RAFINO Report
ISSUE 23 - Winter 1999 - Return
to Index
Penny-less
By J. Claud Wallace
PENNY-LESS: Then one day the bad news mailbag told us that
the Command, especially the PX was out of pennies. To coin a phrase,
"they were penniless." (I believe that then-Captain Sharon
Volgi-now Colonel-was the bearer of these "glad tidings"
and, quite appropriately, she became the action officer on the new project
for getting the penniless problem solved. We always worked projects
as a staff and I, as the F&AO, was even able to contribute once in a
while. I tried to make my input of the nature that would stretch the
imagination of the staff and add a dimension to the project.
The staff solution to the penniless problem was to plead with everyone in
the command to empty their piggy banks, fruit jars, and pockets to get the
pennies back into circulation. I thought that my contribution was a
classic. I simply approved the staff recommendation then asked a
rather simple question…"Why do we need the penny, anyway, if it is
to be a continuing problem and expense?"
After some discussion we decided that the penny was not needed. At
that then-Captain Volgi was the proud owner of a new project, titled,
"Get Rid of the Penny." The solution turned out to be
rather simple with three steps.
1. Stop bringing pennies into the
command.
2. Train cashiers and clerks to
round to the nearest nickel. (For some reason, which escapes me now,
we rounded every transaction for travel vouchers), and,
3. Retrograde the pennies that we
collected from circulation. (We thought that this step would be
pretty expensive but the quick thinking of COL John Bain in the
Central finance and Accounting Office found a way to ship the pennies back
to New York as ballast in a U.S. Coast Guard ship that was making the
voyage to the U.S. I believe that over $110,000 in pennies was retrograded
this way.)
We were able to eliminate the penny in Europe with a considerable saving
to the Army - and to the best of my knowledge the Army is still
"penniless" in that command. I guess that the main point
in this story is that - while everyone complains about the high cost of
doing business - it is only permissible to making savings in the area of
responsibility of someone else.
Members of RAFINO!
Please note that Claud Wallace, the
author of the above story, and the member who graciously
volunteered to take over as Editor of the RAFINO Report
following publication of this issue, was kind enough to send these
stories to me to use (my cupboard was really bare) rather than to
hold them back for his own use.
So, please send him a lot of
replacements! He’ll need
them ASAP!
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