8 bucks

Half a year or so after I started working for Hewlett Packard Melbourne the annual report for FY 1979 was distributed to we workers. Among the many interesting tidbits of information were the salaries paid to the highest of the high. One figure really caught my eye; it was the salary paid to the CEO. US$499,992

Possibly I was inspired by a recent rereading of Norman Lindsay's[^] 'A Curate in Bohemia' where the hapless Bunson regrets the obdurate refusal of his editor to raise his weekly stipend from 3 and ninepence to 4 shillings.

Being a mere 8 bucks short of the half million a year seemed perverse in the extreme so I thought I'd do something about it. I wanted to start a fund whereby 800 of us could donate one US cent and do the CEO proud. Strange to relate, I found it impossible to interest even 10 people in the project.

My Norman Lindsay collection is one of the very few things I brought with me to the US.