Chapter 1

The night was damp....(just kidding-see "Throw Mama from the Train" )(okay, don't watch the whole thing or you may get sick).

In October of 1995, I had just turned 25 years old after completing my college degree. My plan all along was to go to medical school, and I had made so many sacrifices along the way up to this point just to get through college. Just to give you an idea, I made a weekly plan into which I packed: 40 hours at a crummy, monotonous, yet reliablly consistent job at a call center, 15 hours of classes, countless hours in a lab setting doing independent research, 10-12 hours commuting in Dallas traffic, and, most importantly, time with my wonderful wife, Fran (which I actually scheduled because it was a very important thing to me)--sleep got inserted wherever it fit into the equation, but I don't remember being tired at all during those days.

Although the faced-paced, busy tempo of my life was dictated by this schedule, I remember very clearly driving home from school one evening after a 15-hour day and experiencing a feeling of euphoria sweep over me-an overwhelming sense of being content with my life. I was in my 10 year old Honda with 235,000 miles, in which the dual-carburator system never properly worked and which I had spent exactly equal the amount in repairing as I did to purchase it five years before--I was irrationally in love with this cherry red car and had nicknamed it Margo--a name which was a little too sexy to have been selected completely at random and one which made Fran dubiously jealous. It was a running joke between us that, when Margo inevitably broke down and forced me to take a precious vacation day to sit in the garage while she was being patched back together, Fran would wink at me just to let me know that she was aware that my "other love" had unceremoniously dumped me on my ass again. But on this day of contentment, Margo was smoothly purring and as I drove along in Arlington Texas by the GM auto plant I saw reflections of a particularly beautiful sunset from behind me which coated an otherwise industrial scene in a golden glow against the thick, high clouds and spectacularly backlit the otherwise common flock of thousands of grackles which moved like a cloud over the road.

It was on this day that I privately celebrated the things that I had already accomplished in my life, remembering that there were times that I wasn't sure which path to take. At the time while driving slowly along that unremarkable stretch of road, I knew that "right now" was a substantial moment and feeling I would take with me for the rest of my life--it was just so poignant. I recall writing down at a young age that, if I made $90,000 in one year someday, that would be my definition of career success (I also listed the ability to stop during the day at any point I want, go to 7-11, and buy a coke and a candy bar--that inspiration came to me from seeing that my dad seemed to never want to leave his office where he worked as a salesman). Of course, I hadn't arrived at that income yet, but it wasn't so far away that it was unreachable-especially if you added our incomes together. Although we lived in a one bedroom apartment, it was in a nice area and, over the past 4 years of our marriage, Fran and I lived a relatively happy life in which we occupied our time visiting family, taking vacations, visiting museums (sometimes visiting museums while on vacation), and otherwise filling the hours that weren't consumed by our busy schedules. Fran worked in downtown Dallas for a bank, processing payments from trust accounts. We had money in the bank (but also money owed on loans and credit cards), but overall we were financially secure and I had a vague sense of invincability that comes from the ability to walk into any given store, plunk down a piece of plastic, and walk away with whatever you may want (and the satisfaction that comes from not exercising that ability too often).

For some reason, that stretch of road and the light and the birds and the car are all clipped together and filed away in my memory and available to relive in my thoughts at any time. It was a moment of "peaking", though not in an overall sense of my life, but more of a peak of local time and space. Also: satisfaction, but, more than that, self-awareness and listening closely to an internal voice that told me that I was a good guy and deserved the happiness that I was feeling. That strong internal voice has always served me well throughout my life, even as a child, and I trusted it implicitly to serve me. Everything had really worked together for the best possible outcome to this point, or so I thought at the time... Of course, I had taken seven years to graduate from college and some of my freshman class from Baylor were already in medical school where I had hoped to be. But unexpected financial circumstances in my family had caused me to make the decision to move to Arlington, get a full-time job, and slog my way painfully through college on the "pay as you (slowly) go" plan, at the same time earning a valued Bachelors of Science degree along with what has turned out to be equally if not more valuable components of my education: work experience and a sense of self-respect and accomplishment. Additionally, I got a big ego boost from having always been the resident "whiz kid" at my job (my nickname always seemed to be "the brain" or "the kid" wherever I went, because I was an overachiever, and sometimes my work could have a sort of show-off tone through "overdoing" things, but overall I always seemed to be ahead of my time), where I had been promoted multiple times and, despite my young age, had earned a surprising amount of respect and regard from our local and even corporate management. Accomplishments in my job had gotten me special priviledges, and this had mapped out the next move of my life.

