Catching up

Yes, it has been a long time since I last posted here. But...I'm back for awhile.

As noted, I now worked for Strategic Development and I was a "Senior" Instructor. Well, I was definitely a senior. I was looking at 60 and wondering what retirement might look like. Attractive, I believed. But in the meantime I had to take my instructor role on the road and so I was off to tour the country.

First I moved my office to home. I had permission from Gordon but it really irritated my former boss and he lobbied hard to get me back into the same building that he was in. There was some high level push and pull all because the ex boss would get a small allotment of budget money from Strategic Development if I was sitting in his building. Eventually I was given a desk in the Cold Storage offices and then allowed to work from home. Problem solved.

Not that I needed a real office. I was usually in the air, flying to Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Mexico, Kansas, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Orlando, Austin, Dallas and other odd places, just to teach estimators the in's and out's of our estimating system. And when I wasn't teaching, I was supposed to be looking for new developments in the world of computers that might be of some benefit to PCG.

One of those developments was a search engine that I had found a few years back; back when I was still an estimator and that was Google. I had been hooked by it's clean look and simple but efficient operation. I showed it to the team and they weren't interested. They preferred Yahoo. Then I found Skype and demoed it for them. No sale.

I was beginning to wonder about Strategic Development. But as a group, they were still great. Every quarter we would meet in Shawnee Mission KS, our home office, and we would spend 3 or more days getting re-acquainted and developing plans for the next quarter. Part of our plans would always include a "Proformers University". We would rent most of the space and rooms in a large hotel in Lenexa. One of the rooms looked just like a theater with with seating and desk space at each row. Here we would go through a full training in the PCG way of doing things. It was all very exciting during the first few times. But it become a real bore after the 10th time. I could guarantee that I knew what each speaker was going to say long before he said it.

These events occurred 2 or 3 times a year and I would have to spend the week in Kansas, listening to the lectures and then taking the estimators out to dinner on the final evening; graduation. For an introvert with Asperger's, this part was hell!

Most estimators, project managers and branch managers are full blown extroverts and they always wanted to party on that last night in town. And as our department was in charge, we had to provide the party.

Now I do have to say that I got to eat in some fantastic restaurants during my time in this department and the Kansas City area is filled with some of the best restaurants. And I do have wonderful memories of the meals. But I would have preferred to have dined with a much smaller group; say one or two. I remember that we always ate at Plaza lll Steak House for the graduation ceremony. We always had a private room and we filled it. With loud, boisterous men all talking at once. More hell for me.

Is this supposed to be about eating or working? Now that I think about it, my job was to travel and eat. I was supposed to take the branch managers and staff out to dinners and lunches. And I did. In between the eating I was supposed to spend time training or working on the development of new software. I also taught the secretaries whenever I could as most had never been given any instructions on how to use Outlook.

Of course I have wonderful memories of most of the branch offices that I visited...some not so much. Perhaps I should start writing about each of the branches that I visited. Good idea. I'll start tomorrow. Or soon.