Let me introduce you to ..... - In my first job out of college, I worked for a regional retail chain in Tulsa, OK called OTASCO as the credit manager. About a year after I started to work there I was assigned to report to a vice-president named Carl. Carl didn’t select me. I was assigned to Carl by the company CFO who for some reason had been impressed with some unknown thing I had done over the course of my first year at OTASCO.
Carl was a colorful guy. In stature, he was a small, wiry, sixty-ish looking guy with thinning gray hair. Legend has it that Carl was a very good athlete back in the day. I had heard that when Carl was in the service that his tour of duty consisted of playing on the Army basketball team. Carl liked golf and he loved the Chicago Cubs. In demeanor, he was like Walter Matthau’s Coach Buttermaker in the Bad News Bears. Carl smoked almost non-stop. The rusty ashtray on his desk was generally overflowing with butts.
Almost every sentence Carl spoke contained a cuss word. Carl couldn’t say that “the store managers don’t follow the credit policies” unless he said, “The F*-ing store managers don’t follow the d@mn credit policies.” Now I am a guy that does not appreciate the unnecessary use of cuss words. But there was something almost benign about the way Carl wielded profanity. After awhile, it got so we didn’t even notice when Carl remarked that the "F*-ing Cubs had lost another d@mn game." Yet Carl was intimidating. He was a bottom-line, cut-the-BS kind of guy. If someone started exaggerating or even embellishing the truth, Carl would call them on it in a heartbeat. If you stated something as fact to Carl, you had better be able to prove it.
After I had worked for Carl for a couple of months, he invited me to his daughter’s wedding. The invitation caught me by surprise. I had never met his daughter and I was pretty sure that Carl wasn’t too impressed with this wet-behind-the-ears credit manager that had been dumped on him by the CFO. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child and we were involved in a legal dispute with the company who had built our first home. So I didn’t really have extra cash for a wedding present. But I went – probably out of a feeling of obligation and concern of what Carl would think if I turned down the invitation.
After the wedding, as I was going through the receiving line to congratulate the newlyweds who had no idea who I was, Carl walked up and put his arm around me. He proceeded to introduce me to his daughter and her husband, “Meet my dear friend, Toby Joplin.”
I was suddenly oblivious to the newly wedded couple. I was shocked that this gruff, crusty guy who intimidated the heck out of me would introduce me as anything other than his lowly subordinate. I remember standing there shaking hands with the bride while my head was turned 90 degrees to the left staring at Carl in shock. I don’t recall for certain, but there is a very good chance that my mouth was hanging open. I simply couldn’t believe that this grizzled veteran of the credit wars would actually consider me a friend.
A few months later, on November 4, 1988, I would find out just what a good friend Carl really was. OTASCO filed bankruptcy and laid off about 1,600 of the 1,800 employees. They filed bankruptcy on Sunday because Monday was a pay day and OTASCO would have had to give all the employees one last paycheck. The Friday before the bankruptcy filing, there was a secret, offsite meeting for the 30 or so employees from headquarters who would be kept on payroll during the bankruptcy. Carl was invited to the offsite meeting. I was not. OTASCO’s credit manager with the pregnant wife and the legal expenses on his house, was to be out of a job.
That Friday, I had not seen much of Carl. Then my office phone rang and Carl explained the above developments to me in a very hushed tone. He went on to explain that he had told the CEO that he was out of F*-ing mind if he thought Carl was going to try to administer the credit function through d@mn bankruptcy without my help. Carl told them if I wasn’t on the survivors list, that they could just fire him too. Talk about your brass cajones. The list of survivors was then expanded to 31. Toby had a job, albeit a temporary one. However, Carl had bought me enough time to develop an exit strategy.
I vowed then and there, that if I ever had a coworker or other acquaintance who was also a friend, I would never, ever introduce them as anything less than my “dear friend.” So if you drop by our offices, I will not introduce you to our receptionist Alisha, or our sales guy, Shane, or our Production Manager, Jason. I would however be proud to introduce you to my dear friends Alisha, Shane, and Jason.
