One of my, strange but true, stories from Corporate Life

When I think back over my time in corporate life, 32 years and counting, there are lots of stories to tell. This one goes under the category of very strange but true.  The time was the 90's, the venue, a business meeting in upstate New York.  We were putting together a partnership with a company located close to the Canadian border. After a long day of negotiations, my contact took me into the firms VP to update him on our progress. Have you ever met somebody that just immediately rubbed you the wrong way? I meet lots of people but this guy just had a superior attitude about him. It was like others were beneath him, he had a cold, dead look in his eyes, kind of hard to describe. Almost like he looked right through you. Later that night my contact confirmed that he was a pretty odd guy, very impersonal and not liked at all. Anyway, we told him we had agreed on the major discussion points and the lawyers were drawing up the contracts that we would sign the next day.  My contact suggested we have a celebratory dinner and off we went. It was myself, a colleague and six people from the company we were negotiating with.

Dinner was fun, a good group of guys, mostly sales types so lots of conversation going on. It was early when we finished dinner and the host suggested we cross the Canadian border and hit one of the casinos. I'm not big on casinos having worked with them for years on the technology side. But, I didn't want to be a stick in the mud, so we headed north.  The casino was fine, I mostly watched and had a few laughs.

My contact came over at one point and sort of whispered to me. "The guys want to go to one of the strip clubs, they're really good in Canada, the girls are completely nude"  I wasn't sure this was a great idea , I really prefer to stick with business ,but talked to my colleague and he was agreeable. So, we agreed but I stipulated , two drinks maximum and we are out of there. All agreed and we jumped in the cars.

The strip club was a huge enterprise and we were all seated at a large round table in front of a stage. A gal was just finishing her dance when we sat down. And, he was correct, she was totally nude. We all ordered a drink and were deep in discussion. I was talking to my contact about business when the next gal came out to dance. She was a late twenties, dirty blonde hair and very attractive. Great figure. To this day I'll never forget the look on my contacts face when he said "Holy shit, that's my bosses wife"  I laughed and said, ha ha that's a good one.  He replied, "I'm serious that's my bosses wife"  The rest of his colleagues had the same look of astonishment. After a minute or so of dancing, the stripper looked at our table and the same look came over her. Stunned silence at our table.

Strippers need love too

After her dance, the bosses wife came running down to our table and sat right beside me. Fully nude of course, at this point, what's the use of covering up.  "I'm so embarrassed she said, please don't say a word about this to my husband"  My contact chimed in, "I don't understand, why are you stripping, what the hell is going on? "

The stripper explained that she was estranged from her husband and even though they were still in the same house, he had cut off all sources of funds to her. She was desperate to move back home  and needed money. "well,  my contact said, couldn't you be like a secretary or something?"

The stripper explained, "it's the only real skill I have, that's where my husband met me, I was stripper"
Holy shit!  So the no nonsense, better that every one else VP had married a stripper? It boggled the mind.

We are chatted for thirty minutes or so and I discovered that she was from my home town and believe it or not, we knew some common people. Truth be told, it was little difficult maintaining eye contact with her, she was very naked and very attractive.

After the shock wore off, it was pretty funny to be honest, my contact made the best quip of the night when he said "whenever I saw you at a company function, like the last Christmas party, I always thought, wow she's hot, I wonder what she looks like naked, but who knew I would find out this way"

Needless to say, the next day's meeting, with the VP to sign the contract was surreal. Everyone in the meeting, in fact by then everyone in company, knew the story. All except for the VP. Everyone was in on the joke but him.  It was smirks all around the room for sure. Sort of a karma thing.

Certainly one of my oddest moments in my work history and one I'll never forget. Have a strange work story to share? Please do.

Intersection of life

I'm at a crossroads in my life. Each year, during Christmas break, I usually assess the year that just passed.  For the last couple decades, I would see where I was career wise and personal life, look at vacation plans for the next year, set some goals, see if I accomplished what I wanted and review my financial plan.  My financial plan review was usually around how much I saved, what debt I had, how my investments did and where I would invest the following year for the best growth. The Christmas week review was the culmination of a years worth of study and reading, discussion with my wife and others and was fun to do, most times.

What I learned was simple. It takes a long time to save money and time is definitely on your side. The simple act of compounding is the absolute key to saving any sort of nest egg. That and some prudent stock picking. I'll expand on my experiences in another blog on finances. Oh, and marrying well really helps, especially if your wife was a good saver before you met her.

