Cherrypicking a Career
The main reason that we went to the East Texas office yesterday was to take inventory of a survey company that was going out of business (which our East Texas office had a lot to do with). This company had been a fixture is this sleepy little East Texas town for 40 years and they had agreed to sell us the office. It was located in a house that was at least 70 years old. It was like visiting my grandmothers house. It had the crystal doorknobs throughout the house, the keyholes in which your stereotypical skeleton key fit and the great ceramic gas heaters in the wall. Our East Texas office manager lacks your basic people skills, lets just say tact is not in his lexicon. He paraded through the house while the owner, and his 3 employees (all of which have been employed by this company for over 20 years) watched. He would state things like, "I can't believe they still do THIS, we did THIS 10 years ago." and "wow look at this old piece of sh@#$". I tried to ignore him as is my usual custom when I'm fortunate enough to spend time with this individual, and focus on my portion of the inventory, the IT side of things. They had two PC's, lower end, a nice plotter and some software. They actually had MS-DOS in the original box. As I was going through the office, it hit me, we are sorting through a persons LIFE, his CAREER. At the end of it all, the scope of this persons life, THIS was his accomplishment. And we were unsanctimoniously going through it like a garbage pile. I quickly finished my portion of the inventory, and headed outside. It was a bit too much perspective for me.
The main reason that we went to the East Texas office yesterday was to take inventory of a survey company that was going out of business (which our East Texas office had a lot to do with). This company had been a fixture is this sleepy little East Texas town for 40 years and they had agreed to sell us the office. It was located in a house that was at least 70 years old. It was like visiting my grandmothers house. It had the crystal doorknobs throughout the house, the keyholes in which your stereotypical skeleton key fit and the great ceramic gas heaters in the wall. Our East Texas office manager lacks your basic people skills, lets just say tact is not in his lexicon. He paraded through the house while the owner, and his 3 employees (all of which have been employed by this company for over 20 years) watched. He would state things like, "I can't believe they still do THIS, we did THIS 10 years ago." and "wow look at this old piece of sh@#$". I tried to ignore him as is my usual custom when I'm fortunate enough to spend time with this individual, and focus on my portion of the inventory, the IT side of things. They had two PC's, lower end, a nice plotter and some software. They actually had MS-DOS in the original box. As I was going through the office, it hit me, we are sorting through a persons LIFE, his CAREER. At the end of it all, the scope of this persons life, THIS was his accomplishment. And we were unsanctimoniously going through it like a garbage pile. I quickly finished my portion of the inventory, and headed outside. It was a bit too much perspective for me.
Comments
Thanks Escape!