Jack Lew's old sig: "icing on a Hostess cupcake... Charlie Brown’s hair"

June 27, 2016 3:11 PM

"Jack assures me that he is going to work to make at least one letter legible in order not to debase our currency should he be confirmed as secretary of the Treasury" How Treasury Secretary Jack Lew changed his signature from something cuddly that looked like "Oooooooo" to something that looks like "Paul J Fes." Geithner also had to undergo some signature modification, back in the day. Other US money signatures, for comparison.
posted by jessamyn (33 comments total)

This is one of my favorite official signatures: Magistrate Judge Jeff Kaplan, spelled JKaplauuuuuuuuu.
posted by jedicus at 3:30 PM on June 27, 2016 [22 favorites]

Some of those older ones are just as illegible as Lew's "before" signature, in that you'd have no idea what they say unless you looked at the printed name and went back to try to reverse-engineer each letter in the signature.

To me, if Lew used the Hostess cupcake signature before he became Secretary of the Treasury, then that's what he should have put on the money. If there's an interest in making sure people know who the secretary is, then they can print it underneath the way it's done on many other documents. This half-measure of ensuring that the signature meets some arbitrary standard of legibility seems silly to me.
posted by tonycpsu at 3:30 PM on June 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

At least they're not signing a statement like "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of ...", like on UK currency.

If I were to meet the encumbent Chief Cashier of the Bank of England, Victoria Cleland, (aside from asking for her signature) I would demand she swaps one of the notes in my pocket for 20lb of sterling silver.

She, no doubt, will have heard that one before.
posted by iotic at 3:35 PM on June 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Even though this Jack Lew thing happened in 2013, the reason it is a post today is because my sister and I bought a couch this weekend. I paid with a credit card. I signed for my purchase with a picture of a couch and a giant smiley face because no one ever cares and because I thought it would make the couch salesguy smile, which it did. Then he told us the story about Jack Lew at which point my sister and I told him his talents were WASTED at couch salesmanship and if this was some sort of a hostage situation and he was working in Jordan's under duress that he should make a signal and we'd find a way to get him out of there. So that is where this post came from.
posted by jessamyn at 3:40 PM on June 27, 2016 [74 favorites]

It strikes me as interesting that in an unscientific read of the 'other money signatures' list, many from the last fifty years are women with Spanish, Filipino, or Latino names. As opposed to the overwhelming Dead White Men before 1970-ish.

Also: perhaps Hostess should make a Jack Lew cupcake shaped like a delicious bar of currency.
posted by a halcyon day at 3:40 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Obama's second term continues to disappoint in new and surprising ways."
posted by Kabanos at 3:48 PM on June 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

As opposed to the overwhelming Dead White Men before 1970-ish

The position of Treasurer of the United States, the other signature on money, has been continuously living female (or vacant) since 1949.
posted by Hatashran at 4:03 PM on June 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

As we used to say in grade school, there's penmanship, and I-don't-give-a-shit-nature.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:19 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Signatures are weird. My sister recently pointed out that mine is basically an S (for my first initial) followed by a star.

I had never noticed this before. I just got sick of writing it and smushed the while deal into as little space as possible.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:23 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Then he told us the story about Jack Lew at which point my sister and I told him his talents were WASTED at couch salesmanship and if this was some sort of a hostage situation and he was working in Jordan's under duress that he should make a signal and we'd find a way to get him out of there.

*sigh* I always wanted to go to Jordan's but never did. Is it true they have sno-cones and a trapeze you could try? I bet that's why he worked there.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:23 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Obama forcing Jack Lew to get a better signature was mentioned on the "How To Sign Your Name" episode of Going Deep With David Rees (which btw is a terrific television show, previously and previouslier).
posted by danny the boy at 4:47 PM on June 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

After signing hundreds of qualification cards my signature devolved into a J and a wavy line. I like it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:55 PM on June 27, 2016

Is it true they have sno-cones and a trapeze you could try?

The one in Warwick seemed sort of normal (apparently there is some water show) but the one in Reading MA has a ropes course.
posted by jessamyn at 5:26 PM on June 27, 2016

As somebody with an illegible signature composed of messy squiggles and loops, this makes me very sad.
posted by duffell at 6:41 PM on June 27, 2016

I used to take great pride in having a readable signature, which meant I took 3-4 times as long to sign as most people. But I also took pride in my middle initial "L", which I wrote with a loop/tail at the top almost as big as the bottom, so I nave been way-too-often asked "Is that a 'Z'?"
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:41 PM on June 27, 2016

This is going to be a setback for any aspirations Arsenio Hall has to become Treasury Secretary.
posted by Kabanos at 7:38 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jessamyn's comment about how the post came about is proof that we're all in the right place...
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 9:08 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

In one of my previous roles, I used to sign, literally, about 100 checks a week. My assistant made a sort of flip book out of the canceled checks and we watched as my signature devolved over about 3 months time from something bearing a resemblance to my name to something that is much closer to a simple X.

Btw, Donald Regan's signature just looks like a Republican made it.
posted by AugustWest at 10:44 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Now I feel less bad about my own illegible signature. Thanks, jessamyn!
posted by Harald74 at 11:37 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

My signature has reduced itself with age, via certain jobs with bureaucratic paperwork where I'd have to sign my name dozens of times during a shift.

- The first time I realized I had a Signature, I was around 12 or 13, signing my bar mitzvah Thank-You cards. It was my full first name, my middle initial (or full, depending), and full last name.
- Later I stopped using the full middle name, and only used the initial.
- Then I dropped the middle initial entirely
- And then only the first initial and full last name.
- Finally, it's down to my first initial and last initial. It looks something like a looped square (⌘)

My son skipped all the steps, and his started and ended up looking like some sort of hobo marking or electrical symbol – very simple, jagged – almost the polar opposite of my signature.

