| Role | William Dollar |
| Audience | U.S. Mint/Bureau of Engraving |
| Format | Memorandum |
| Topic | Plead for Time Off |
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TO: Personnel Director
FROM: William Dollar
DATE: April xx, 19xx
RE: Request for VacationMy name is Dollar, Bill Dollar. Looks like you are referring to my namesake with this!! I've been on the job for the last twelve months without a break, and I am writing to request a two-week vacation. Good reference to fiscal year. In considering my request, I think it's essential that you understand exactly how much work we dollar bills have to do during our time of service for the United States Treasury. Excellent, reference to Treasury department is spot on!! One-dollar bills are the more prevalent, most used, and most abused of all the paper currency. Our life expectancy is only about 18 months. By comparison, the average $100 bill has been in circulation around nine years! Direct evidence that shows you know your stuff.
My journey through the many hands that hold me begins after I leave the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and get sent out to a Federal Reserve Bank. I was shipped to Richmond, Virginia, although I could have been sent to any one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks located throughout the country. While it's nice to travel and see the country, that first trip involves being bundled in currency "bricks" and chunked into armored trucks...no daylight or sunshine for us there! You are too funny! Then we get sent to regular banks when they need to increase the cash they have on hand for their customers. So while it seems like our job is pretty easy to start with, let me assure you it gets much worse from there.
In my case, I went out of our bank with a whole lot of other bills to become part of the day-laborer payroll of a construction company. It turns out there's a lot of house-building going on in the fast-growing Research Triangle area of North Carolina, and a lot of temporary help is hired on that has to be paid at the end of each day. I was paid out to a guy who'd been hauling sand all day to the cement mixers. On his way home, he stopped by the Better Burger place for a buffalo burger and fries, and I ended up going into the cash register there. When they were closing up that evening, the manager divided up tip money among the wait staff, and I was off again.
I went into this very nice woman's purse, but I didn't stay there long. In fact, I didn't stay any place too long; I was in and out of cash registers, fed into soft drink machines, passed back and forth between husbands and wives and kids, folded into swans and other strange shapes at late-night dinner tables, crumpled up and wadded into jeans pockets, and even washed a few times in laundromats.
But I know how crucial we are: employers use us to pay their workers, and the workers use us to buy food and medicines and clothes and gas, and then we're used to pay the people who work in the grocery and drug stores, the malls, and the gas stations. Then those people use us all over again to pay not only for goods but also for services like haircuts and car washes.
It is true that in some ways my life is easier than it was for dollar bills that came before me, because people use checks, credit cards, debit cards, and other electronic transfers more and more all the time. Nice reference to other types of transaction accounts. But there will always be a need for good old hard cash like me. It's just that I'm awfully tired from all my travels, and I may only have another year at the most left in me before I'm recalled, retired, and shredded into thousands of tiny pieces. I'd like to have time to recover from all this wear and tear so that I can keep on circulating until I'm in no condition to continue. Will you consider my request?
Sincerely,
William P. Dollar
Your response remained in character, was creative, and provided substantial references to information we have discussed throughout this unit. This is excellent work and I would like your permission to keep a copy of it as an example to future students. |
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