I don't want to spend each day bored

I have been very focused on retirement the last few years and surprisingly not the financial end of it. I am in pretty good shape there although some changes will need to be made in lifestyle to accommodate the lack of a paycheck. My main concern is this, just what does one do all day when retired? I have interests, like golf, travel and working around the house but I am concerned about all this free time. Will I end up bored with all this free time? I can envision feeling like I am on an extended vacation at first and I am sure that will be great but what then? At this point in my career, I have been very focused on keeping my current job. I am fairly compensated and know that it would be very difficult finding another job at my age and in this environment. I am thinking that 2014 will be my last year working at this profession. My current thinking is to take a year off, travel and relax but also do some new learning for a new career. But what is that new career? Ideally, it would be a flexible job, something that is seasonal or I can work when I want to.  Something I could keep busy at and make $20 or 30K per year. That would pay my taxes and keep me from dipping into retirement savings too much for the next 6 or 7 years.

Is the path I'm on?

To be perfectly honest, I'm sort of amazed to find myself this old. It sort of snuck up on me.  I've spent the last forty years working at my career, trying to prepare myself to be financially secure.  So, it's a great feeling to be where I need to be in the finance area but I want to use the rest of my life to do something very different. Just what I'm not sure. I don't know how many good years I have left. Already peers of mine are dying off.  I may have fifteen good years left.








Some of the part time careers I may be interested in:

And by the way, these have nothing to do with my current line of work. Now I am in the manufacturing business and have been in Exec. Management for the past 20 plus years. The bulk of it in a corporate position. Much of my job is managing the commercial and technical relationships with customers. I have worked in start ups and a few of the largest companies in the world.

• Home inspection: I like working with my hands, I am fairly handy. I have run into a few guys that took this route and are making six figures doing this full time. I like photography, using a computer and writing so this uses all those skills in writing up a report. It would get me out of the house and I could freelance and make $300-$400 a day doing this so it fits the part time test as well as the earning potential I want. I would need to go to school and get certified.

• Videography: This is another interest. I could do small scale shoots for businesses or commercials. Maybe even a small movie from time to time as long it is somewhat local. (DC, Baltimore, Philly or even NY)  To do this I would need to gain experience and a portfolio. I could even do weddings for experience. A back up to this would be editing which I may like even more. Earning potential is good although I'm not sure how part time fits in, it may be full time project work with breaks in between.  I may explore a class in this.

I think the common thread here is I want to work for myself or by myself, I think. I've had enough of large corporations. The only way I work for a large company in the future is if I start one and it grows that large. Honestly, I don't think I that would keep my interest anymore, I've done that already.

So, what's your plan? Work until you drop? No job and travel or whatever you want in your retired years?    Start a new career?     Volunteer?   Whatever it is, you gotta have a plan !

The Kindness of Strangers

You've heard the term, but have you ever experienced the kindness of strangers? I have, it was unexpected and I was grateful. It wasn't a life changing event or life saving but it made a big difference to me in a time of need.  I tend to be very resourceful and honestly much prefer to take care of my own problems.

In the late 80's I was spending quite a bit of time in Europe with a start up company. I would travel around Europe for a month at a time, several times per year. I was single, so I took advantage of the time to sightsee on weekends without worrying about getting home . This particular trip, I had finished some business in Paris and had to be in Dusseldorf, Germany on Monday. I decided to take a train to Germany and enjoy the sights from the window. I had a train schedule and travel guide and no real plan for the weekend except to meander my way to Dusseldorf.  Remember, this was the pre-internet and pre-cellphone days, so travel was a little more seat of the pants.  I had lunch with colleagues in Paris and headed out for a good weekend, or so I thought.

A couple hours into my trip, I really started to feel ill. Sweats and nausea came first and then vomiting and  diarrhea. The toilets in trains then, and maybe some now, just dropped onto the tracks. You could literally see the track bed of gravel below you. Pity the poor guy walking along those tracks after I went by.

As I got sicker and sicker, it was pretty clear I needed to get off the train. I can't recall why I thought this but I guess I felt the need to lay down and find a better place to hug a toilet. When we reached the next town, I just got off. I had no idea where I was. I wandered around looking for a hotel. I found one after a half hour or so and was able to get a room. The hotel was some where in Germany, small town and nobody at the front desk spoke english. They did not take credit cards but I had a few hundred dollars in DMarks so that was lucky.  By the time I got to my room, I was seriously ill. I made it through the night but spent most of it on the toilet with a trashcan in front of me. It was not pretty. I kept trying to drink as much water as I could to keep hydrated but most of it came back up.

