Meet the Staff
Many people think it takes a staff of trained professionals to produce a magazine like Pipes and tobaccos. Those people are wrong.
Staff
Dayton Matlick, Chairman
With decades of experience in tobacco publishing, Matlick founded P&T magazine because he likes pipes. “The industry and hobby needed a magazine like this,” he says, “and I needed more pipes.” He immediately became publisher of P&T because he owns the company and can be whatever he wants, but he soon turned the job over to Phil Bowling because he didn’t want to work (though he kept the pipes for himself).
Noel Morris, Chief Executive Officer
Primarily responsible for scheduling meetings about what further meetings are necessary before additional meetings can be scheduled, Morris is the company problem solver. “What kinds of problems?” she asks. “Try giving liquor, motorcycles and pellet guns to a college rugby club and you might start to understand the kinds of problems we have.”
Phil Bowling, Publisher
Also publisher of Tobacconist magazine, Bowling occasionally contributes photos and articles to P&T, but his primary contribution is his common sense. “You wouldn’t believe the bone-headed ideas these guys come up with,” he says. “My main job is to say, ‘No, you can’t print that. Are you insane?’”
Chuck Stanion, Editor in Chief
After his incarceration for selling moonshine and counterfeit county fair tickets in the backwater towns of Arkansas, Stanion decided to change careers and become a writer. “I know most of the alphabet,” he says, “and my father knew a guy who owned a dictionary, so writing comes to me naturally.” He was hired by P&T magazine because he smoked more than the other applicants.
Stephen A. Ross, Associate Editor
The only editorial staff member with an education past the fifth grade, Ross is the true intelligence behind P&T, though he’s probably held back by the jealousy of his coworkers. “They’re intimidated because I can spell ‘subterfyooge,’” he sulks. “Wait, lemme see what you just wrote down. No, it’s S U B T E R F U G E, you idiot.”
Amy Bissinger, Copy/Design Editor
Without Bissinger, every story in P&T would look like it had been composed by spider monkeys. “I can fix most of the errors submitted,” she says, “but sometimes the most compassionate thing to do is shred the story and tell the editors to try again when they’re sober.”
Rich Perkins, Sales Manager
Perkins has 185 years of experience selling and marketing anything possible. He began as a snake-oil salesman in the western territories and gained a reputation for illicit land deals when the railroads were built. Later, he became publisher/sales manager for a gardening magazine. “I can sell seeds, or even dirt itself,” he boasts. He feels that marketing P&T is a perfect fit for him. “Now I promote pipe tobacco,” he says. “It’s all plants.”
Marrilyn Jackson, Sales Coordinator
As liaison to advertisers and tasked with assisting Rich Perkins, Jackson’s most important qualification is that she does not own a firearm. “Rich’s previous assistants would shoot at him all the time,” she says. “I’d shoot him too, but I don’t have a gun.”
Heather Brittingham, Customer Service
Every organization needs someone who can be polite. Unlike the rest of the staff, Brittingham can speak with someone on the phone for more than two minutes without spontaneously insulting them. “I like the pipe people,” she says. “For folks whose enthusiasm borders on obsession, they’re great fun. And they’re so much better to talk with than the people who work here.”
Rhonda Combs, Accounting Manager
“Does no one here,” she says, “understand basic math? You have to make more than you spend.” Nearly always in a state of weary exasperation, she is often seen roaming the halls pulling out her hair, which she fashions into tiny voodoo dolls of the sales staff. “No, you can’t have a hot tub in the pipe room. Go sell a subscription or something for God’s sake.”
Irene Joiner, Human Resources Manager
Joiner has the unenviable job of making sure no one in the office does anything to anyone else in the office that could get the company sued. “I’m exhausted,” she says. “It’s like trying to teach a pack of starving hyenas which hors d’oeuvre fork to use for shrimp.”
Kathryn Kyle, Production Manager
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” says Kyle. “I wandered in to ask for directions and they put me to work. At first they said it was temporary but now they won’t let me go. Please, send help.”
Nicky Franker, Graphic Design Associate
Because she has more intelligence and good judgment than the rest of the staff, Franker not only does design and layout but is responsible for making the print ads look good. No one here would ever call her a witch (as far as she knows), but she does seem to achieve results that can only be attributed to magic. She also has an unusual cackle that makes one duck from imagined flying monkeys.
Antoine Reid, Graphic Design Associate
It’s always the quiet ones you worry most about. Because Reid has a journalism degree, we’ve kept him entirely quarantined and make his job as hard as possible by submitting incomprehensible notes for him to turn into legible articles, which he does without complaint. That’s suspicious, but it’s not yet been determined if he’s in the witness protection program or what. Without his tireless efforts, P&T would look like a photocopied children’s menu for an amateur horseshoe league’s annual ’possum barbecue.
Matt Shapiro, Graphic Design Associate
Part computer himself (much of his frontal lobe was replaced last year with an iPod after a tragic guitar solo accident), Shapiro is so comfortable with code and programming that he daydreams in Flash and takes notes in binary. He’s able to communicate with the rest of the staff via email, but his personal conversation skills are limited to snarling and pawing at the air as if trying to knock apples out of an invisible tree.
Headquarters
Pipes and tobaccos
3101 Poplarwood Ct, Suite 115
Raleigh, NC 27604, USA
Telephone: 919.872.5040
Fax: 919.876.6531
Email: chuck@pipesandtobaccosmagazine.com
Subscription email: subscribe@pipesandtobaccosmagazine.com
Circulation
Customer Service
919.872.5040 ext. 238
or email
customerservice@pipesandtobaccosmagazine.com
