Dateline: 2014. Recruited by a Sr. Exec mgr from two prior separate gigs I'll write about eventually. He & I had a good relationship based on my sales success at those stops. Plus, he's a decent guy in many ways: smart, generous, positive, dedicated, loyal. Alas, our positive mojo curdled & died at this final stop. One might even declare there shan't be another. Keyword: shan't.
I was there for 6 frustrating months. Frustrating for 2 good reasons: the software was created for a space I knew nothing about: the world of 'health care Third Party Administrators' (TPA). These are small mom & pop shops that physically process your health care claims. So, if UnitedHealth or whoever is your carrier, they don't process your/your doctor's claim, they outsource that to TPAs. No big deal. However, TPAs, I came to learn, live in the 1960s. By that I mean, they process claims by FUCKING FAX.
Yes: faxes, like in old-timey movies.
This was in 2014 mind you. Not yesterday, but not 1960. Or 1970. Or 1980. Or 1990.
So this startup made simple software. It processed claims and produced EOBs in PDFs for you in your online account with your doctor or insurance company. I would visit these TPA offices to pitch my wares. I would look around and actually see fax machines and stacks & stacks of paper. They told me after a demo & walkthrough: 'yeah it's nice but we've done it this way for 15 years and we'd have to lay people off and we don't want to do that.'
I visited the office monthly, from my house in the midwest. My first visit there I got an Airbnb private room (2nd floor, shared apt) at the famous fish market. This is right in the hubbub belly of the beast. Tons of people. The owner/tenant was a black guy with a pet rabbit that had the run of the place. He apparently didn't work (the guy, but also the rabbit), rather, he sat at his desk in the corner staring at 3 computer screens, smoking joints all day. I think he paid rent by continuously renting out the spare room I was in. Not sure what he was looking at, as I didn't care. I did find the rabbit in my suitcase though. Kept the door shut after that. I took this pic at the door to building, pretty sweet:
The office was in Pioneer Square, about a mile down the blvd, very cool part of downtown Seattle, esp if you like weed & homeless people. It's a funky area, cool stores, cool brick sidewalks. 5 people worked at HQ. A couple remote devs (coders).
On my 1st day in the office it was a devs 1st day also, he took train in for that day only. He was wearing a way, way too small t-shirt & jeans. I recall thinking 'it's your 1st day on the job at the new office, and you wear fucking that? Really dude? You don't own a single shirt with buttons?'
And so began my ultimately futile crash course in Health Savings Accounts, EOBs, health insurance claims, and other stuff I could not care less about. But wait! My actual first few days of employment was at a big health care conference, in downtown Denver. A few hundred there, all in this otherwise invisible space of back office health care claims processing. I went with my mgr, the co-founder, for 2 or 3 days of utter confusion. I had no idea on our product, our brand, our messaging, other than basics. Hardly an effective sales guy at this point. I sat in sessions, attended mixers, thinking: what in the sam-hill am I doing here, and how & why do people work in this weird field? It's so boring, so tedious, so filled with legal hoops...is the money that good? I left a couple days later thinking: this is so nuts. And now I'm in it.
However, on my way out of Denver, there was an incident so troubling I smh to this day. Ever flown into Denver? The airport is waaaay the bejeezus outside of town, seemingly near Nebraska. I took an uber there of course, it's an hour drive or more from downtown. On the way there, I get an sms alert my Delta flight is delayed 1 hour. Ergo, I ask the driver, a young hipster type if we could stop at a weed store, which are on the highway there every 5 miles. He says 'giddyup' ergo we stop at the next one. It's my 1st ever visit to one (remember this is in 2014). I find it all fascinating, it was a big arse store, like a weed Walmart. I decided to buy a couple cookie edibles and take them back home to ingest in the Midwest. So I buy two 10mg cookies.
Back in the car I says to the guy I says thanks man I'll have these back home. He says you can't fly out with these, the TSA checks for it. I said but we're in CO he says not technically at an airport that's FAA space or something. So I says to the guy I says ok then I'll just eat one now. Which I do right there. We keep driving. I get another SMS alert as we're pulling into the airport, the Delta flight is now delayed 2 hours. What I did next was a big, big mistake. I thought, fuck it, & popped the other one, right down the Gulliver. I recall thinking, these cookies are tiny, what's the big deal? I was not a weed smoker back then, just a few times a year to reduce my binge drinking for a few days. Plus I knew what being high is like from college of course (and as a 10 year old). Ergo, I figured I'd be fine. The driver looked at me and says yeah yer gonna get high. I had now ingested 20mg of edibles, the 1st (and last) time I ever tried edibles. Edibles do not work like smoking I later learned upon studying. Crosses the blood/brain barrier totally differently. Moreover, 20mg would drop a hippo.
It's a big airport, lotta walking. Whilst waiting in security, I noted my visual acuity had become sharp like an eagle. I could read signs way down the terminal. I thought hmmm that's cool. Go through security and do the long walk to the gate. Just as I arrive at the gate the thc slams into me like a rhino. Like a light switch, my brain was flooded with thc in an instant. I sat down and thought 'sweet jebus.' Not knowing what to do I decided to fire up my laptop and read the news or something. I was sitting next to a giant piller that had electric plug 3 feet up on other side of the seat. I choose to plug in, and realized I couldn't seem to be able to. The cord was long enough but it seemed like the socket kept moving to the side opposite me. This went on for several minutes: me chasing the moving wall socket around the pillar.