The next morning there was a knock on the door, the maid had arrived. I tried my best to convince her to go away but the language barrier was a challenge. She was trying to be persistent and at one point I blocked her from coming in. She left but returned a few minutes later with some front desk help.  More discussion ensued with no real understanding of the situation. I kept saying "nein" and a pantomime of being sick and they finally went away. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not as I was seriously sick.

Twenty minutes or so later, another knock on the door. In came the front desk lady along with a very attractive young lady. In perfect english, she asked me what the issue was. I explained my situation and she translated to the front desk lady. The front desk lady left and I spent a few minutes chatting with the english speaking girl. Her name was Helga.  She explained that she worked at the local bank but had studied abroad. She was friends with the daughter of the couple that owned the hotel. They called her at home since they knew she spoke english.  She stayed with me and I felt relieved but apologized quite a bit as the room smelled like a cell pool. The help came in and cleaned my bathroom and opened the windows. A few minutes later a doctor walked in, amazingly they called a doctor! He didn't speak english so again Helga translated. He figured I had food poisoning and gave me medicine and a shot. I slept like a log.

That night, Helga came back with food. The hotel only had breakfast so she brought an assortment of cheese, meat,  fruit and bread.  She was a really sweet girl, friendly and chatty with a great smile. I think she enjoyed speaking english as she didn't have much chance to practice.

I thanked her and the staff that night, they were really kind to me as I was just a stranger that walked off a train. A foreigner to boot. They went beyond any expectations a person could have. They treated me like family.  I got back on the train the next morning with a new outlook. Maybe a little more positive feeling and renewed faith in people.

The next week while working in Dusseldorf, I had a colleague write a note in German thanking the staff at the hotel for their kindness.  I wrote a note to Helga and we stayed in touch. We got to know each other better and spent quite a bit of time together over the next two years. I met her in Munich one year for Octoberfest. Once she showed up at my house in the US unannounced, but that's another story.

Not really Helga, but close 

Twilight zone, somewhere in France

This is my story of getting stuck in what seemed to be The Twilight Zone while traveling in France a couple decades ago. Travel today is pretty easy. With the internet today you can do price research, budget your trip, make reservations, check the accommodations on line , print boarding passes, and even do language translations. When I started traveling abroad in the 80's, it was really seat of the pants. I can't imagine what it was like in the 60's!

When I travelled in Europe in the 80's, I carried a bag the size of a basketball full of convertors. Not only voltage convertors but the AC plug ends were different in each country. In most countries, they had multiple convertors for voltage and two or three different plugs for a phone line. I may have had thirty different convertors. So in the mid-80's when I carried a computer (see my blog on my Compaq luggable) I needed all these convertors to plug my analog modem into so that I could get email or send a file.  It was a nightmare. But I digress from my story.

So, I find myself in Paris one week and I have a meeting in the suburbs with one of our distributors. I had called him the previous week and arranged the meeting. I confirmed the previous day and he gave me instructions on which train to take. The metro stop was just outside my hotel and I grabbed a train map and figured out my route. No problem I thought. I was traveling with a colleague and we headed out. The plan was to get to the train stop and call our contact who would pick us up. My contact had explained that the train stopped in a shopping center.

Where do I put the coins?

We made our way to the shopping center by way of a couple train changes. He was correct, the train stopped underneath what we would call a mall. Up two levels to the mall and we looked for a phone to call him. We found one in a minute and I pulled out my contacts phone number. I looked all over the phone for a place to put in the coins. There did not appear to be any place to put money in, very weird. Well, we thought, this must be a special French phone that is only for locals. Off we went in search of another phone. On the level below, we found another phone. Same issue, there did not appear to be a place to put money. We started asking people walking by to explain what the situation was. Nobody spoke english. Finally, after a dozen or so tries, a young gal tried to assist. She pulled out a card and showed me that you needed this special card to make calls, the phones would not take money of any type.  Well great, so where can I get a card?  She said the Post Office sells them. Lucky for me there was a Post Office in the mall. Off we go to the post office only to find it is closed and opens in an hour.  Waiting in front of the Post Office, I finally find a guy who speaks good english and he explains that the government had been getting rid of all pay phones for some time.

