 |
Dateline: 2011-2013. I did a 3-year tour with a tech company HQ in the LA area. This is one of four 3-year tours I did in this same tech space. I will call them, medium crazy x2, high crazy, & turbo crazy. This here blurb is the high crazy. Following is what occurred during this stop. However, one life altering incident occurred during this stop, about me (almost) being cancelled. That one merits a standalone blurb, as the effects changed the trajectory of my life. I will write about that within the next couple months.
They acquired a smaller, similar Dallas company during year 2. I reported into that office and travelled there every other month or so. So I started day 1 at home in midwest but soon headed to the SoCal HQ on Ventura Blvd (pic of above is where HQ is). Visitors stay at a hotel down the street, overlooking the 405 as it goes northbound over the giant hill into the valley. At 3am I'd look out window and nonstop headlights & taillights. So in the morn of course I decide to walk to office, the office numbers are similar to the hotels. The walk, that I thought was a couple blocks, is well over a mile. No big deal except I'm in nice clothes, blazer, laptop bag, normal white collar crap. But mainly, being from MN, I'm at the time basically an Eskimo. Antifreeze in the veins. If it's over 75 I'm overheating. Which I was. I was so sweaty when I finally arrived for my 1st day at HQ I went in the crapper, took off blazer, dress shirt, removed t-shirt which was soaked right through & tossed it in the bin. Off to a great start and haven't even walked into the office yet.
So I do, everyone's great, it was a pretty great office actually, cool folks, esp. the owners, who are hall of fame cool dudes. I meet them, then HR, super cool person also, in fact by far the coolest HR person in history. She tells me nobody can find my personnel file I mailed there, although it arrived there, sent when they hired me a couple weeks earlier. She had it, now nobody can locate it. This has all my personal info, but mainly my SSN of course so I'm not thrilled about this. Someone in HR did find my file, 2 months later, tucked away in some general office area. Unsecured, non-HR location. What the fuck? An omen, no?
My 1st year there focused on a DIY platform, that was actually quite cool & almost visionary. I say almost as back in '05 I did a couple years at a Mpls tech co that built an identical DIY platform. I was completely hands on with that one also, in fact I did onsite client training sessions & on call tech support. It got some traction, about $2 mil/yr but never more as the owner's ego prevented him from seeing big picture (also he refused to sell the co when a big shark came knocking; big mistake, I'll write about both these co's down the road).
During that 1st year I learned the co was building a phone app to focus on mobile surveys & geofenced surveys (pop up surveys based on walking into a specific store). Fascinating stuff at the time, to me anyhoots. The future of consumer research it seemed. I was studying up on it fortunately for a few weeks on the side, when I was pitching my other DIY wares at Land 'O Lakes corp HQ in the Mpls burbs. A few folks in the room when the department head honcho walks in late & announces 'tell me about this mobile research stuff.' Which I then did, smoothly & competently for a solid half hour. Harder than it sounds, but not if you're prepared and take your gig seriously. Let's focus.
But let's get to the actual weird stuff, mostly related to the Dallas office. Such as: sales rep Beth. Older, guessing late 50s. Nice enough, didn't really know her, until this happened. I rang her up and politely asked her if she was working some agency near me in MN. She wasn't. However, the simple fact that I asked her about it caused an angry, outburst personal attack on me. Not business related, a personal attack. It was unreal. How dare I. How incredibly rude. I've heard about you. You think you can just call anyone. It went on. I was using a VoIP phone at the time. A couple hours later she called me back, to do it all over again, even worse. This time I recorded it on my mob phone. I kept the recording for a few weeks, debating whether to play it for HR next time I was in the socal HQ (I never did).
On my next trip to Dallas where the team assembled at the request of Rick the sales team lead, he declared after work we're all going to Topgolf for an evening outing. I had no idea what Topgolf was, never been before, or since for that matter. So we drive over an hour away from Dallas, into seemingly nowhere, where we spend 3 staggeringly boring hours eating & drinking on the co dime, and watch Rick hit long drives from the tee right in front of us. Over & over & over, he's working on his golf game whilst the 10 or so of us basically take advantage of his expense account. But here's the story, ready? That day, Beth insisted to me privately, she drive me, & only me, to Topgolf. This is very recently after her verbal meltdown / outburst 2x. To her credit, she spent much of the drive there apologizing. I didn't press her on basically 'what the fuck were you doing' because I didn't give a shit about her, then or now. I thought she was an embarrassment to herself.
Rick however, is one for the storybooks. Oversized TX ego driving a jacked up jeep on oversized tires (later sold for luxury sedan). Magic 'graphite' VIP credit card. Cowboy boots. Smelled magic markers during meetings (this was of much humor to the office). Largely awol for his year there prior to being axed.
But 3 stories in particular I cannot shake the memory of. The first is easy: we did a tour of some MN prospects. These were actual big companies, not small agencies which is all he knew, getting by with a handshake and golf invite, apparently. He was just clueless how to interact with actual big corporate business people.
