The thing about living a life steeped in weirdness is- I forget how it looks to normal people. That is, until I make what I feel is an ordinary off hand remark referencing an occurrence and get a room full of silent stares, followed by confused laughter.
The thing about being at the same company for thirty one years is I occasionally pull up a document from over two decades earlier and think "What dopey kid wrote this mess?
...
Oh, it was me."
Meaning there has been time for a great many of those "ordinary off hand remark" moments.
Yup, it's time to drop more "Dad Lore."
Here's a tale of that dopey kid who started working there fresh out of college at age twenty-three on his first or second business travel adventure.
I forget if the "Go attend a bunch of cardiology seminars at the conference in Atlanta because you are an untrained in biology Mechanical Engineer" happened before or after this one.
That was where I learned to ALWAYS go out to dinner with the sales and marketing people.
A valuable lesson.
This was my first but not my last "Less than 24 hours in a far away state" business trip.
This was also my first but not my last "being too young and stupid to know when to not have an experiment" moment.
Early information one- Less than a year after I started working for the company I remain at, we moved into the new building in Fairfield. I was thrilled with the upgrade to a full cubicle, since my temporarily lodging in the old building was somewhat lacking.
It consisted of:
1) My desk facing an internal wall.
2) The right cubicle wall had no feet and was wedged between my and my neighbor's desk.
3) My left cubicle wall was the box for my white board.
4)I did not have a computer, and had to borrow one on the guy across the way's desk when he was elsewhere.
Not that a computer was an eight hour a day need back in the caveman times.
Early information two- The annual sales meeting was normally in some swanky resort type place. Afterwards, the senior staff at the time would always show videos of it at our Internal Town Hall meetings, much to the chagrin of the production workers.
Early information three- In 1994, our first year in the building, the annual sales meeting was held in New Jersey (much to the chagrin of the sales people) to allow everyone to see the new facilities. When the internal and external building people met up, there was a lot of chagrining.
Whatever project it was at the time, there was a need to run an animal test. Before putting a new medical device into a human, sometimes this is necessary above and beyond what can be simulated in a lab model. When it is a requirement, all other options must be reviewed and its use minimized. The animals are always well and humanely treated. The results of these trials lead to life saving advances. End of disclaimer.
The only lab we had contacts with capable of performing this test for the length of time required back then was in Salt Lake City. I was the youngest engineer in the group. (Ah, memories!) therefore was expendable to go to the lab while most of the higher ups were doing presentations to the sales team at their meeting. However, because I had to demonstrate test fixtures during the open house at night, I needed to return immediately, the following day after the test was set up. Given my youthfulness and inexperience, I did not fully comprehend the "cow related issues" they were hinting at before I left.
I had shipped the test samples out, they already had our hardware, and I packed an overnight bag. The car took me to Newark airport mid afternoon, I passed through security, boarded the plane without incident, and continued on one of many readings of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series I started in the terminal. As time rocketed FAR past any part of the afternoon, I finished three and a half books in the single tome version of the increasingly incorrectly named trilogy while stuffed into my economy seat.
This is due to the fact that we sat on the tarmac for FIVE HOURS!!!!!
A delay of this nature is something they do not allow anymore, and I feel my plight has benefited others by leading to that ruling.
It is very fortunate this happened to the "dopey kid" version of me, and not the current "crusty old man" version of me, as I would have never stood upright again.
It is also very fortunate that "dopey kid" version of me knew I read stupidly fast and brought other Douglas Adams books, as I finished the whole Hitchhikers series in the air on the way out.
We landed in Salt Lake City shortly after midnight and I approached the rental car counter of the company I had pre arranged my vehicle at.
This was the moment in life I learned what is common knowledge for many-
minimum age for renting a car is twenty-five.
Another valuable lesson.
I had a few things in my favor.
A) My descended from The Bronx demeanor after close to ten hours crammed into an aircraft seat compared to the late night western weariness of the Utah lad behind the counter.
B) My height and general musclebound bearing (ah, memories!) compared to the slight and scrawny build of the Utah lad behind the counter.
C) My age, while being just beneath the official requirement, being several years past that of the Utah lad behind the counter.
I'm not sure if there were any coherent words between my growls in our conversation, but eventually he looked up at me, forcing my license across the counter along with a key, while blurting out, "You'll be twenty-five soon, It will be ok, Here."
I drove to the hotel using primitive, printed directions, of the type only reserved for scavenger hunts in modern times. While checking in I ignored the weird Utah bar set up with the "Mini Bar" next door with actual tiny alcohol bottles. I have no memory of the room where I washed up and crashed for the next few hours.
The next morning, with more printed directions in hand, I crammed my belongings into my overnight bag, and set out for the lab. Trying to navigate in my wiped out state, and being stunned at the HUGE mountains I missed hiding in the dark the night before, I also I missed a turn. In the part of the country I was raised in, the worst case for an error of that nature is ending up in a bad neighborhood, which normally wouldn't be an issue in that early hour.
Here I suddenly found myself out of Salt Lake City entirely and driving into the desert. Using oil rigs as focus points, and passing what was likely the only topless bar in all of Utah, I found a place to U-turn. (A common occurrence in the featureless desert I had driven into.) I inverted written directions in my head, returned to the city and found the lab.
Upon working with the veterinarians on the set up, the "cow related issues" quickly became apparent. The dimensions of our device called for a one hundred kilogram calf to be a proper model for arterial diameters. For "cow related reasons" there were none of that size available in the entire state of Utah. The one they'd brought for this test was double the required mass, meaning his blood vessels were usable but substantially oversized. However, and what would turn out to be more importantly, it also meant his strength and mobility were increased. I spent half the day there helping them with set up, taking manual notes (yes, rotten young people, on actual paper) and confirming everything I needed was prepared for the multiple day study.
By this point it was already time to drive back to the airport and return to New Jersey for the open house. I read the first Dirk Gently book on the (Praise to all the gods of travel!) undelayed flight home. Somewhere between the middle of the night and the wee hours of the morning, someone retrieved me from the airport, and I collapsed at home for a couple of hours.
Needless to say, I was far from top shape for the open house after a full day of work. Set up time meant I was out of conversation contact with the lab, following a positive morning update, for most of the afternoon in the no-cell phone cave man times. I was able to juggle to kick off the night, leading to the inevitable torrent of "clever" lines about how I should work in finance and "juggle the books."
Sigh.
They put an open bar in the lobby. Therefore I assembled a HUGE supply of scrap devices. In the lab, I would demonstrate our insertion test, then watch while a tipsy sales rep would smash it into the fixture, leading to prepping another sample.
Lather, rinse repeat.
My boss gave me one sample box with a post-it note that said, "Secret Project X- Jeff, hide this before the tours start." Naturally I left it out in the open on a lab table. About fifteen sales reps would lollygag behind their group alone, look around to see if anyone was watching, and sneakily peek in the box.
Then they would visibly deflate while their shoulders would slump when they saw one of our standard devices with the balloon portion cut off and a balloon animal teddy bear I made stuck on in place of it.
Hey, engineers need fun too!
Returning to work the following morning I had a message from the lab. Due to its larger size, after getting a day of good and helpful data, the cow used its strength and mobility to eat my test device.
One more valuable lesson.
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