So, an hour goes by and by now I am getting very late for my meeting and the Post Office opens. Of course, there are twenty people waiting in front of me by the time I get in. As I am waiting in line, I notice there is a phone booth in the Post Office. It looks different than the other phones I saw. I look closer, it has a coin slot, WTF!  So, you have to buy a card to use phones outside the Post Office but the one inside , where you buy the cards, takes coins. That's a government at work if I ever saw one.

I call my contact and apologize for being late, he says he will pick me up in five minutes.  OK, things are looking up now, well not so fast. We head for the nearest exit and head out, right into the parking garage. Back into the mall we go to the next exit. Same thing, into a parking garage. We try two more exits on that level, then head upstairs. After 25 minutes, we cannot seem to find an exit to the street. Every exit goes to the parking garages. Finally, we head into the garage and decide to venture further. We follow a car exiting and find out that there is no way to actually enter the mall on foot. You have to drive into the garage to enter the mall. When we get outside, we see that the mall itself is several hundred yards from any other building and was built with no foot traffic in mind.

We get picked up by our contact who gets a good laugh out of our story. I knew him pretty well by that time so I got the benefit of the doubt. I mean, would you do business with a company that sends a representative that can't figure out how to make a phone call or exit a building?

The moral of the story; when you travel to a foreign country nothing is quite as it seems. It may look the same but trust me, it's different.

High technology in the 1980's

Today's laptop computer is a pretty amazing device. Truly portable, light weight. long lasting battery life and chock full of features. With more computing power than the on-board computers that sent man to the moon. It wasn't always this elegant. I'm here to tell you that from personal experience. My story is from the late 1980's and I was working for a start up making IBM compatible products. I was traveling through Europe several times per year as we grew our customer base.  When I traveled, I carried a laptop predecessor called a luggable computer. Note in the picture it has a CRT display. Basically, it was a desktop pc with a handle and weighed in at close to 30 lbs. The screen was black and white (really green) and this was before Windows so we're talking a "C prompt".  

As I met with various distributors, I would hook this pc up to the local mainframe through a special built emulator board. It allowed me to capture the communications protocol that was country or language specific. Then our engineering staff back home could make sure our devices operated correctly when we shipped to different countries. I would record this on a floppy disk and return home with a pot of engineering gold for the geeks.

In those days, a device like this invited loads of scrutiny in airports. The gate attendants didn't know what to make of it and many times would not allow me to board with it. Another issue was getting it in or out of some countries. I finally had to travel with a set of papers showing I owned it and was not reselling the device as many countries assumed I was trying to avoid paying a VAT.

Another quirky issue was that since this was really a desktop pc, whenever I arrived at my destination, I had to take the cover off and reseat all the internal printed circuit boards and any thing else that came loose. It really didn't travel well.

So, I am traveling from Germany to Switzerland one week, had to check the Compaq as luggage and we land. I am waiting to exit the plane and I hear my name announced over the PA. Will you please wait in your seat for the Captain.  This can't be good I'm thinking.  The rest of the passengers disembark, and the Captain comes down the aisle, "Come with me please", so I follow him to the rear of the airplane, and down a set of stairs to the runway! Now I am on the runway looking up into the cargo hold at a Swiss guy motioning me to climb up into the hold. Remember, these are the days of wearing suits all the time. But, up I go into the hold. 

Apparently, the detachable keyboard came loose in flight and the 12 inch coiled cord now appears to be four feet long! The keyboard is now somewhere else in the aircraft below the cargo hold.. The Swiss guy has a pair of cutters and is asking if he can cut the cord. "Nein danke" I say (about the only two German words I know) and we go about trying to fish the keyboard out of the hold below. Forty five minutes later I retrieve the PC but the cord is now permanently four feet long. Thank god for bungee cords.

The demise to this pc came a couple years later. I find myself in a German train station  after a very long and tiring trip. I have all my luggage loaded on a cart and I'm going down a three story high escalator.  The cart is in front of me, the Compaq just out of reach when it slides off the cart. It starts down the escalator in what seems like slow motion. As it picks up speed, parts start flying and half way down, it's making a hell of a racket, hitting every third step or so. Thank god there was nobody in front of me!

By the time it gets to the bottom, it's in a hundred pieces, plastic, metal and printed circuit boards everywhere. How do I react?  I act like it never happened, just keep walking and ignore the accident. No rubber necking for me, just board the train and be on my way.  It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing, I finally got rid of that thing.

