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Mortimer will make $261,000 in 1959 in salary and bonuses, owns 20,000 shares of General Foods stock, now selling at about $100, has options on another 10,000 shares. He and his wife own a 400-acre farm in Montague, N.J., where they spend weekends. Mortimer works at farming, has a herd of 100 prize Holstein-Frisian cows, also likes to ride on his ten miles of bridle path, fish for bass and trout in his own ponds. He belongs to the Union League and the prestigious Links Club (but to no church), is a director of Manhattan's First National City Bank and a member of the board of Smith College (alma mater of both his wife and daughter), in 1957 headed the United Community Fund. He likes to say: "The way a man with an active mind rests his mind is to use another part of it."
The Whydontchas. At work, Mortimer's mind gets little rest. With the pride and eclat of a grand chef, he presides over a decentralized operation with 21,500 employees, 54 factories, markets in 93 countries. "The first thing," he says, "is knowing more about the total company than any other person around." To keep abreast of things, he meets daily for an hour over coffee with President Wayne Marks (he takes tea), who in October was made president and chief operating officer, has some 50 executives send him confidential reports once a week on "whatever they damned well please." Mortimer has a sharp sense for the specious argument and the error in judgment, can scribble a quick note in the margin that gets to the point like an arrow.
He is obsessed by time, has won the company nickname of "How Soon Mortimer" because of his prodding questions to his executives about how soon a job can be done. He sometimes goes to other executives' offices so that he can better break off the conversation when it gets too windy for his taste, dislikes long, wordy meetings ("where you sit around and hear somebody admire himself verbally"), does not like to write long memos. He spends only half his time in his office ("I simply have to get out at times"), often goes barnstorming around to see customers in one of the company's two private planes, or checks the shelves in a grocery store to find out how his products are faring with the housewife.
But perhaps Mortimer's chief job at General Foods is saying no. The company receives a never-ending flow of letters suggesting new additions to its line, new gimmicks, variations of ingredients. Mortimer calls them the "whydontchas": "Why don't you put out rice in different colors?" "Why don't you make a coffee that, when weak, would taste like tea?" "Why don't you offer chopsticks with Minute Rice?" "Why don't you pack coffee in a square can?" Such suggestions are not too difficult to resist, but Mortimer must also resist the temptation to jump into products that, while tantalizing, do not fit into General Foods' mold. The company must also have the shrewd ness to seize on a good suggestion when it gets one. A housewife wrote in that she had made excellent lemon cheesecake using Jell-O lemon instant pudding. General Foods liked the recipe, adopted it for national distribution. Result: it sent the national Nielsen rating on Jell-O lemon instant pudding up 18%, sold 2,000,000 packages on the basis of one ad.