Pink Slips and Parting Gifts

by Deb Hosey White

  During this paper era some managers preached shredding and disposal as the solution to exponential paper accumulation. Viewed as “old school” to suggest destruction of unnecessary documents and records, these managers were actually ahead of their time. They understood that it was folly for companies to accumulate such an extensive paper trail and commit so much business practice to writing.

  One notable Easton human resources director admonished his staff in the mid-1980s, “If you don’t have to put it in writing, then don’t. If I’m ever compelled to take the stand in some court case, I’d like to have an opportunity to explain our actions without some attorney waving a piece of paper in my face.” At the time this HR director seemed to be a management dinosaur; history proves he was a corporate visionary.

  A few seasons into this new communications era, corporate budget analysts began to recognize the value of sending more files to offsite storage. Office space was too expensive in most geographic locations to keep all that paper amassed in-house. Many larger organizations previously utilized some offsite file storage, but mostly to store decades of historical information or specialty materials. Now suddenly almost every organization and corporation in America needed more offsite storage capacity.

  Enter Iron Mountain. In business since 1951, Iron Mountain morphed over the decades, adapting to serve the growing needs of the international business community by providing records management solutions for all media and formats, including paper, digital, film, and tape.

  The history of Iron Mountain is worth a peek. How does a company come to provide record storage to ninety-eight percent of the Fortune 1000, and serve over 90,000 organizations in twenty-six countries? Believe it or not it began with mushroom farming.

  For more than fifteen years, Herman Knaust, a.k.a. The Mushroom King, grew and marketed mushrooms in the Hudson River Valley in a depleted iron ore mine purchased in 1936 for $9,000. After World War II, Knaust was searching for an alternative use for his mine. Cold War apprehensions and the arrival of the atomic age convinced Knaust there was a market for protecting information from war and lesser disasters. When the first vaults of Iron Mountain Atomic Storage opened, Knaust located a sales office in the Empire State Building and invited national figures such as General Douglas MacArthur to tour the facilities. New York City banks, followed by other high profile establishments, soon began moving vital records to storage in Iron Mountain. Aligning with business demands for more offsite storage, Iron Mountain spread beyond the New York City market in 1980. It bought its first storage warehouse in Boston in 1983 and expanded into management and retention of legal and medical documents. Then in 1988, Iron Mountain acquired Bell and Howell Records Management, Inc., a company four times its size, and became the first national service provider in the industry. In little more than a decade, Iron Mountain grew from $100 million to $2.7 billion in annual revenues.

  Herman Knaust wasn’t joking in 1952 when he told the Wall Street Journal, “This business will mushroom.” Clearly organizations worldwide have been quite busy since the launch of the information age storing masses of documentation. The Easton Company was not unique in contributing to the stockpiles.

  What happens after a merger to all those archived files and other important and not so important documents that a corporation sends to offsite storage? Acquiring companies such as Pratt-Miles groan at the task of reviewing stored company records when they buy a well-established corporation like The Easton Company.

  During a merger, stored records is an area that seldom receives the attention it deserves, unless someone is looking for a particular missing legal document that is integral to the sale. The Easton Company’s records represented decades of boxed and indexed documents and bits of corporate history that, at some point in time, someone believed were worth saving.

  In the transition period when Pratt-Miles continued to uncover information about Easton, Pratt-Miles presented extensive lists requesting specific key documents from the Easton legal division. As the selling company, Easton produced the requested records either from onsite files throughout the company or from storage. In the course of Pratt-Miles’ acquisition of Easton, that’s where the document review process stopped – at least until after the sale closed.

  Occasionally, an acquiring company might go one step further by asking to review a master list of files in storage. Generally the file review focuses on accounting, human resources, legal and tax matters. The master lists usually provide only vague hints as to what might be found in a particular stored box. Indexed box descriptions normally list the month and year the box was stored, the division or department sending it, and the last name of the lowly clerk who sent the box to storage. The contents description field on the form might be left blank or contain one word (PENSIONS) or a short phrase (BENEFIT BOOKLETS) to guide future employees on a hunt for some long forgotten but suddenly necessary bit of arcane information.

  The other key bit of information that must be completed on the form before a box can go to offsite storage is the storage time period. Here, the employee sending the box to storage checks: one year, five years, ten years, or indefinitely. Finally, the storage form requires the sender to indicate instructions for the storage company to follow when the storage time period has elapsed. The choices are: “contact sender for new storage instructions” or “destroy.”

  Few corporate clerks and administrators are ever trained in the process of sending files to offsite storage. Insufficiently informed and not wanting to throw caution to the wind, clerks packing boxes for storage frequently check the “indefinitely” box. Without any other direction, this seems like the safe choice. The lack of training and guidance regarding this one small procedural detail probably accounts for a significant portion of Iron Mountain’s ongoing business.

  A more inquisitive acquiring company might perform core sampling once the master list of documents is reviewed – for example, sending for every seventh box in storage from the past seven years, plus any others with intriguing contents descriptions (PARTY DOLLS).

  Inevitably, when an acquiring company digs through stored corporate files, the new management’s reaction is universally predictable: Why the heck were they saving this stuff?

