Cartophile:
Esso/Humble/Exxon Touring Service

Some wise person (I forget who) told me to take stock of my interests and abilities and then to look for the place where I could best use them. Since I loved maps and knew my geography, I reasoned that a Touring Service would be the best place to work. There were several in New York City, but I liked the Esso maps best. I thus went to the Esso Touring Service at 15 West 51^st Street first. (That was the counter. They told me to go upstairs, but upstairs turned out to be over 3 blocks away in the U.S.Rubber Building.

John C. Shaw III was the roadmaster and he told me to come back around Easter. I explained I wouldn't be back until June, so he agreed to test and interview me that day. The test was a breeze. In retrospect, I know that I said the right thing in the interview, when I told them (quite honestly) that, for years, I had considered them the best Touring Service.

He thus agreed to hire me, although the official hiring would occur when I returned in June. This wasn't the last time. Every June for ten years, I would spend the first couple of hours at work filling out the job application, W-4's, etc. Since I always got paid for that time, I didn't mind too much.

The normal overtime day for me meant arriving around 7:00 a.m., taking an hour for lunch (around 2:30), and leaving around 6:00 p.m. Those who arrived later would leave later. We thus worked about ten hours a day, six days a week.

We would take mail requests in groups of "ten and ten" - 10 letters & 10 postcards. A mid-manager would chalk these up on a clipboard. Generally, this was about two hours of work. Then, we'd each "pull phone duty" for a couple of hours a day. At the phones, we'd tally our own PMs & PIs. A PM was a phone/mail request. You'd take the request and mark it yourself. By using lots of abbreviations (like airport codes) and marking while talking, you'd keep up production and wouldn't have many to take back to your desk. A PI was a phone/info request --- no maps were sent, but the motorist was helped by directions on the phone.

There was also "counter duty". Although Frank Tuohy and Paul Geller worked full-time at the counter, the rest of us just pulled a couple hours there each weekday, generally around the lunch hour.

A year or two after I started, the walks became shorter, as "upstairs" moved into the Esso Building. We were in the back of the building with windows overlooking 52^nd Street and the 21 Club.

Moving was always an overnight affair. On moving day, you had to:

• leave work at 5:00 (no overtime that night)
• put away everything in your desk drawers

The next move was to the best location imaginable --- the front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. In those days, 30 Rock was the RCA Building. Today, it's the GE Building. Our office, on the 17^th floor, was at the northeast corner of the building, thus giving us windows looking northeast toward the Cathedral and looking east at the Channel Garden, and looking straight down at the famous outdoor restaurant/skating rink where they erect the Christmas tree each winter. The view was not particularly conducive to productivity, but we still "got the routes out".

Until the last move, only the upstairs office moved. Then, in around 1972, both the counter and "upstairs" moved to the newly erected Exxon Building. It was on the west side of Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas to tourists), diagonally opposite Radio City Music Hall. The best views were to the west --- so I could now see the Hudson River and New Jersey beyond. While the office was brand-new, our desks and map racks were the same ones we had back in the Rubber Building almost ten years earlier.

Top management included Charlie Cordes, John Shaw, and later Ralph Altieri. Mid-management included Walter Ludloff and Bob Goodwin. The routers had much more contact with these people, who managed the production and also did their share of the routing. There were also Frank Tuohy and Paul Geller at the counter.

Besides those with management duties, there were other year-round routers, like Lee Hyland in my earlier years, Kent Engle thoughout the years, Hank Reinhardt who had literally started in the mailroom, and a constant flow of others who would stay for a year or two.

The year-round staff had many benefits. The company bonus was often almost equal to the rest of the year's income, but only the permanent staff got the Christmas bonus. They would also do the road trips during the winter slack time. When there was a choice of two possible best routes and the question affected a lot of the routes being marked, a road trip would be scheduled for the next winter and both routes would be driven. Those results were treated as gospel truth. The question might be on a short question (best way from N.J.Turnpike to the Long Island Expressway) or much longer (Pa.Tpk. to St.Louis). Full-time staff also took turns going on promotional tours sponsored by state tourism departments. Odd as it might sound, Alabama's was everyone's favorite. Each router who went would come back with a much more favorable opinion of that state.

Another group of employees was the musicians, like Martin Lies, Paul Solem and Kellis Miller. During the school year, they were often on the road, doing classical vocal music on college campuses, so they knew the country well. While in New York, they might occasionally get bit parts in the opera. They would also take "gigs"s; doing bar mitzvahs, requiem masses and commercial jingles. Because of their wide travel, they were valuable assets, so the management was very liberal about letting them leave work for a gig.

