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Executives get pied for charity
By Scott Steinberg
Pretend it's not happening. That's what Bruce Paynter says is the best way to take a pie to the face. Speaking as an artist for an undeniably rare art form, his advice is about as professional as it gets.
On Dec. 7, Paynter and other management at Applied Arts stood tall as employees paid to toss or smear their bosses with whipped cream. The money went to charity; the kicks were for keeps.
It was a special day for Paynter the "Pie Guy," who is site director of the Sunnyvale campus. He was rumored to be taking the 300th pie of his four-year creaming career.
Applied Materials managers were raising money for the Second Harvest Food Bank charity. It's become a mammoth seven-year alliance resulting in 3.4 million pounds of food donations.
And so Dec. 7 was merely a continuation of a yearly tradition in which $5 got employees a toss 10 feet from the target--upper management at its most susceptible. Twenty dollars meant flattening a pie straight to the face, no throwing, no stretching. But $50 bought an entire can of whipped cream, carte blanche.
The proceeds went into a bank account from which Second Harvest can draw whenever they need to, says Mike O'Farrell, vice president of global community affairs.
The advantage to doing it this way rather than buying food is that the charity can buy more food per dollar than the company can, he adds
Despite the benefits of creating an account for the charity, O'Farrell says the most impressive part of the company's Season of Sharing campaign is a more hands-on contribution called Helping Hands, which takes place the first Saturday in December.
Employees arrive at a warehouse with their families and create ethnically categorized food packages for needy families.
"That day is the best of the best," O'Farrell says. "It's a value-oriented activity that gives people an idea of what it's like to give back."
Paynter is no stranger to charity himself. He contributed $1,000 of his own money to the pie-tossing event, and, needless to say, a still target, which he doesn't mind.
"The worst thing [about it] is the smell stays with you for days," he says.
But he took pie after pie in the best of spirits. His philanthropy begged the pestering questions--"Would Albert Schweitzer take 300 whipped-cream pies to the face?" "Does Gordon Moore know the feeling of having a dessert topping in his ear?"
One employee told Paynter, "You are one of my favorite guys."
Then she got him right between the eyes.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
