How low-tech can you go?

Family believes if it was good enough for grandpa, it's good enough for them

Hector Cantu

The Dallas Morning News

February 27, 2001

If you telephone H.M. Amirkhan Oriental Rug Cleaning Co., listen closely. In the background, you may hear the faint tip-tapping of a 60-year-old Royal typewriter.

If you had called a few years back, your voice would have been coming through an old rotary phone.

"I got rid of the rotary phones because I guess we needed a touch-tone phone," says company president Ellen Amirkhan, "and we finally broke down and bought a fax machine, too."

But that's pretty much where the high-tech gizmos stop at the 11-employee company.

It's not that Ms. Amirkhan dislikes modern office equipment. It's just that she doesn't see the need for it. She was among the readers who responded to our call for office workers who refuse to abandon their "low-tech" workstations.

"Here's the thing," Ms. Amirkhan explains. "When my grandfather started out, he was an orphan and had no money. Everything was done very economically, with low overhead. That philosophy was passed down to my father, and I guess it was passed down to me. If it's not broken, you don't need to fix it."

That's pretty much been the philosophy since the cleaning company was founded in 1911.

Here's what else you'll find in its offices on Ross Avenue:

A wooden typewriter desk. "It's been here all my life, and I'm 45," Ms. Amirkhan says. "My father is 74, and it's been there all his life."

Old envelopes. "We slice them open and type [work orders] on the clean side. We've been doing that forever."

Company letterhead. In the 1930s, the company ordered stationery that has lasted more than 70 years. "We have two more reams left, probably enough to last the rest of my lifetime," Ms. Amirkhan says.

Pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands and a stapler. And, of course, Liquid Paper. "Lots of Liquid Paper," Ms. Amirkhan says.

Here's what you won't find.

A Rolodex. "I just have a big bunch of papers hooked together with a paper clip. That's where I keep all my phone numbers."

Post-It notes. "A lot of people are using Palm Pilots and all that nonsense," Ms. Amirkhan says. "I take the back of an envelope, and I write on that."

A computer. "I haven't been able to figure out what a computer can tell me that I don't already know," Ms. Amirkhan says. "We don't have to worry about power outages or computers crashing.

"If something is not helping us deliver a better product, then I don't see a need to purchase it."

Will the company ever have a change of heart? "I don't see any change coming soon," Ms. Amirkhan says, quickly adding, "unless someone stops making typewriter ribbons."