Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Aug. 20, 2016)

Of Scholarship and Academe

One learns more from a good scholar in a rage than from a score of lucid and laborious drudges.

…Rudyard Kipling

From the Trivia File

There was a time when Campbell Soup Company deliberately advertised “21 kinds of soup to choose from” and listed 22. For years, 400 to 700 alert advertisement readers annually wrote the company calling attention to the discrepancy—which pleased the company immensely, the error having been made deliberately to make people talk about it and for the added purpose  of giving the company an idea of how thoroughly the ad was read.

Uncle Garabed’s Economic Philosophy

Back in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when U.G. was employed by the U.S. Post Office Department, he noticed that many of the mail clerks and mail carriers were old timers who had gotten their jobs during the “depression” years when jobs were hard to get. He also noticed that these gentlemen performed their assigned duties in an exemplary manner, often going beyond the call of duty. Postal customers could rely on the courteous and conscientious manner in which these gentlemen conducted themselves. In short, they were overqualified for the jobs they held; and that was true of many segments of the economy. One may ask, “Why did they not get better jobs when the economic climate improved?”  The answer is that they had so much invested in their retirement that they did not wish to risk losing the benefits. Some made up for their relatively low income by “moonlighting.”

Then, the U.S. Government, in its well-meaning way, embarked on a program of full employment. Employers were given incentives to hire the otherwise unemployable. This process of dilution of the work force, coupled with the vicissitudes of currency inflation, produced a condition where many employees were underqualified for the jobs they held. This process accelerated to the point where practically everybody became underqualified for the job he held. The truth of this can be observed by anyone merely by going to any department store and asking a clerk a question about its merchandise.

What wisdom can be derived from the foregoing? Simply this:

There’s something to be said for hard times!

What’s in a Name?

Mampreian: Hebrew and Greek in derivation, identified as a descriptive term, mampre is defined as fertile, fruitful.

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CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist

C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.

Latest posts by CK Garabed (see all)

• A Reminiscence: John Najarian - February 19, 2020
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