There was a point where I decided to step away from technology after being over-worked. Let’s call it a “sabbatical”. One day, a friend of mine—a senior enterprise administrator—called me up and asked, “Want to make some quick cash?”
“Sure, why not,” I said, because, well, why not?
The gig? Moving boxes of PCs from one place to another. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it. My previous job had me working round the clock in Greensboro, North Carolina, and this was a nice break after moving back to Austin.
My friend showed up with a few junior IT folks in tow—guys who clearly had nothing better to do. Now, I’d worked with my friend at least 10 years ago. One of the younger guys asks…
Him: “Why is it so easy for you to move these boxes?”
Me: (Grinning) “Well, I am a fine specimen of a man.”
Him: “No, that’s not what I mean. We’re more like pencil pushers and you’re…”
I looked at my friend and said, “I can’t believe he said that.” I actually can believe he said that because it’s not the first time in my career hearing questionable statements.
I dont’ t remember what my friend said at the time, but a few days later, he called again. “Hey, we need a Unix Engineer. Interested?”
“Sure, why not,” I replied.
Fast forward, I’m now the lone Unix Engineer managing the combined infrastructure of three companies under a Texas State entity. We’re talking Tandems, Unix, Windows, imaging servers, and Xerox high-speed printers—all the tech you’d expect for processing claims across Texas.
One day, I get a call from a user. He’s frustrated because he can’t see a file he just FTP’d using his browser.
“Did you refresh your browser?” I ask.
“Of course!” he says indignantly.
“Alright, where are you sitting?” I walk over to his desk. The guy looks startled to see me and it’s the same guy that made the racist comment. Without saying a word, I reach over, hit the refresh button on his keyboard, and voilà—his file appears.
As I walk off, I glance back at him and say, “You should know better than that, pencil pusher.”