Elves Protest Santa, Inc.'s New Tracking Strategy

location based services

NORTH POLE – December 18th, 2006 – In a dramatic show of solidarity among Santa Inc.'s work-force, the Elves came together on December 1st to present Santa, Inc.'s CEO with a petition signed by all 20,000 elves who worked in the field on Christmas Eve delivering presents to all the good boys and girls. The petition stated Santa, Inc.'s upcoming implementation of an AVL tracking application on the elves cellular phones was not acceptable and against the corporate culture of Santa, Inc. The acting spokesman for the elves, Hermey "The Misfit" Elf, stated, "We are not against tracking Santa, Inc.'s Assets per se—its just that we don't consider ourselves wholly-owned by Santa, Inc. Track the sleighs, not the elves." Hermey and other elves at the Santa, Inc. headquarters were spotted wearing tee-shirts emblazoned with an "Elves Own Ourselves" slogan. Santa, Inc. had previously publicized a plan to roll-out phone handset tracking capabilities on Christmas Eve of this year, but has shelved those plans in favor of implementing tracking devices on all sleighs in the delivery fleet. "Automatic Sleigh Location (ASL) has always been a planned component of stream-lining our shipping and logistics operations," stated Mrs. Claus, the President and Chairman of the Board, "this is just the first year we will have it rolled out to all sleighs." "At Santa, Inc., we were just not expecting the negative feedback that our proposal to track the elves individually, via their cell phones, generated among our workforce," she added. In a last minute deal, brokered by Santa, Inc. with the support of their elf work-force, Chapel Hill, NC-based USAT Corp., a firm hired by Santa, Inc. in the past to enable wireless data communications between headquarters and all shopping mall-based Santas, was tapped by Santa, Inc. to install the ASL equipment into all sleighs during the latter part of the month of December. In order to achieve so many installs in such a short timeframe, Santa has agreed that 200 elves, managed by Hermey, will assist the USAT Corp. installation team after a training session given to Santa's workforce by Joe Goss, USAT Corp.'s National Installation Manager. "It is a very challenging schedule, but with good weather and full cooperation of the elves, we should get all the sleighs done on time," Goss said. About Santa, Inc. With approximately 60,000 employees in over 120 countries and no ongoing revenues, Santa, Inc. is one of the world's largest not-for-profit providers of holiday deliveries. Santa, Inc. designs and develops or sources gifts which it delivers to end-users via their proprietary CRM with a sophisticated, integrated "behavioral tracking system". For further information please visit www.usatcorp.com/santa