On Topic: Square pegs occasionally fit in round holes

One of the rules - and there were rules galore - at the home office of the giant insurance carrier where I worked for a few, fleeting years was that male managers weren't permitted to leave their immediate work area without wearing a dress jacket.

In fact, up until shortly before I got there, men for years were required to order their sanctioned jackets from a corporate catalog. That way, all those decision-makers would be donned in identical coats.

When “casual Fridays” entered the corporate culture, some of the older managers almost went into a sort of shock.

But, just to ensure the workers in the home office complex didn't run amok with their new-found freedom, word came down from the executive suites that shirts emblazoned with any logo other than the company image were forbidden. (Did I mention this was in Columbus, Ohio? Where Ohio State University scarlet-and-gray buckeyes and giant O's are as omnipresent as, well, oxygen?)

Now, you might take away from this that everything at the headquarters of this big corporation was solidly vanilla, from its policies to its people. But one of the more colorful characters I've ever met had endeavored to flourish there for some three decades.

Ed had started his career at a small town newspaper where he'd answered the urgent call to every train wreck and car crash, taking photos and grabbing names.

At first, I couldn't comprehend why some H.R. administrator believed Ed (not his real name) would make a suitable supervisor of people. It was clear Ed wanted things done the same way he'd been accomplishing them for years, without variation.

His filing system was, to put it in the nicest term, chaotic. It consisted of stacking on his desk the memos, stories, photos and everything else we needed for the half-dozen company publications our department generated.

When we absolutely had to lay our hands on those pieces, we'd wait until Ed went to lunch, then undertake an archaeological dig.

He objected strenuously when I pushed for us to purchase computers that had been built within, oh, the past century.

When we finally went ahead with modernizing our IT equipment and received training, Ed got nose bleeds.

Things came to a head at a conference in San Francisco.

A word on these conferences: The annual summer events were back-to-back ceremonies at posh venues for high-performing agents and managers. Those of us working the affairs - Ed and I did interviews and shot photos from early morning to past dusk every day - were on-site for about a month.

That could be why tempers were a bit frayed when we started sorting statues the night before the awards presentation.

Ed insisted on going about the alphabetical arrangement of each recipient's statue the way he always had: Take one statue out of the box, place it in its spot on the awards table, rearrange all the others already on the table; then take out another statue ….

After about 20 minutes of this, I pointed out it would be much quicker if we removed a whole bunch of the statues from the box, put them on the floor, grouped them with their respective beginning letters, then arrange all the statues alphabetically - once - on the main table.

After the fourth time I suggested this, Ed clamped his eyes shut and, with a statue clutched in each hand, yelled, “You're messing up my system.”

More shouting occurred, from each of us.

Fortunately Ed's wife arrived. She listened to our proposals and, bless her heart, allowed maybe we could try my idea, just this once, to see how it might speed things along.

We were done in less than half an hour.

It wasn't until 12 months later, at the next year's awards functions, that Ed admitted that possibly my plan might be faster. Apparently, without my noticing, we'd decided to get along.

When Ed retired a few years ago, I was asked to contribute to the testimonials for him. I'd been gone from Columbus for a while, but I was more than willing to participate.

What I wrote, and what I'd come to realize about Ed, was that he was devoted to his work: What we did for that corporation, to his lights, was valuable.

The insurance agents, when Ed would show up to interview them in their far-flung offices, from Maine to California, loved him. Simply loved him.

And when he perceived someone in the home office was messing with one of his “people” - with vacations, with access for a story - he'd “go to war,” as he put it.

By his “people,” he even meant me.