The other was that during that trip, he insisted on staying at my house. I lived in a groovy bachelor pad, ergo no guest room like normal ppl have. I said 'um...what.' He said for real 'yeah I'm staying at your place tonite.' For months after I pondered why, and my only conclusion is he was running some sort of scam with his expense report. There's no reason for it. We weren't friends. But I do recall this: him waking me at 3am asking if I had spare blankets as he was chilly out on the couch. Earlier, there was a sort of couples outing w/my ladyfriend + plutonic friend I met a year earlier in Capoeira class, an extraordinarily cool black woman, PhD shrink. He & she were sorta kissing on the davenport back at the manse at eve's end, but it didn't go anywhere further, not on my watch. My house, my rules y'all. Let's focus.
But the 3rd story is the kicker. He was my boss as outlined earlier, and his boss, a very pregnant workaholic, for unknown reason decided to join him & I on his next visit to MN. There was no point to this, she was 7 months preggers and why fly from CA to MN for a day of prospect visits? To this day, makes no sense. Unless, it's tied into the following. So we drive around the twin cities, I do my thing, they do the meet & greet, and as far as I know it's just a normal sales prospecting circuit, same as I've done for many years. We decide to reconvene in a couple hours for dinner at nice outside patio in Uptown area of Mpls. She's already there when I arrive, I drove myself of course, she taxied. So she starts asking me as soon as I sit down: 'so what do you think of Rick' ? I said I don't know fine I guess. Then she goes into slagging him. She really doesn't dig him. What am I supposed to say? Ever had your bosses boss slag your boss, directly to you? No good will come of this. Am I supposed to agree? WTF. Rock & a hard place. So then Rick shows up and sweet jebus it's ice vibe all of a sudden. I'm oblivious to the problem between those two, up until that day. I'm in MN, he TX, she CA. This is called being a remote worker. So yadda yadda we eat, it's now late, past 9pm as it's summer and it's dark out. I offer to drive them back to hotel but they insist on taxi back. Ok fine. So at 11pm, or midnight or something, I'm actually sleeping, my phone rings, and it's her. She's sobbing. I mean bawling. Not coherent. Apparently there was a shitshow in the taxi, that got worse at the hotel, or something. She said he was screaming at here. I'm spooked. Should I tell HR? wtf?
I did nothing, predicting (accurately) he would be gone shortly. He yelled at me once, for smelling like cigarette smoke upon getting into his luxury sedan. Not smoking in his car, just smelling like it, he was literally yelling at me as it might make his car smell like ciggies. The mentality of this logic, combined with his rudeness, is in hindsight quite something.
The largest Hispanic conference in the country, at the time anyhoots, was called 'Hispanicize.' Annual event in Miami. Thousands go. TV networks, all the big consumer brands, celebrities, it's pretty amazing. A whopping 12 of us went, including me. Also including a real deal LA actor, Marco, who appeared in our online company adverts. Great guy, we hit it off instantly and remain fb chums. We all worked the crowd, spreading the news of our app launch, luring ppl to our tech demos, etc.
So our entire group is staying at one of event's hotels. Upon checking in, I notice it's $400/night. Just for me in a single room. I talk over w/new hire Odette, who agrees this is nuts. There's a best western across the street. We walk over and they're $150/night. We check in, walk back, cancel our rooms, walk back and unpack (separate rooms of course). Stop me when this gets too exciting. No other colleagues join us. I've often thought this simple act we did is a reflection of our character. Who in hell needs a $400/night room? That's insanity, even on an expense account. Walk across the street, save the co a bunch. So we work the event for several days. Someone brought dozens of Apple TV devices, which we gave away to ppl just for coming to our tech demo we gave every few hours. I introduced Marco at one of them, after playing his commercial, had him come into the room to applause.
But the big boondoggle outing was this: the co had rented the actual 'Scarface' movie mansion for an eve. A hundred chairs in the big back yard with movie screen setup where they played the movie. The co had hired 5 models to walk around plugging our app giving out cards w/qr codes. The sole male model came to our table and chatted for a spell, he was a mellow cool guy. Talked about how incredible Radiohead concerts are. Oh and: Manolo & Angel from the movie showed up to mingle & take pics. Looked a lot like this:
Now onto the good stuff, which means crazy(ier). One was a long, drunken West Hollywood outing visiting the bars from the movie 'Swingers' in a BMW 7-series, driven by colleague. Included a 1am visit to In-and-Out Burger, my first. Place was completely packed. Colleague ordered for us, which came in 2 overflowing trays, looking like this. Late nite West Hollywood at In-and-Out is something that needs to be seen to be believed. It's as if zombies invaded a models convention.
Three more to go, saved the best for last. Just for you.
First, the Connecticut sales gathering. There was 15 of us on the sales team, scattered around the country. There's always an annual gathering, at every stop I've had. Sometimes more frequently but the big annual is where quotas are unveiled to much complaining & confusion, strategies discussed, and stupefying amounts of alcohol consumed. This was in CT somewhere so remote nobody had mobile coverage. One day a top shelf sales trainer I remember as pornstache Mike gave us a 3 hour sales training sesh. A week prior he had sent a survey to us about our expectations, our plans for the new fiscal year, etc. Thing was: his survey read like it was written by a 4th grader. It was embarrassing. And I said so in my replies. And he kept bringing that up during the sesh: 'your results indicate you plan increasing sales 10% & also I write terrible surveys.' He said that repeatedly. Oh well.
