Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-10-18

Business men who poke fun at their
wives for hiding money so successfully
that they cannot find 1t often place let
tiers and documents beneath their blot
ter pads.
old saying goes, has no better exempli-
fication than this. Once an executive
slides a letter beneath the blotter on
his big desk, 1t is gone as effectively as
If he had placed it in the waste paper
basket.
Yet scores of efficient executives in
dulge in this practice. Observe care
fully the desk of the next manager or
near-manager you come in contact
with. The chances are very decided
that there will be suspicious elevation
of the desk pad in front.
Look closer, not too close, for some
one might suspect that you had a de-
sire to read his correspondence, and
this is major crime, of course.
Many office workers would see man
hanged for reading what they placed
in full sight on their desks. Yet the
roaming eye cannot help seeing, i'll
many instances, and all that glitters in
black and white is n3s gold, after all.
OFTEN 1t is only so much bunk.
One may suspect that papers and
letters are poked beneath desk pads In
Another reason, and probably the more
weighty, is that the tired business man
is too lazy to open a drawer and file
the letter.
If one should lift one of those blot
tiers, and take stock of what is beneath,
no doubt he would find o wilder aSsort-
ment than ever graceS little Johnny's
right trouser pocket.
Many women profess to believe that
men are only grown-up boys, which
theory would fit in very well with what
may be found beneath their desk pads.
The neatest desk owned by an Office
worker who INDUCES in this practice
will show forth letters six months old.
jokes from the comic papers, rubber
bands, paper clips, maybe rusty pen
point or two and few postage stamps.
This is favorite hiding place for
photographs of fair ladies in bathing
suits and the like. What place Is so
handy to slide such pictures as beneath
the desk blotter?
Possessors of big blotter pads must
needs pity those busy executives who
have gone in for huge slabs of clear
glass, pitilessly revealing all that goes
beneath them. Not even grain Of
dust can escape.
Lifting mans desk pad, however, is
like reading his letters over his shoul-
der. It isn't done in the best business
circles. What an official puts there is
strictly his own business, not even his
wife's.
Busy men-all business men are busy,
of courSe-conduct their desk tops In
one Of two ways, as a rule.
There is the tidy desk, and the messy
desk. 1t seems that men cannot be
halfway in this matter. A desk has
got to be neat as a pin, according to
the old comparison, or as cluttered up
as q fence corner with November leaves.
Keepers of these types of desks stand
for no compromise. The Neat Desk
Man has only scorn for the Cluttered
Desk Man The former has place for
everything and everything in its place.
The latter has place for everything,
all right, but it generally is on top of
something else. or beneath it, or behind
It, or 10 papers down or feet below
the letter which should have been an
Swered last Christmas
Neat Deskers go in heavily for law
and order. They specialize in papers
just so, hobby fountain pen sets, every