Then, the scary thoughts began. The shirt I was wearing had the company logo on it, since we were wearing those for the conference. Two, if someone from the conference happened to walk by and see me / the shirt, they might come over for a chat. I became horrified at this prospect, as I realized I lost the ability to think coherently, let alone speak. I realized: I need to change shirts.
There was a men's room directly across from me. It was right there. But then I realized, if I went into the men's room in one shirt and returned in another, the airport security team would be alerted and come interrogate me. I agonized over this scenario for 20 full minutes. Sweating which was worse: having someone from the conference engage me when I was essentially catatonic vs. alerting security that I was changing clothes for unknown but surely suspicious reasons.
Finally, I chose to change shirts, which I did. This also took forever. Upon exiting I assumed it was 50/50 I would be tackled in seconds and dragged to the interrogation room. I decided to move seats. They have an endless moving walkway there with seats along it. For some reason I choose to sit there, back to the moving people, realizing many of them were talking about me. I received another sms alert my Delta flight now delayed for 3 hours. The walkway was noisy, there are constant announcements, lights blinking, people yapping, I was afraid to move.
I decided to call my bestie, who's not just a successful biz exec but also an avid stoner. I figured he could talk me down. I rang him up, he answered, and I began whispering about my situation. I had to whisper because there was a guy 30 feet away monitoring me & my thoughts. I'm sure he laughs about this conversation now but at the time I was petrified. I knew I had to move again. I somehow walked to a sort of tucked away group of chairs that seemed safe. I decided computer bad, book good. I had actually brought a novel with me to Denver for the flights. I had read it before in college, thought would read again it's so good. So I read the book which more than anything helped me chill out. Of all the books I could have on me then, guess which book I brought. Ready?
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Yes, true. Hunter S. Thompson had been in my altered state many many times. He essentially lived in this altered state. When the plane finally arrived, got on, it took off, and I stayed stoned out of my gourd for the 2-hour flight back, and drive home. I can't recall if I taxied home or drove myself, wish I could. I remained high all eve. Figure: 8 hours? A very long time. Note for you beginners: never go anywhere near 20 mg. Not even 10mg. Go waaaay smaller. Like only eat a crumb.
Anyhoots. Realizing I needed to visit Seattle monthly or more, may as well make it interesting. Ergo: went on Tinder. Met a bird my 1st or 2nd trip there. She was a PhD Archeologist of all things, worked for the government nearby, as in a couple blocks away from Pioneer Square. We met for joe, lasted a few hours. She was into statistics as her gig involved lotsa data. I showed her an online stats article I wrote a year earlier, and she took a shine to me. I'm sure all you blokes out there do the same thing to reel them in. So, she lived in Bremerton, just a few miles from downtown Seattle as the crow flies (over the ocean) but to drive would take hours. Ergo, she and hundreds of others took a gigantic ferry to and from work every day. You could drive onto it, cars below, humanoids on 2nd floor. There was booth seating for hundreds, snack bar, & a bar bar. Pic at top of page is a Seattle commuter ferry. Sure beats driving there, as Seattle traffic is apocalyptic.
How, you are asking right now, would I know this? Because for the remainder of my trips to HQ, around 5 trips, I stayed at her place. Ergo, we took the giant ferry across the bay, past Bainbridge Island, to Bremerton, home to a giant naval base btw. Because I only saw Bremerton roughly 6pm to 7am, where it was dark & raining most of the time, it seemed like a place I would not want to live. But I must say, the ferry ride was pretty great. Took 45 minutes, and she like many others there had a group of random downtown workers she had met and they always sat together. Ergo, I joined their motley crew. I was in my comedy phase then, well; I'm always in that phase, am I not? Correct again. Examples?
Example 1: every single time we departed, as soon as the boat started moving, I would yell out, rather loud 'we're sailing!' The nearby passengers would collectively rise & clap in glee!
Example 2: 2014 was the year I got sober after a lifetime of binge drinking. I was in fact just a month or two sober when I started this Seattle gig. So this fun group of 5 had a pint or two on the boat ride back to Bremerton, but not me of course. I was asked at one point, so: why you no drinky? And I quick as a winky replied 'because of the baby Jesus.'
It was a real knee slapper.
There was a rather ugly situation there, just this one really. Me being a pretty good tech generalist, I requested access to the company website to update some crappy verbiage. Access granted. I changed the content, also the font size. Minor, yes? When I saved, the entire website got blurry. Blurry! To this day I recall starting at it thinking: what the fuck? The company CTO was apparently a heavy hitter tech guy, and he was way pissed at me. Why? BECAUSE HE NEVER BACKED UP THE WEBSITE, EVER, ANYWHERE. This doesn't even seem possible to me, to this day. The site ran on a single box in the office. That's it. No cloud backup, no separate usb drive, nothing. I was working at a coworking space back in Mpls most days, and it was filled with tech wizzes. I found one and we had to hire her to fix the site, for a few grand. The CTO (also a co-founder) was pissed at me of course, for breaking the site but also for shining a spotlight on his nonexistent site backup. My boss was caught in the middle, not much he could do but pay to have it fixed.
After several sales pitches to TPAs, where I was literally explaining the benefits of using the internet, and getting rejected often, I just couldn't take it. A software license started at $5k, they thought it was too much.
There was an offsite strategy sesh on Bainbridge Island near the end. I gave a zero energy sales summary to the group of 5. I'm sure that was plainly obvious. My boss was generally frustrated with my inability to grasp the back office archaic workflow of health care claims (plus I didn't give a shit about it). I don't even recall saying I'm outta here but I'm sure nobody objected.