Etc...

Now that's a paper chase

Patrice Moore of New York was recovering in the hospital after being trapped for two days beneath a landslide. Repeated calls for help went unanswered and "I didn't think I was gonna get out," Moore told the New York Post. Rescue finally came when his landlord realized something was wrong and called the fire department. How's that? Well, it seems the entire ordeal took place inside Moore's apartment, where an avalanche of stacked books, catalogs, and newspapers onto the former mailroom clerk. Firefighters and neighbors filled 50 bags of trash as they dug through the debris. Moore says he collected the paper goods for more than a decade and earned a living selling them on the street.

Perhaps it's the co-chief executives' stated philosophy: Listen with full attention, look for the good in others, have a sense of humor, and say "Thank you" for a job well done. Or maybe it's the cooking smells that waft through company headquarters. Either way, say editors at Fortune magazine, the J.M. Smucker Company - the nation's leading maker of jams and preserves - was rated the best place to work in the publication's latest annual survey. More than 46,000 employees at 300 firms took part. Fortune's top 10 best employers for 2004, where they're based (in parentheses), and their respective US employee tallies:

1. J.M. Smucker Co. (Orrville, Ohio) 2,600
2. Alston & Bird (Atlanta) 1,450
3. Container Store (Dallas) 1,800
4. Edward Jones (St. Louis) 27,100
5. Republic Bancorp (Owosso, Mich.) 1,400
6. Adobe Systems (San Jose, Calif.) 2,400
7. TDIndustries (Dallas) 1,400
8. SAS Institute (Cary, N.C.) 5,000
9. Wegmans Food Markets (Rochester, N.Y.) 28,600
10. Xilinx (San Jose, Calif.) 2,000