I Discovered That I Now Had Twenty-Four Ketchup Packets

Because this is my 100th blog post, I thought that I would give you something special that I had been holding out on for a while now.

About four years ago, I was employed as a translator at a Japanese company here in Indiana called HAPPICO. That topic in itself is worthy of its own book (HAPPICO, once a large plastics manufacturer, is now completely out of business, and I have about 300 pages worth of boredom-induced on-the-clock writing that could give you some idea why). Most people, both inside and outside of the company called it "Crappyco," and with very good reason.

One Friday, by boss, Mr. Manabe, informed me that I would have to accompany him as his translator on an excursion the next day to American Plastics Molding in Scottsburg, Indiana. Work on Saturday? Eff that, I thought. Little did I know that my visit there would change my life forever.

All that I had heard about American Plastics Molding was that they refused to work on Sundays because the owner of the company was a devout Christian. When we arrived at their facilities in Scottsburg that day, there was quite a bit of time to kill, and while we were hanging out in the office waiting for our contact to show up, I noticed that there were copies of this red book all over the place. I picked one up and started reading it. It was weird. Really weird. What is up with this weird book? Is this written by the president of this company? When one of the secretaries saw that I was reading it, she asked me if I wanted my own copy of the book to take home. She even told me that I could have a few copies of the book to take home. Why are they so eager to get rid of copies of this book?

Well, it turns out that not taking an entire boxfull of this book is possibly one of the biggest mistakes I have made in my entire life. You see, the book by by APM president Floyd Coates is called Our Toilets Are Not for Customers. That should have been my first hint as to the treasures contained within its pages. I took my one copy of the book home with me, and showed it to a few friends, kind of like "check out this weird book they gave me when I went to Scottsburg." Every single person who has seen the book has desperately wanted a copy. It's just THAT GOOD. Need proof? Please read what is possibly one of the greatest opening sentences of all time. Here you go:





That's right. There is a book, an actual printed book with a full color cover, full of "stories" just like this. This chapter really just scratches the surface of the genius found within the pages of Our Toilets Are Not For Customers. There will be more blogs about this book. Many, many more.