Going to the Company Elders for Help

New York Times, March 10, 2008 — On a recent Saturday afternoon, John Toppel, a retired Hewlett-Packard sales manager, did not spend his leisure time golfing or mowing the lawn. He spent it at a local electronics store extolling the virtues of H.P. laptop computers to customers. He was not paid by the store or by Hewlett-Packard, for that matter. Mr. Toppel, 62, left the technology company four years ago, but he remains a volunteer cheerleader for H.P., one of thousands of its retirees whom the company is trying to galvanize into an auxiliary army of senior marketers, good-will ambassadors and volunteer sales people. None of them get paid; they do it, they say, because of their affection for the company.