers, of course, as we like to check the paper to get a leg up on the whole naughty and nice thing."
We quickly came to terms. We would ask our local children to write the letters, then we would print them, just as they were written. Then, we would send them to North Pole Inc.
"What happens then?" I asked the elf, who had now identified himself as Jolly J. Jingles, head of Public Relations to Santa Claus dba North Pole Inc.
"First, we send the letters to the Naughty and Nice Department for verification. Then, our accountants look over things to weed out the requests for say, a million dollars or something. Santa's not a bank, you know. Especially not with interest rates like they are.
"Then, we send the letters on to the legal department, who scans them for copyright infringement, non-compete clauses and conflicts of interest. Once they clear those hurdles, they are sent to procurement so we can make sure we have all the necessary pieces and parts to fill all the orders. After that, they go to the workshop and then quality control, which checks to make sure all the balls bounce, the batons twirl and the skates roll. We added that step a couple of years back after we had a recall involving some Silly Putty. It was bad.
"From there, things are sent to the warehouse to be loaded onto the Big Man's sleigh. We're working on a tight deadline around here, so we have to follow our procedures exactly."
I was impressed and felt the least we could do was handle some of the letter duties. So, we asked our local children to send their letters to us and they responded with floods of letters. I hope Jolly J. Jingles is happy. I'd hate to be the kink in the chain that messes up the entire operation.