Delusions of Adequacy

I haven’t blogged much this week as a very interesting experience happened to me and a number of people across the US. I have mentioned that I worked the storage industry 15 years ago. It was a small company in Boca Raton that capitalized on the success of the IBM PC. The company was bought out by the AIWA division of Sony and later folded. I lost track of most of my

co-workers, occasionally finding each other at trade shows, but a few of them contacted me via my blog.

The employees went to any number of companies that include Fujitsu, Compaq (HP), ADP, Ziff Davis and Good Morning America, Disney, LSI Logic, IBM, Lenovo, Ingram Micro, Gucci and a few who started their own businesses. (Sorry if I missed some of your companies, not intentional).

The interaction exploded this week with an innocuous note about a reunion, and the communication shot out of a cannon. People added a couple of people they knew until a big list of ex employees were chatting as if the 15 years never happened. It was quite interesting hearing about what everyone was doing, almost like an online college reunion. I read other’s blogs and personal pages. It seems as if everyone has move on to bigger and better things. Who knew that we had that much talent while we were scrapping against the big boys of the industry!

There was a common thread to most of the communications, that being the owner of the company whom I’ll leave at eccentric. Everyone had a story about this owner, and many had multiple stories. It was genuine book material which is what the corporate attorney told me when we worked there. From day one, he kept track of the bizarre behavior and was in disbelief at the antics, saying to me once that he should write a book about this one day.

Everyone opens and closes chapters in their life. I thought this one was closed, but was delighted that it returned. I was genuinely happy to hear from everyone (almost as it now as described below). As it turns out, others also study the martial arts, some changed careers, there was a funny story about engineers setting up an electric eye cam with speakers in their back room to know when the boss was coming (who said IT guys aren’t creative), and at least one went on to stay in the storage industry.

It brought me back to a different time in my life where I cut my teeth in a lot of techniques that I use today to get my job done.

The story unfolded more this year, as I ran into the former owner of the company and while we had our differences, I decided to extend my olive branch and it was accepted. We discussed racing and life and he even commented on my postings and of the email remembrances. It was quite nice to see that through years, time and maturity (by some of the employees) we could reconnect as humans. Instead of employer/employee status, we were just guys.

More than I can say for 2 of the employees who couldn’t let their emotions go and grow up. One with very heavy misandristic tendencies.  Like the story above, I offered an olive branch to her but to no avail.  She was in technical writing, but never was able to let go of her hate and responded with ad-hominem attack which was very revealing. She didn’t mature from that period, and time stood still for her as far as we were concerned, for which I pity her. The dichotomy of the situation was she wanted to be one of the boys while professing to be a feminist, a bipolar relationship with men,,,, maybe she should have gotten one of these.

The other used to work for HP and responded with what was the most immature comment I’ve ever seen because I called him out when he made an elementary school remark, so I keep this piece of loserness in my approval penalty box to laugh at. I’m going to put it in my comment hall of shame when published one day….thanks guy.