“… [he] began reminiscing about his job as a lineman, in the early nineteen-sixties, for a power company in Wyoming. Copper wire was expensive, and the linemen were instructed to return all unused pieces three feet or longer. No one wanted to deal with the paperwork that resulted, [he] said, so he and his colleagues found a solution: putting `shorteners’ on the wire—that is, cutting it into short pieces and tossing the leftovers at the end of the workday.”
Hints/spoiler in the comments…