  In the throes of an acquisition, however, sifting through stored documents was a low priority for Pratt-Miles. In the short window between the announcement of the sale and the close of the deal, they barely had time to review the piles of pertinent documents required to effect the merger. After the acquisition, Easton corporate records remained at Iron Mountain with periodic review ticklers and invoices redirected to the new owner.

  Although no one wanted to give it much thought, eventually low level Pratt-Miles administrative staff had to consider what might be in storage. After several months of notices and invoices from Iron Mountain, a part-time Pratt-Miles accounting clerk asked the question, “Do you think we need to continue storing all these Easton files at Iron Mountain?”

  “Oh heavens. Please don’t ask,” a coworker responded. “They might make us actually go through it all.”

  Eventually, after a merger deal closes, someone must make a decision about the future of the former corporation’s stored documents. Either keep them, or shred and destroy. But is it an all-or-nothing decision, or will some detective work occur beforehand?

  What makes management uncomfortable is the material that corporate attorneys automatically assume is out there: documents related to a lawsuit-in-waiting. Such records are like Rip Van Winkle asleep under the tree; only this stuff sleeps underground in an old mining mountain in the northeastern rural countryside.

  Fifteen months after the acquisition, Pratt-Miles decided to stop opening all mail addressed to The Easton Company or any former Easton employees. It was shredded upon delivery. A few weeks later, a decision was made about Easton files stored at Iron Mountain. Pratt-Miles would undertake one final review of the material, decide what to keep and what to toss, and (more importantly) document the prudence of t
he review process.

  One Pratt-Miles attorney shared her thoughts about the matter off-the-record with a coworker, “It would be nice to send word to the mysterious recordkeeping elves that everyone imagines work at Iron Mountain and tell them to destroy it all, but we just can’t do that without having some basis for our decision.” It was the in-house attorneys who insisted on sending for a vanload of assorted boxes to have staff take a cursory look and hopefully confirm it was all worthless and disposable.

  Sending for the Iron Mountain boxes was like taking a geologic core sample. There were decades of history here: some of it interesting, some of it amusing, most of it irrelevant. But like a core sample, it had to be studied carefully to know what critical items might be lurking below the surface.

  A Pratt-Miles administrative assistant paused in the middle of flipping through stacks of Easton printed material. She glanced at the other workers around the table who were buried in old Easton files. They had sorted out a tiny “keep” pile while their “shred” pile was now bigger than a compact car.

  “This is the nonsensical paper garbage that some future intergalactic dynasty will unearth and sift through to discover the secrets of the post-atomic era,” one employee said. “Sadly, what they will discover will be the least interesting, most useless information imaginable – in triplicate.” Included in the last shipment of boxes from Iron Mountain was one inventoried as “HRH docs/gloves/goggles.” This description had caught the attention of a Pratt-Miles law clerk taking a concluding look at the storage inventory lists. It was sufficiently captivating to request that bin in the final run.

  Are You Still a Corporate Pilot If There Are No Corporate Planes?

  Jake Martin stood in the doorway of the hangar bay as the new owner of the Hawker 800A taxied toward the runway. It hurt too much to watch it take off with someone else in his seat, so he turned and walked back into the empty bay. The pilot for the new corporate owner of the Learjet had flown it away two days before. Without the planes, the Easton Transportation hangar was depressingly lonely.

  Jeffrey had sent Jake a note right after the planes had sold, saying he was angry with Pratt-Miles for their poor handling of the situation and sorry to see the Hawker go. “It’s like losing a good friend,” Jeffrey had written.

  “You’re telling me,” Jake had mumbled to himself as he read Jeffrey’s note.

  The note continued, “My apologies that things didn’t work out as I’d expected. No doubt you will land on you feet – snatched up by another CEO who appreciates the comfort of being flown by the very best. Best of luck, Jeffrey Elkins.”

  Jake strolled through the hangar to the office and took a small set of keys from his top desk drawer. Then he walked into the conference room and unlocked the wine cabinet. He extracted a bottle of 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet and opened it. It was expensive – one of Jeffrey’s favorites – and certainly one Jake might enjoy when someone else was paying. As he walked back through the hangar he stopped dead center and took his first swig. It was smooth and fine. Jake chuckled quietly to himself. Good? Yes. Excellent? Definitely. But only the corporate elite on an expense account would spend $500 for 25.6 ounces of fermented grape juice.

  Looking up at the camera installed in the ceiling, Jake smiled and raised the bottle in his hand. “Hey Jeffrey. How’s it going? If you’re watching, this moment is depressing as hell.” After taking another swig, “Lucky you. You’re not here.”

  After the holidays at the start of the New Year, Jake was continually amazed every other Friday when he checked his bank account balance and confirmed he was still receiving his direct deposited paychecks from Pratt-Miles. The contract copilot and mechanic had received their letters terminating their work agreements weeks ago.

  Toward the end of January, Jake got a call from a human resources manager at Pratt-Miles in Denver. After exchanging some surreal pleasantries with a person he had never met, the manager asked Jake if he would mind staying on for a couple more months to handle the run-out of bills and expenses related to the close of Easton Transportation. Jake agreed, thinking to himself this would be easy to handle while he geared up to look for new employment.