When I got back home to work , I was asked about the Compaq, where was it?  
"Seized in customs",I said, " I'm lucky I'm not in jail, I was barely able to get out of the country"

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

What's it all about?

Why am I writing a blog?  Good question. Maybe I think I have something to say, but you'll be the judge of that. I am a 50 something year old guy, so I've seen some things in my life time. I am hoping I am two thirds of the way through life. Hence, my blog name. Time will tell on that one. I have worked around the world, travelled a lot, have dozens of friends from these travels and may have some interesting stories to tell. Some stories may inform, some amuse, in the end, you'll decide.


I follow quite a few blogs, the majority are younger folks (like my kids age)  Most I can relate to, I surely remember what it was like to be in my 20's and 30's.  But can my blog be topical and relevant to folks today? I guess I will find out.


An amazing amount of things have changed in my lifetime. When I discuss most of these changes with my kids and grandkids, they always have an amused look on their face. I may be older than I think.


So, what's changed?  Seems like just about everything.

Creature comforts we take for granted today
Since I grew up in the 60's, and what life was like just a half century ago, how about this trip down memory lane:

Air conditioning circa 1950's

• No air conditioning- we didn't get our first window unit until I was in high school. I lived in the finished attic space with my brothers and it was hot as hell in the summer, freezing cold in the winter. Summers were really survival mode and I remember having a big fan I found in the neighbors trash going full speed. I still like sleeping with the noise of a fan to this day. My kids complain if it's hotter than 75 degrees in the house

• No credit cards, debit cards, direct deposit or ATM's - My first job with a real company paid us weekly. I remember getting a manila envelope with all the hours and tax information written in pencil. Inside the envelope was cash. No wonder you always read about small companies in those days being robbed of their payroll. I remember going to the bank and making cash deposits every week when I got paid. . You could pay your utility bill at the bank. Now I travel with no money all around the world. A few weeks ago, I left for Asia with less that $20 cash. I think I got home two weeks later with all the cash .
• Our tv was black and white and got four channels. I remember my dad got this plastic overlay that you taped on the tv screen that made it appear to be color. It was blue on the top portion and green on the bottom, maybe amber in the middle. So, if you watching a show that had outdoor scenery, the sky looked blue and grass green. Otherwise, it didn't work so well.  Our color tv came much later. There was no remote control, you had to get up to change the channel which was ok since you were also always screwing around with the antennae. Now you have 200 channels and it doesn't seem like tv is any better.

Soft Porn, Sears Style

 Our version of the internet was the Sear's Catalogue. We used to fight over it when a new one came out. I would spend hours looking through it. I hardly remember our bathroom growing up without a Sears catalogue on the toilet. Did you know you could buy a house from Sears and have it delivered to your lot? There still thousands of these houses around the US. 

For some reason I liked the women's underwear section. What 12 year old boy wouldn't?

No computers, no internet, no cell phone.

• I was an early computer adopter (I worked for a Manufacturing company and we made a pc in 1984) I started using the internet in 1993, I used email first during a two year stint in Europe and stayed in touch with my then girlfriend using Compuserv. Before that, it was the US mail. If it was urgent, a telegram was sent. There was no broadband so you used dial up
• Ten years ago, when I started working from home, the only access to email was by dial up modem. I used to log onto work and wait 45 minutes while my email downloaded. We got broadband a couple years later, what a difference!
• I used to carry a laptop around Europe in the late 80's made by Compaq. It was basically a desktop with a handle and weighed maybe 30 lbs. I have a funny story about what happened to that computer and will post later.
• My first cell phone in 1988 was a "bag phone" made by Motorola. It came is  small brief case and was analog not digital. Reception was spotty but in 1988 you really felt like a secret agent or something. 
• Before a cell phone, when travelling, I had a pager, after getting a page, you would use a calling card in a public phone to ring up my secretary.  She would update me with any messages. Remember phone booths? I have a funny story about trying to make a call once in France, I'll post that later.
• There was also no microwave ovens, compact disks ( we had record players, remember them) etc

Well, you get the picture. I could go on and on (and probably will in future blogs) but lots has changed for sure. Even in the last decade or so, technology has really accelerated in impacting our every day lives. I think the internet, as it is today, is the most significant technology event in my lifetime. It is the greatest learning tool ever made. I'll expand on that in a later blog. So what's changed since you were a kid that makes your life different or easier?