As we pursue our passions, it is impossible to reach our goals by ourselves. We need the help of dear friends, like Carl, Alisha, Shane, and Jason. Don’t insult them by referring to them as anything else.
What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?
Carl was a colorful guy. In stature, he was a small, wiry, sixty-ish looking guy with thinning gray hair. Legend has it that Carl was a very good athlete back in the day. I had heard that when Carl was in the service that his tour of duty consisted of playing on the Army basketball team. Carl liked golf and he loved the Chicago Cubs. In demeanor, he was like Walter Matthau’s Coach Buttermaker in the Bad News Bears. Carl smoked almost non-stop. The rusty ashtray on his desk was generally overflowing with butts.
Almost every sentence Carl spoke contained a cuss word. Carl couldn’t say that “the store managers don’t follow the credit policies” unless he said, “The F*-ing store managers don’t follow the d@mn credit policies.” Now I am a guy that does not appreciate the unnecessary use of cuss words. But there was something almost benign about the way Carl wielded profanity. After awhile, it got so we didn’t even notice when Carl remarked that the "F*-ing Cubs had lost another d@mn game." Yet Carl was intimidating. He was a bottom-line, cut-the-BS kind of guy. If someone started exaggerating or even embellishing the truth, Carl would call them on it in a heartbeat. If you stated something as fact to Carl, you had better be able to prove it.
After I had worked for Carl for a couple of months, he invited me to his daughter’s wedding. The invitation caught me by surprise. I had never met his daughter and I was pretty sure that Carl wasn’t too impressed with this wet-behind-the-ears credit manager that had been dumped on him by the CFO. At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first child and we were involved in a legal dispute with the company who had built our first home. So I didn’t really have extra cash for a wedding present. But I went – probably out of a feeling of obligation and concern of what Carl would think if I turned down the invitation.
After the wedding, as I was going through the receiving line to congratulate the newlyweds who had no idea who I was, Carl walked up and put his arm around me. He proceeded to introduce me to his daughter and her husband, “Meet my dear friend, Toby Joplin.”
I was suddenly oblivious to the newly wedded couple. I was shocked that this gruff, crusty guy who intimidated the heck out of me would introduce me as anything other than his lowly subordinate. I remember standing there shaking hands with the bride while my head was turned 90 degrees to the left staring at Carl in shock. I don’t recall for certain, but there is a very good chance that my mouth was hanging open. I simply couldn’t believe that this grizzled veteran of the credit wars would actually consider me a friend.
A few months later, on November 4, 1988, I would find out just what a good friend Carl really was. OTASCO filed bankruptcy and laid off about 1,600 of the 1,800 employees. They filed bankruptcy on Sunday because Monday was a pay day and OTASCO would have had to give all the employees one last paycheck. The Friday before the bankruptcy filing, there was a secret, offsite meeting for the 30 or so employees from headquarters who would be kept on payroll during the bankruptcy. Carl was invited to the offsite meeting. I was not. OTASCO’s credit manager with the pregnant wife and the legal expenses on his house, was to be out of a job.
That Friday, I had not seen much of Carl. Then my office phone rang and Carl explained the above developments to me in a very hushed tone. He went on to explain that he had told the CEO that he was out of F*-ing mind if he thought Carl was going to try to administer the credit function through d@mn bankruptcy without my help. Carl told them if I wasn’t on the survivors list, that they could just fire him too. Talk about your brass cajones. The list of survivors was then expanded to 31. Toby had a job, albeit a temporary one. However, Carl had bought me enough time to develop an exit strategy.
I vowed then and there, that if I ever had a coworker or other acquaintance who was also a friend, I would never, ever introduce them as anything less than my “dear friend.” So if you drop by our offices, I will not introduce you to our receptionist Alisha, or our sales guy, Shane, or our Production Manager, Jason. I would however be proud to introduce you to my dear friends Alisha, Shane, and Jason.
As we pursue our passions, it is impossible to reach our goals by ourselves. We need the help of dear friends, like Carl, Alisha, Shane, and Jason. Don’t insult them by referring to them as anything else.
What are you passionate about? What are you doing about it?
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