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This week I am in the state of insanity state of Illinois, which in the wintertime is often referred to by us Texans as the “frozen north” - except today the temperature was a balmy 72 degrees farenheit! It’s mighty decent of you folks to turn on the heaters for me - I always knew Midwesterners were good people.

I’m visiting a client’s facility in Morris, Illinois (almost universally referred to as being outstanding in my field - get it? I’m out standing? in my field? oh, never mind). It’s something I have to do on occasion when new projects are just getting off the ground. No biggie, but I managed to have a few random thoughts I wanted to put down while they were still fresh.

The Joy of Hotels

I don’t know about you, but I’ve stayed in my share of hotels. Some (like the time we stayed in the Embassy Suites in downtown Austin for four months) were fantastic; some (like the Holiday Inn I’m in now) are… not so great.

My co-workers and I were eating breakfast at the hotel restaurant yesterday morning, when I heard the two waitresses suddenly let out with a short scream. I turned around just in time to see a rat scampering across the middle of the dining room floor! One co-worker, in an amazing display of discrete propriety, jumped up and shouted, “It’s a rat!” So much for discrete.

A few minutes later I was riding up the elevator with another patron and made a comment about the critter. His response? “Oh, it was just a little field mouse, and he was just lookin’ to find a way back outside.”

Really? Well, I don’t particularly make much distinction between rodents - they’re all vermin to me, especially when they go traipsing through my dining room! Needless to say, this particular hotel is off my Christmas card list…

People We’ve Known

That same evening at dinner, we spent a fun couple of hours swapping stories about various people we’ve known throughout our careers. Let’s see… there’s the guy that had 10 kids, who used to come to work two hours early and sleep in his car, because it was the only peace and quiet he could get. Then there’s the fellow that used to hold down two full-time jobs for different companies in the same building. (If I hadn’t actually known the guy, I would have classed this as an urban legend.)

Inevitably we reminisced about how life was like in engineering offices back in the “good old days” (back in the ’70s, or ’80s - or any other time that isn’t “now”). I remembered that one mark of a good drafter was his or her ability to shoot rubber bands across the room and hit a target at will.

But What About You Me?

Inevitably we got around to talking about strange and goofy (and worse) bosses we’ve known. You know, the ones Bob Sutton (author of The No Asshole Rule) has made a career blogging about?

What made all these people stand out in our memories, even after (in some cases) quite a bit of time had passed, was that some of their character traits were.. well, let’s be nice and just say they were distinctive. Unfortunately most of the things we remembered didn’t exactly paint them in a positive light.

It does make me wonder, though. What will the people I work with remember of me twenty years from now? (Assuming, of course, they remember me at all!) Will my co-workers remember me as a good project leader? Do our clients remember me with a smile (or better yet, a positive comment like, “he’s a good man”)?

OK, how about this one? Will the people who read my blog today remember me years hence with a pleasant feeling of nostalgia? Will they be glad they dropped by the Middle Zone? Will they be proud of having contributed (if they’ve left a comment or ten) to something of value?

Just a thought.

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