Hints and tips:
...“As far as I’m aware — and for all I know there could be this huge running joke at the bar where every time I enter a room people are whispering that it’s me — nobody knows in the industry....
...The first visionary was Frank Lloyd Wright, who in 1904 designed a building in Buffalo for Larkin, a mail order business that was the Amazon of its time....
...Asked if they write letters, most people would echo the DLO’s famous fictional former clerk Bartleby in the Herman Melville story: “I would prefer not to.”...
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...To comment on this article, please e-mail magazineletters@ft.com...
...The clerk, or “budtender”, asked about my “preferences”. A deadringer for the actor James Franco, he looked unfailingly chill. “Nothing too strong,” I said....
...The postmen who delivered the mail by bike or on foot had fewer heart attacks than sedentary men who served behind counters or as telephonists and clerks....
...He was, he said, ushered into a meeting with a low-level clerk and told to pack his bags – probably because his perceived sympathy with the Palestinians had embarrassed the British government....
...By now all of us know the perils of sending an e-mail when picking up the phone or meeting in person was what a sticky situation really required....
...The high commission negotiated a room and we paid a large porter to be vigilant. Joe’s sedation was upped again....
...But the scale of the task does not daunt the former bank clerk....
...Could hotels perhaps send in e-mails praising themselves and rubbishing their rivals?...
...He works with disarming directness and speed, bouncing back replies to his e-mails within minutes....
...Every day that the House of Commons sits, between 10am and the close of parliamentary business, one of a rota of six members of parliament presents him or herself at the table office, a small room in a corridor...
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