The last groups of employees were college students and a few teachers. Some stayed for many years, but I doubt that any exceeded my ten years. Among the most memorable were Charles Cino (who went on to practice law in Florida) and Joan Rech who was working on Wall Street when I last saw her a few years later.

Besides the routing staff, the office also had a typing pool, with its own supervisor. These women would type the address on the insert that showed through the window on the envelope. Along with the address, they would type a bit of code that told the date it was marked and also which router had marked the route. (We each had a stamp with our initials & that was stamped onto the request). When appropriate, we'd use our orange marker and write the number of a form letter if the typists needed to include one. Some of the form letters were fill-in-the-blanks form letters. The typists also typed these. One of these might saying something like:

    We have been unable to locate an El Paso, NM.
    Thinking you may have meant El Paso, TX,
    we have marked a route to that destination.
    If this is not.... 

There was also a mail room that weighed each package, determined the class of service, and affixed the postage. Whenever possible, routes would be sent THIRD CLASS, but FIRST CLASS would be used

• if the departure date was near,
• if the request came from a stockholder or executive of the oil company,or
• if there was any writing.

• We were employees of General Drafting Co. (the mapmaker), not employees of the oil company.

• We still acted as if we were public relations employees of the oil company. Thus we learned:
  • Esso was derived from S.O. as in S.O. of N.J. (Standard Oil of New Jersey). As part of the broken-up Standard Oil monopoly, it was not allowed to market in all 50 states.
  • The name Humble was used for a while, esp. in Ohio. The name had nothing to do with humility. It was the name of a Texas oil company that Esso acquired. That company was named for the little town of Humble, just north of Houston.
  • In the west, they tried Enco as a trade name. When they learned it meant something like "stalled car" in Japanese, they decided that wouldn't be a good name for a world-wide company.
  • Wishing to avoid a similar error, they learned that Maltese was the only language in the world to use a double-X. They then determined that the word Exxon didn't mean anything in Maltese, so they used that as their corporate name.

• Because we couldn't be nationwide, we did not have maps of all states. A few years after I started, they issued the first Oklahoma/Kansas map. There never was an Iowa/Missouri map. If a map of one of those states was absolutely essential to a route, we used the state highway map. There was never an Esso/Exxon map of Hawaii or Alaska, although General Drafting did produce an Alaska map as a promotion for a refrigerator company. This was right about the time of Alaska statehood in 1959.

• The Post Office did not consider the orange line nor the blue rubber-stamped information to be writing. By avoiding actual writing, much postage could be saved.

• Both the orange marker line and the blue rubber stamps were bleach-soluble. The ink on the maps was not. Each morning, we'd each take medical cotton and twirl it onto a little stick. This would be placed in a hole on the map rack. On the rubber stamp rack, there was a vial of bleach. Rather than waste a map, we'd use this to erase minor mistakes.

• Geographic place names were to be pronounced as they were pronounced locally. That was the rule, and there was invariably someone in the office who knew the right pronunciation.

• The word route rhymed with root and not rout. Because it was certain to cause a stir, it was normal to try to use the word rout whenever possible, as in the sentence, "That was sure a rout at Yankee Stadium last night." A supervisor would just overhear that one word and come over to scold, whereupon the offender would ask, "Do you mean that I should say the Orioles were rooted last night?"

• On a phone request, detail routing at the starting end of the trip could usually be avoided. Thus, when you asked for a trip from Freeport, L.I. to Brookville, FL, you'd be asked "Do you know your way to the N.J. Turnpike?" If the answer was affirmative, you'd save the work of routing the person off Long Island.

• Telling a customer you couldn't find a destination (no matter how small) was a no-no requiring the highest approval. This wouldn't be given if there was any way to find the answer.

• The office had it's own, very logical, etiquette. To this day, I find myself occasionally following Touring Service etiquette instead of normal office etiquette:
  • When unsure of something, you would wonder aloud. Thus, others in your neighborhood could hear.
  • When you heard someone wondering something, you'd answer if you knew. While there were resources in the room to research any reasonable geographic question, this proved to be much more effective.
  • When you walked between two people who were talking, you did not say "excuse me," since that was more of an interruption than the original one.

• One reason there was so much walking around was to consult base maps There was a base map for each US city, usually posted on a wall. Each was a tree-like route showing the best direct route from every place in the country to that particular city. The master map was a New York City base map, printed in black and white on plastic, from the plates of the Eastern and Western U.S. maps. These were scaled so they could be spliced together. This one was atop a bulletin board and pins were inserted to show current construction. A red pin meant the construction must be avoided. An X would be placed at that location on the route and then the best detour would be the route actually marked. Another color pin meant that the customer should be advised of the construction, usually with a || mark made with a rubber stamp.

Proceed to the General Drafting Co. CASTLE.