My background in science and math had developed my analytical abilities, but in a ironic twist I was cursed with being an above-average, but not spectacular student (much of this was probably due to my busy schedule which enabled me to only study key points without the luxury of rote memorization of facts, which in a science curriculum is a necessary step to achieve top marks--this remains something that embarrases me today because I felt that, although I was a solid B student, I ultimately performed under my personal expectations).

My true strengths came from being able to assimilate very practical applications of my education into "real life" settings, and in some inexplicable way despite very little business training, I had come up with many innovations including developing an entire program of statistical analysis for the company which had changed our workflow processes and dramatically improved production. Furthering that success, I had taught myself computer programming for a year for the purposes of computerizing these changes which greatly and measureably improved quality of work at the middle-management position (labor savings of a quarter million dollars over 4 years). This was a position which I had studied since my promotion at the age of 19 made me the youngest middle manager in the history of the company, and I had grown within this position to learn extremely valuable counseling, coaching, and documentation skills. By strengthening both my analytical and personal skills, I developed insight into the workings of business that enabled me to see patterns of cause and effect that other people apparently could not, and I had the leadership and management skills to institute change effectively. These accomplishments certainly contributed to my momentary buzz of euphoria.

Two months later, I awoke in an oddly uncomfortable scene and wondered if I could turn the clock back a few ticks and get a "do over" like we did in an elementary school kickball game. The scene was now a dimly lit and chilly office in a trucking terminal off a side road near downtown Dallas, Texas. Under the premise of working quickly to finish graduate school, I had left my celebrated job at the call center after six and a half years and gone to work part-time for a "logistics company", named Greggo Zip Industries with the promise of having "flexible hours" and "the ability to work from home". This was a huge risk that Fran patiently yet skeptically tolerated. She knew Greg, the owner, who had been a friend of their family for many years. She knew about his family's reputation for rough living and personally did not think too highly of him, and she was worried about the stability of the job as well as how Greg and I may interact.

In my upbringing, trucking companies were the kissing cousins of outlaw biker gangs-truckers were a group of dangerous thugs with sawed-off shotguns, coke-bottle spittoons, and they drove like maniacs while hopped up on amphetamines.

But, since I had done some work with Greg before, I felt very secure in being "hands off" as far as the truckers were concerned and was looking forward to spending quiet thinking time at my "home office" (aka desk in the living room).

The setting that I left was a company run by women, with six females of the seven managers of the company. The one man that was in management was hand-selected to be the most incompetent, bumbling ass possible and he was hired after a survey of the company had shown that many employees questioned why all the managers were women (about 90% of the employees were women as well, so I was very surprised that this came up as an objection). The company was, as mentioned, a call center which had a strict set of rules for every job function. It thrived in volume processing of incoming calls and data entry and verification. One remnant of this company's rules is that I am an irrational stickler for punctuality in employees. Of course, this is critical when you are getting hundreds of calls per hour and staffing is of upmost importance, but perhaps not as critical in other applications--but it became ingrained in me and I couldn't let it go--at my previous company you were fired after 3 tardies of 1 minute or more in a 3-month period, and I tried to let that go, but had a hard time.

It would turn out that working with primarily men would be a significant departure from the female-affected atmosphere of the call center as well. I was used to fiercely subversive, silent political battles that took place behind closed doors. Rumor and inuendo actually affected policy. Fran and I met at the call center, and we got called in and negatively documented because people felt "uncomfortable" seeing us sit next to each other in the breakroom (In perhaps an ironic stroke of revenge, I asked her to marry me in that same breakroom). It's my strong feeling after working in both settings that women in the workplace can be much more vengeful than men, who seem to be able to settle differences and move on in a more predictable, work-it-out fashion than women (of course there's a gamut, but this is a general trend). This reminds me of a "Far Side" cartoon by Gary Larson, where the wife ameba says to the husband ameba "Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. Don't you ever think?" (But my favorite "Far Side" is two polar bears standing over an igloo and one says "I love these things--crunchy on the outside and a chewy center!".