Second, the infamous Walmart project. I was doing mobile powered consumer research for a food co, several gigs, was going well. My client there referred Walmart to me. That was a good day, to receive that email inquiry. The gist was a multi-mode staged pilot, my co vs. some other tech company doing similar work. Some mobile stuff, then offline stuff, then more mobile stuff. Sounds easy but the way they wanted it was a logistical nightmare. Moreover, in order to participate, we had to complete a very long legal documents. This is an MSA for Master Services Agreement. Covers invoicing protocols, data protections, legal liabilities, endless what-ifs, etc. It was 30 pages, entirely written by lawyers in legal jargon. My co had no lawyer. I was told by Rick: 'you do it.' So I spent an entire month going through it, line by line. The co wouldn't pop for a lawyer, so I did it. I'm not a lawyer.
But here's the kicker of this tale. I foolishley accepted the advice of a tech lead at HQ about who in Dallas to put on point, to hands on manage the project. Partly it was me but the gig was so complex it needed several ppl on it. So he said user her. I said fine ok. Didn't know her but apparently he did. So here's how that played out. A few items for consideration. I could tell almost immediately she was clueless. Almost in parallel I could tell her boss was protecting her. Why I'll never know. First example. We were doing our weekly call update, me on the blower, they're all in Dallas conference room. And she starts crying. I could hear it. She knew she was fucking up this project. Someone else jumped in and took it on (actually I asked her to) and she salvaged it. She was amazing actually. Amazing = smart & reliable. Does what she says. Second example. Had a colleague/friend who threw business my way, for years. Threw me some data cleaning gig, which went to her, supposedly her specialty. Days later, I was in Miami at Hispanicize actually when he called me to read me the riot act. She literally didn't know the difference between single select & multi select response options in a survey. This is kindergarten level knowledge. In my entire friendship with him I never once heard him raise his voice, never saw him angry, nothing, before or since. And he was fucking livid about her messing up his analyses. Next example. After her Walmart showing for some reason I thought it was maybe an anomaly. The spotlight was too bright. I invited her to MN along with a tech wizard very smart, cool guy, to visit the big food co client, to talk strategy, how we could help more, etc. I met them for brekky at their hotel. He & I are on our phones between bites. She's just sitting there. I finally said: don't you need to stay connected? She said 'oh I guess so' and fished around in her purse for her phone. Then when we get to the client visit, several of us around the table, she sat there like a stone, the entire time. Not exaggerating. No notebook, no pen, no note taking, no talking, no nothing. The entire meeting I'm scribbling notes, pages of them. Final example, the co hired a legit exec from Pepsi to lead the team she was on. He fired her, no joke, his first week. The office grapevine said her now former boss/protector/enabler tried to stop him and he literally told her 'you hired me to manage this team, and I'm managing it. She cannot stay here.' I liked him immediately.
Oh and, since you asked: the Walmart gig went well, but apparently not well enough when we weren't awarded the coveted exclusive mobile supplier role. The co that did win only did mobile research, nothing else, unlike my co. Plus they were already working with Walmart before us. Oh well. We took our hacks at it.
And now we come to the final tale of despair, which makes me smh in recollection. The infamous 'Omaha' gig. The big food co was hiring a few suppliers to run a mobile (app) powered shopper survey in Omaha. Only Omaha. They were testing some grocery products there. Needed folks to go shopping, take pics in the store, answer some q's. All that part is easy ish. The Omaha part isn't. That part is a hugely restrictive footprint. Which is what I told the owners. They said 'go sell it we'll figure it out.' I said, like a good sales rep: 'ok.' But really a good sales rep would have said 'this gig is impossible.' Because when we went live, it was DOA. We got around 10 completes. We needed hundreds. It became a major internal shitshow. The food co was a small but steadily growing client. But mainly, they were a very prestigious 'logo' client for us. Household name kind of thing. Big time credibility.
So here's what happened. We needed hundreds of Omaha residents to install our app, agree to the gig, go to the store, do the assignment, etc.
But how? Here's how, sort of. I was given the ok to hire national call centers to blitz Omaha residents with the invitation to do our gig. Yup, you read that right. We were offering a big spiff to each, $50, to anyone who would do it. So I personally hired, trained, and monitored 3 separate call centers. I managed all this, each one, day & night. The project itself lasted weeks. The call center part lasted 1 week. During that time I was so stressed I actually had chest pains, for the 2nd time in my career. The 1st was 5 years earlier, where I walked away from a $200k/yr job because I thought I was going to have a heart attack any minute (nonstop chest pains). Rich doesn't matter if you're dead, I reckoned.
The gig limped to a close, we waved the white flag finally. The call center blitz resulted in a few dozen completes. And annoying the entire Omaha metro area no doubt.