WaMu Office Supply GiveawayIt's the biggest office giveaway in history (at least that I am aware of). Last Saturday, JP Morgan Chase will begin a grand-scale giveaway of $3 million in office supplies previously promised to 300 Puget Sound schools and not-for-profit organizations.~~ This finally completes the transition from the Seattle-based headquarters of Washington Mutual to the smaller local offices of Chase. Thirty-nine floors of the former WaMu office building had to vacated to make the giveaway a reality. WaMu collapsed in fall 2008 and JP Morgan Chase & Co. acquired the deposits, assets and certain liabilities of Washington Mutual's (WaMu) banking operations. Chase's offices occupy a modest three floors in the renamed Russell Investment Center, formerly the WaMu center. The giveaway begins each at 9 am each Saturday in January, when a warehouse known as "binder mountain" opens to two or three recipients at a time. Each organization is given a six-foot cart and one half hour to load up all of the office supplies they can. For those WaMu employees absorbed by Chase, the decision was an emotional one. But ultimately, what people agreed on was giving other businesses a leg-up with a gift of office supplies. The supplies, consisting of whiteboards, paper, staplers, binders and miscellaneous items, will allow the schools and nonprofits to concentrate on their core goals--instead of worrying about mundane and costly issues like supplies. The giveaway will continue until the all the supplies have been taken. The organizer hopes to have given everything away by the end of January. She has been roaming the floors vacated by hundreds of former co-workers for nearly a year readying for the giveaway. Prior to September 2008, WaMu had been the nation's largest thrift. The closure of WaMu resulted in a massive series of layoffs that began in December 2008. | 
