Caught in a Time Tunnel

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.  I’d been as happy not to see them as the people I knew in high school, they acted the same.

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, NetApp, 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 (something I loathe). 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!  Thank God we didn’t have a real reunion.  I don’t want to have to restart the clock since I last saw them and we didn’t get together on purpose.

There was a common thread to most of the communications, that being the owner of the company whom I’ll leave at eccentric (and everyone else called a cheapskate). They all had a story about him, 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 about this one day.  There was the memo he sent that said to steal pens and safety clips at the bank to save money.  The bad office memo of the day (that got read over the radio) happened when we were told to go home, and then had to make up the time we didn’t work.

Everyone opens and closes chapters in their life. I was hoping that this one was closed, but was mildly interested that it returned briefly. 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 and prosper in the storage industry.  He told Hal and his henchman Robert Adamson that the reason he left was because of how they treated me when I left.

It brought me back to a different time in my life where I cut my teeth in a lot of PR techniques that I use today to get my job done.  It’s stuff they never teach you in IBM PR, because IBM was never that creative.  I amazed them when I got to IBM by doing tactical and strategic PR they had never heard of.  The press described IBM PR as moribund.  I was very creative at CORE and at IBM, as long as their corporate PR machine didn’t find out.

The story unfolded more this year, as I ran into the former owner of the company. 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 at the track that day.  I, unlike others could put his antics behind me, even a lawsuit because he sued everyone.  I knew Adamson was behind it anyway.

One went on to be very famous (Gina Smith) and I was able catch up with at a conference and it was like we were still at CORE.  She was quite gracious and we enjoyed the short time we could spend together.

Unfortunately, it is more than I can say for one of the employees who couldn’t let her emotions go, nor could she grow up. One whom I pity was a misandrist who wouldn’t take the olive branch, Sondra Arkin.  The guys at CORE nicknamed her Barkin by this group because she was dog barking ugly.  Of all the girls I thought I’d want to have a fling with at work, I could never bring myself to think about it with her.  She went out of her way to not be feminine and it showed. Combine that with a whiny voice and she was a bag of unhappy and undesirable.

Like the story above, I offered to bury the hatchet to no avail.  Unsurprisingly, she sent me hate mail in response to my offer to move on in life.  She was in technical writing and actually worked for me in marketing for a while, 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. The dichotomy of the situation was she wanted to be one of the boys while professing to be a feminist, but had a bipolar relationship with men.

It is funny to me that both of the above two spent time working for me.  I wrote a reference letter to PC Week to do what I could to help Gina.  Little did I know that she would go on to be very successful.  Conversely, despite any attempt to help Sondra, whom I also would have helped in her next endeavor were rebuffed.  That is the way life turns out.  She amounted to nothing.  We all had a great time with everyone else in the reminiscing of our days at CORE and the stories about our encounters with the owner.  Only one person couldn’t move on with life, but she wasn’t in the group chat anyway.  No one likes a sore loser or a spiteful person, like Sondra.

Anyway, as for the rest of us, it was good to catch up based on the time we had spent together earlier in life.

For me, it was also good that it ended as quickly as it started.  I’d closed them out of my life once and doubt that door will be re-opened again.

Thank God that these things end quickly and nothing else happened.