CHAPTER 10: PERSONNEL RECORDS AND OTHER INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE

This chapter focuses on dealing with others who have access to any piece of paper with a “DOB” line on it. Can you have access to these papers without getting arrested? This chapter addresses the possibilities of ripping out the date of birth when you have the chance. If the personnel manager is indiscriminate, do you kill her to ensure your privacy? These and other questions will be answered.

My Personnel Binder has my date of birth in it. I’ve had so many jobs and schools, traffic incidents, credit applications, stupid surveys, license plates, any form I ever filled out, I felt a moral obligation to fill in my true date of birth. And then I met Oona. God I love her. When friendships like this happen I think maybe there is an element of fate to life.

Let me explain. She feels no obligation to give the exact year. She taught me tricks. Make the last number difficult to decipher. Is that 1979 or 7? 1973 or 8? Get it? She believes if people are rude enough to ask, it is perfectly OK to lie. As long as you are not saying you are 17 when applying to be a stripper, you’re fine. As long as you are not signing up for a gym membership claiming to be 28, when you are actually 59, you are OK. As long as you are not harming yourself or others, it is no ones business.

See, Oona’s dad shares my pain. When Oona was as young as 13, she had to tell others she was 10 or less to decrease the inevitable calculation immediately made on her father’s age. He knows.

When I started in my big company I was just a child. * I gladly documented my age on the first page, and would make everyone laugh when people had their work anniversary parties and I’d say, “You’ve been here longer than I’ve been alive!” It happened twice, and then I shut up.

* Again, one of those fabulous, subjective words. I’ll remain child-like until my death to maintain the ability to use this adjective.

There have been so many incidents when I knew people snooped to find out how old I was men and women. There was a male boss who comes to mind. He was describing how there was another colleague of mine who is actually younger than he appeared. He was right, I definitely thought he was at least ten years older.

I knew he bothered to look in my personnel binder to obtain my age because,
A - I told no one my age and
B - he said, “Bill may be younger than you.”
Bill is one year younger than I am! Yes, that could just be a guess, but there were other occasions when this guy referred to people 15 years younger than him as my age, and I am exactly 15 years younger than he is.