For the next 5 years, "Logistics Company" became my fancy way of avoiding telling people that I worked for a trucking company, and on that day in December of 1995 I sat with my feet crossed under a filthy platic folding chair waiting to go in to meet with the owner to find out exactly what my responsibilities were going to be. I sat at a desk on the other side of a window, trying very hard not to look directly at Greg while he sat behind his desk, which was covered with piles and piles of neatly arranged papers. Every possible inch of space on the desk, floor, and window sill behind him was covered in little piles of paper, and I had a vague, forboding fear that the key to my success at his company would lie within those piles somewhere, because I was supposed to be improving the efficiency of the company, and whatever was in those piles could certainly not be in the process of being handled efficiently. I don't think every piece of paper in that room could be touched by the same set of human hands on the same day. I had been in the office before, mostly for brief meetings as I worked as a consultant for Greg over the previous twelve months, easily and quickly preparing small reports which I collated from random scraps of data. I had helped him put together a critical proposal for a customer, putting artistic touches on it including a beautiful cover and graphics, printing it in color and taking it to have it bound, which Greg thought was unnecessary but I thought was absolutely necessary since, according to him, the future of his company rested on the contract. So when he got the contract, I assumed that the future of the company was safe and finally decided to take him up on his offer to come to work for him. I felt that I had insight into his mind from my previous dealings with him. He was subtly creative, open to suggestions, and highly valued my experience and intelligence. Although he didn't say so, he insinuated that he thought I was naive, which I was, and on the side of being intellectually elitist, which I wasn't. I showed him some of the innovations I was making at my previous company, and was surprised that he followed me easily as I took him through the changes on deeper and deeper levels until I finally lost him (sometimes I wonder if it's deeper and deeper levels of bullshit explanations for simple changes, perhaps reading way too much into the profoundness of these changes as they can usually be boiled into elementary terms; Now, instead of putting that piece of paper here, you put it over here...really, not too deep).

Meanwhile, in the meeting: Bursts of uproarious laughter. Violent, loud, vividly-worded swearing with amazing creativity in the word selection--things I would have never thought to put together and refuse to record on paper. In my puritanical mind, this was a huge red flag. Cursing meant that you didn't have the vocabulary to express what you really meant to say, so you just go for shock value. It was a brutal verbal assault to get the upper hand of a discussion. In the company I had just left, I remember being personally outraged when the office manager once cursed during a meeting, and now I had just heard one sentence with the "f-word" used as a noun, verb, and adjective! I made the decision there not to worry Fran about the humanity that I may be a witness to. I certainly didn't want to worry her about violence and profanity. Later, I would think to myself that I should make a checklist of the 10 Commandments and cross them off as they are broken in front of me. Somehow, though, she knew what was going on and I was always a little defensive of the fact that she disapproved of my new job and, as I developed into a more effective manager, felt that my skills were wasted with Greg. Once I had been with Greg for a while I became very protective and idealistic about what I was trying to accomplish--I felt that I had an opportunity, although fleeting, to experience raw leadership, business management at both its most basic and complex levels, achieve independence, and actually accomplish something. With Fran it always seemed to boil down to nothing more a dubiuos cast of characters in a seedy setting, and the sooner I could get out of it, the better. I now think we were both right about many of these things.

In retrospect, the scene in the refrigerated office resembles "The Godfather", and in my internal voice I was Fredo, impatiently waiting and a little ticked off while people filed in to meet with and kiss the hand of the Don while Fredo's mother tells him in her thick New York accent "You wait on line to see your brother like everybody else!" If I knew how close to the truth that would end up being (on my second day of work, I was asked to “wait around til tonight while someone brings in a ‘payment’”), I wonder if I would have sat under that flickering fluorescent bulb for 3 hours wondering whether or not this fell under the heading of "flexible hours" or "my time". If I had a realization all at once about exactly what I was getting into, I wonder if I would have stayed around to experience it all--somehow I think I would have because it was an eye-opening experience, a challenge, often funny, and certainly unusual (like the Chinese curse says: "May you live in interesting times..."). But maybe that's a blessing as well.