(It helps that his initials are MW and mine are JP; for both of us, the last stroke of the first letter becomes the first stroke of the second letter. My son adds a flourish at the end, if a straight line connecting the terminals of his letters can be called a "flourish".)

(Also, Jessamyn's handwriting in general is very cool, and she sends postcards. My handwriting is ... legible ... and definitely not cursive. I deliberately failed penmanship in sixth grade.)
posted by not_on_display at 12:56 AM on June 28, 2016

I'm jealous of people who have consistent signatures. Mine could be used by a cryptographer to inject entropy into plaintext.
posted by srboisvert at 5:01 AM on June 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

>>Is it true they have sno-cones and a trapeze you could try?

The one in Warwick seemed sort of normal (apparently there is some water show) but the one in Reading MA has a ropes course.

Left on Spit Brook, right on Daniel Webstah!
posted by slkinsey at 5:18 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

My own signature, when I am signing like a normal person is just an up and down zigzag thing. It looks like a perfect cross between my dad's old signature (two initials and the last name, barely comprehensible but you can see that it's a name) and my mom's which is a never-changing zigzag that may have been a name at some point and definitely is not a name now. I don't think I've had recognizable letters in my signature since I was in college.

I now sign documents as part of my Justice of the Peace/Notary role and I always feel a little weird signing my zigzag on a marriage license, though the one time I thought "I should add my name next to it so people know who signed this" like you do, I got a call from the town clerk who said I'd messed it all up (wrote my name on the wrong line) and would need to do it again and it was just like that Gilligan's Island episode where it turned out the Howells were never married! The happy couple was very forgiving.
posted by jessamyn at 5:48 AM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

My kids--aged 16 and 21--think the whole concept of signatures is quaint and archaic since they only have to sign their signature very seldom, unlike those of us who grew up in the all-paper era.
posted by tippiedog at 6:37 AM on June 28, 2016

My ballot last year was contested because my signature didn't match my signature card on file. There was a hotly contested fluoride measure on the ballot so I think there was scrutiny where there wasn't before.

Signatures matter!
posted by vespabelle at 7:05 AM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Both my parents have very nice legible signatures. As a result, I have always strived to have the same. Since I took on a job where I routinely signed my name to legal documents and official letters, my signature has evolved as I've worked to develop a signature that's both aesthetically pleasing and asserts a certain level of proud identity ("Hey, it's me! Not a bunch of squiggly lines!"). I may have just perfected my initials (another project).

While I doubt I will ever amount to anything where people actively seek out my signature, I do hope that if someone stumbles across it for any other reason, they at least go, "Hey, this guy had a cool signature."

Confession: I did guilt a coworker into at least making his signature semi-legible. He has since left and I have no idea if he has relapsed.
posted by Atreides at 7:31 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I used to write out my whole name in perfect Zaner-Bloser cursive. Then I saw Nixon's signature, which was like, two lines and a circle. 10-year-old me thought that was classy as hell - to be SO important and SO busy that you didn't even have to carefully write out your name. I took it as a sign of having truly become an adult. My signature has been an unruly, unreadable scrawl ever since.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 8:02 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I went looking for Barack Obama's B-line O-line signature (oooo autopen) and learned a new trivia fact: Gallaudet University in DC was created via an act of Congress and all their diplomas have always been signed by the president of the university and the president of the United States.
posted by jessamyn at 8:48 AM on June 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

In the old west movies and television shows, often a cowhand or cowboy would not be literate and would be asked to make his "mark" on a document. I sort of feel that is what a signature has evolved back into, a make your mark sort of thing. I can just see the credit card company asking Jessamyn if that is her mark, a picture of a couch. "Well yes it is indeed, but I would never draw a smiley face. I would draw a shrug instead, so not my mark."

(That is a neat fact about Gallaudet Univ! I have this vague memory of President Obama being the first President to sign an autograph on an iPad type device. Wonder if that signature was consistent with his autopen.)
posted by AugustWest at 8:53 AM on June 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

My ballot last year was contested because my signature didn't match my signature card on file. - this happened to mr. epersonae last year! He had to send back a letter with a new signature, IIRC.

My mother has a perfect Catholic-schoolgirl-cursive signature. Mine has always been a bit messy, because left-handed, and when I'm signing "for real" the "e" at the end of my name does this weird backwards curl at the end. On most store touchtpads, it's just a rough scrawl. But on the iPad at my favorite coffeeshop, I started signing with just a giant capital E, because why not.

At the same coffeeshop, a friend always signs with deliberately weird squiggles & crosshatching, to the point where we've joked about printing them all out and hanging them as art.
posted by epersonae at 9:06 AM on June 28, 2016

When I first moved to the uk and was still buying stuff with my swipy / signy credit card I went to tesco for some basic things, and was required to resign a reciept due to how bad my scrawl had gotten compared to the one on the back of my card.
posted by jonbro at 9:30 AM on June 28, 2016

"Well yes it is indeed, but I would never draw a smiley face. I would draw a shrug instead, so not my mark."

I draw a very stylized smiley face (more like a rotund theta with eyes) at any tablet-based terminal. I'd phone the fraud department if I saw a legible approximation of my name in cursive.
posted by a halcyon day at 11:45 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I went to withdraw all of my childhood passbook savings at age 27, and the teller was gone a long time, finally coming back and apologizing, because my current signature didn't match the one I'd signed when getting the account at age 8. I laughed, because I couldn't do cursive like that anymore if I tried. Luckily for me, even though I hadn't lived in my hometown for 10 years, the manager just waved me on with a "oh, don't worry, she looks just like her mother".

Pictograms! This is what I should start doing!
posted by ldthomps at 12:51 PM on June 28, 2016 [4 favorites]