  The following week, another call came from Denver. This time it was from a member of the corporate legal group. “I realize this isn’t what you normally do,” the young-voiced female attorney purred into the phone with the emphasis on the word do, “but we were wondering if you would mind acting as the company’s agent over the next couple months. We really need someone to show the hangar to potential buyers and, well…you would be the perfect person to do that, don’t you think?”

  Jake was quiet, not to be rude, but truly thinking over the ramifications of what the woman was asking.

  “We don’t mean to insult you – really,” the attorney jumped into the silence. “We know that as a professional pilot you might be insulted that we’re asking, but here’s the deal. We’d be happy to continue your current salary for the next few months if you’d agree to show the hangar as needed. We’d send you a Blackberry so that you could come and go as you please, as long as you would make yourself reasonably available to meet an interested buyer at their convenience. But again, we would understand if you said no. As a fellow trained professional I can appreciate that you are probably anxious to get back to what you love to do most.”

  “Let me think on this overnight, if that’s alright with you,” Jake responded. “I’ll call you back in the morning with my answer.”

  “Fine. Really. That would be great. We’ll wait to hear from you.”

  Jake flipped his cell phone shut and began considering the proposal Pratt-Miles was making. The attorney was right. It was an insult to ask a pilot of his caliber to work as the Vanna White of the Hangar, so to speak. But on the other hand, they were willing to pay generously for him to unlock the facility and conduct show and tell tours with wealthy investors.

  Two weeks later, a Blackberry toting Jake Martin was sitting just outside the Easton Transportation hangar doors, enjoying one of those freak unseasonably warm winter days that pop up almost annually in the Washington area. Tipped back in a folding chair leaning against the outer wall of the hangar, Jake was killing time watching planes land. Jake wore his tour guide garb: black leather flight jacket, pilot cap, and his best and newest aviator sunglasses, which glinted in the sunshine and gave his wide white smile an air of mystery. He was waiting for yet another potential buyer scheduled to tour the hangar. Someone named Carolee Kelly. With a name like that he was certain she would look like all the other female millionaires who had already visited, consistently arriving in enormous limos: tall, anorexic bleached-out women with impossibly high heels and ridiculously small dogs residing full-time in designer bags. The dogs usually wore couture clothes that sometimes matched their owners’ outfits. There had been plenty of interested businessmen who passed through dressed in Briani, Armani or Hugo Boss suits, mirror shades that rivaled his own, and Rolexes the size of mantel clocks. The phrase “ludicrous outrageous wealth” continuously snaked though Jake’s consciousness every time he gave another tour.

  On this beautiful winter day, Jake felt like he had sold his soul. He desperately missed flying, but the money Pratt-Miles was paying him while he freely roamed with a Blackberry on his hip made his decision to defer job hunting an easy one. Almost daily he went through the mental gymnastics of reminding himself that he was a professional pilot – it was important to remember that. However, this period was the first time in his entire life when he was able to relax on the job. “Just a little while longer,” he told himself each new day. “Just a few more weeks.”

  Tales of the Sofa

  Three weeks after the close, with more than 110 corporate jobs already eliminated, nearly half the offices in the former headquarters building stood unoccupied. Entire sections of the building, including two back entrance hallways, were left dark when employees arrived in the morning. Employees entering through any of the doors other than the main entran
ce now had the strange sensation of entering a deserted building. It was eerie. Just a month before – and every business day for decades before that – the building had possessed its own soundtrack of voices, phones, footfalls on hardwood floors, and the general buzz and hum of generations of office equipment. Now it was like entering a morgue. Dark and quiet. Too quiet for a building this size. The phones had stopped ringing. The sound of conversations, meetings, laughter and even the hum of the lights and electronics was disturbingly subdued or absent.

  Occasionally, an employee from one floor of the building would wander to another floor to find a fellow human to talk to for a few minutes. The conversation usually began with, “Got a minute? Everyone left in my group is traveling this week except me. It’s a little lonely up there.”

  In those early days of December when the daylight hours were seasonally scarce, the dark and quiet atmosphere inside the former headquarters was more than some remaining employees could tolerate. During those closing weeks of the year, it was commonplace for a worker to stand up and announce in a relatively loud voice some version of: “It’s too quiet in this place. I gotta get out of here for a while.” And out the person would go for fresh air and the comfort of some coffee shop noise. On cloudy days someone usually walked around and turned on lights in portions of the unoccupied spaces saying, “I know it’s wasteful but I just can’t stand it being so dark in here. It’s depressing enough – we don’t need to make it gloomier.”

  On one of those gloomy days, a marketing specialist walked through the main level intent on shedding a little more light throughout the building. On a whim, she flipped on the lights in the CEO’s reception suite. Later that morning, because it was an exceptionally gray and quiet day, Kate Cooper and two remaining human resources employees decided to take their meeting to a new location in the building, hoping for some better light and some new perspective. Turning a corner on the main level, Kate noticed the lights on in the CEO’s suite.