Parenthood is…

…stepping quietly into your dress shoes in the darkness of your closet as you prepare to leave for work, finding a C-size battery neatly tucked into the toe of each shoe.

Batteries.mp3

Just finished my first two-and-a-half days with the Eastern Division of Harland. We met at Harland on Monday. Had dinner at the Evergreen Hotel at Stone Mountain Monday evening. Arlene Bates, Phil Brown, and other guests came. Tom Hidell recognized several people for various achievements, having them stand up. He formally introduced me as the new guy, and had me stand up.

Tuesday night we had dinner at Tom’s house. He lives in a big house with a big stream behind it. After dinner, we all crammed into the pool room to sing to Tom’s collection of video disc background music. I sang “Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love” and got nabbed by Tom as I was trying to make my way out for “Born to Be Wild” with Lee___ and Tom’s daughter.

The meeting was very positive. As Tom closed the meeting, I could see where Phil is probably right about him being the next president. The group made final comments talking up how amazed they were that the operations and sales sides seem to have a single purpose. I’m sure that’s Tom’s doings.

My comment was that the group not only seems to have a single direction, like a train, but that it is a powerful train moving fast in a positive direction. And that, as the new guy, I felt like I had come up to the track and found that the best way to get on board and get up to speed has been to grab on. And though I may be just barely hanging on with one hand on the back of the caboose, that I’m glad to be on the ride, and that I look forward to making a contribution.

That was well received, and no one objected that trains are headed in directions that are predetermined by their tracks. Maybe I should have said something about Tom laying the track. Hope he knows where we’re going. Hope he has enough track to get there.

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Back at the ranch, I left an E-Mail message to Phil about how well his R&D presentation had gone. He moved up a couple of notches in my book when I saw all the work he was doing. (Seems like we only see each other goofing off.) I asked him about the drop-out he had worked up at the web so that the safety paper left a white box where the amount field is on checks. This is something we can do since we have our own web plants that the competition can’t. And it’s important because of the future demands of image processing.

In the E-Mail message I told him that this part of his presentation confused me because it seems like the amount area is one of the key parts of the check to protect with a safety coating.

Later I ran into him walking out of quality control. He had run right up there after getting my message. No one had thought about the need to have white safety paper coated with blue safety paper to insure that the white box would be protected.

Both Phil and Dennis commended me for thinking about it. I think they were relieved, but nervous that some guy three days into the business had to think of it. Maybe I moved up a notch, too. That’s been something hard to do in the unprofitable IPS division.

It’s ironic, however, that the reason I thought of this was I immediately recalled a lesson on safety paper in our Robbers, Thieves, and Con Artists training series. The section showed a criminal trying to change the amount field on safety paper. If the program didn’t make any money, at least it saved the company some money (or embarrassment.)

Gave Phil and Dennis the willies. I think work is going to be fun again.

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