Roughly a decade ago, I had sort of a cool glass bottle on my desk that I and a few others tossed change into. We’d use the coins as needed for cookies, candy bars, pop, etc. out of the vending machines.
The bottle sat unmolested on my desk for months until the day, just for a sociological experiment, I decided to stick a dollar bill in among the maybe $2.50 in change. When I arrived at work the next day, the entire bottle was gone.
Disconcerting but, I suppose, somewhat predictable.
Anyway, a short time after that news editor Kim Jackson and I founded a new financial institution, which we dubbed the First National Vitamin C Savings and Loan. We called it that because we kept our coins, this time, in an old Vitamin C bottle, tucked for safekeeping inside an ancient stone crock that I had found buried in our garage storeroom.
For short, we call our business “The VC,” which we realize has something of a Vietnam War ring to it, but we’ve gone with that anyway.
Over the years, our business has expanded from merely banking to what I like to refer to as a “three-legged stool” of finance, pharmaceuticals (mainly ibuprofen) and uncanceled postage stamps, which I peel off incoming mail every chance I get.
Kim gets sort of nervous about the third leg of that stool — to him it conjures up images of federal crime and Leavenworth, so he just sort of pretends we don’t do the stamp thing and lets me handle it — but I am pleased to report that despite these tough economic times, The VC remains as solvent as the day it was founded.
(I should mention here that a few years ago we took on Sunday editor Mike Henneke as a third investor; he causes the occasional security breach, such as leaving the money bottle outside the crock, but we’ve never suffered for it.)
While we three are the main ones keeping The VC afloat, others do contribute as well, pretty much commensurate with what they borrow (we’re talking money here; Kim and I provide the meds just as a show of goodwill, and of course the stamp thievery is my area alone; we give the stamps away to people who need them, btw, not sell them; at present we have about $15 in stamps on hand.)
And just in case you were wondering what our operation looks like — and I’m sure you were — here are some pictures from our brochure:
The outer vault.
Money and meds: The inner vault.
The stamps that Kim would lose sleep over, were he to think about them.
3 comments
dmich0806 says:
Dec 16, 2009
This one made me laugh out loud while sitting at my desk in my very quiet office environment…
My heritage is German and, while serving in our armed forces, I lived in Germany for just under three years. Keep this in mind: in the German alphabet, the letter W is pronounced "vay" and the letter C is pronounced "say." German was my first language, so I tend to still comingle particular parts of each of the primary languages I use.
Now, in Europe, the lavatory is commonly called the "water closet" and, as history would have it, many water closets are marked with "WC." This is the "Vay-Say" and when I saw the letters VC in reference to your "pot," I simply could not control my hysterics! Had to excuse myself to the (ahem) ladies room!
Thanks for the boost this morning! I needed it!
stevelundeberg says:
Dec 16, 2009
Hey, no problem. That's what I'm here for. Thanks for reading.
Lundy: Thrifty clean « Steve Lundeberg says:
Aug 25, 2010
[...] work, I store the extras under this funky little crock that serves as the outer vault for the savings and loan that Kim Jackson, Mike Henneke and I operate. At home, they go, amazingly enough, into a napkin [...]