The truck died on the side of the road and nobody was coming out. I fixed the throttle linkage with the shoestring out of my own boot, and two weeks later my manager wanted to talk to me about proper notice.
Category: Work & Data
Take A Nap
May 2016. The vice president over our group called and asked me to come to his office. He hardly ever talked to me. I knew before I stood up. I knocked, he waved me in, and he said it from behind his desk — times are tough, the decisions have been hard, we're going to … Continue reading Take A Nap
His Hard Hat
My grandfather went to work for Mobil Oil in 1946, right out of the war, and stayed until he retired around 1988. Forty-some years, southwest Oklahoma, running routes as a pumper. He was a slender man. Five-eight, five-nine, not big. And he had some of the strongest hands of anyone I've ever known — grip … Continue reading His Hard Hat
The Warehouse
"Can you summarize that for me?" I've been hearing some version of that my whole career. You write up a problem — the background, the angles you've considered, what you think ought to be done about it — and back it comes. Too long. Don't have time for all that. Give me the high points. … Continue reading The Warehouse
Thirty Copies
Around 2013 I was very good at Excel, and Excel was slowly ruining me. The job needed SQL. I had built SQL up in my head into a wall — I'm a business person, I'd say, not a technical person, and they've got me doing technical things. It'll take too long. It's too hard. I'm … Continue reading Thirty Copies
David Willis 