Firstly, I am really enjoying this sub. A lot of what I'm seeing here that folks are starting to do with regards to work leaves me with a lot of encouragement. I had come to a lot of the attitudes here early in my career especially having been burned enough times. Things like using the “work at will” laws within a state to my advantage, job hopping in order to get any sort of significant salary increase, etc. For 2 decades my career was as a software developer. I got my b.s. in computer science “late” in life – I finally graduated 2 months before I turned 30. I'm not currently working right now, my husband and I have the good fortune that if we live frugally we don't have to work, but we are thinking of going back to work to shore up more of our savings. We talk about what we read in this sub all the time. I've worked retail, bagger and checker for a grocery store, a radio station, a movie theater, and various other jobs before I got my degree and went on to become a software developer.
This is a story about my first job as a software developer for a major hotel chain. I started working there immediately after having graduated with my degree in 1998 and the “internet boom” was well underway. While I worked for corporate for the hotel chain the way it was structured at the time was that I worked for a company that was owned by the hotel chain which did all of the I.T. for the hotel's corporate headquarters and hotel properties. In my time there that company was dissolved and we ended up becoming direct employees of the hotel chain. I'm unclear on how that worked out. But this is a story of a new CIO we got during my time there. I was reminded of this story when I read the post about pie with managers. This involved pancakes.
Right before that reorganization happened we got a new CIO. I don't remember his name so let's just call him Chad. While we did have somewhat of a web presence at the time my work was mostly on the reservation system along with doing some reporting from the database for the hotels. This CIO was all in with The Internet. I mean, he wasn't wrong to want to expand our web presence, no problem there. However, the annoying bit about Chad was his favorite phrases he loved to use, the most prevalent one was “Internet time.” We had to do things in “Internet time.” Which meant “fast.” We had to be “fast” with our work because everyone else was going to leave us behind on The Internet if we weren't fast and if that happened then the apocalypse would be imminent.
I capitalize “The Internet” because whenever he spoke about it it felt like he had some massive hard on for it. Due to university and to a friend prior to my going to the university I eventually graduated from I had already been online and on The Internet since 1992. I got to see the progression from a mostly text based interaction online to it's full blown web applications that we see now. So The Internet literally was no big deal for me at that time in 1998. Most folks in my degree didn't take the internet seriously at the time either.
Anyway. The Internet and this CIO with “Internet Time.” Every damn meeting we had we had to make sure we were doing things in “Internet Time.” Any project proposal, “Can this be done in Internet Time?” If no, then make it possible, if yes, fantastic, but do it faster.
Ugh.
One of the “morale boosters” the company did at the time was “Breakfast with the C-suite.” This happened only once but it was built up like it was some sort of big deal considering the “twist” on this event. The “twist” was that the C suite executives were going to make US breakfast. The event was going to be from 8 am to 10 am and it was set up in the largest conference room we had. Every single executive wore chef hats and aprons. They set up stations with electric grills for various breakfast food items. Chad was assigned to make pancakes.
I was on the development team and I got to work earlier than normal that day. We had all agreed that we were going to go to breakfast as a team. There were about 10 of us. It just so happened that other teams decided to go together as a team as well and we all just so happened to have showed up at the conference room right around the same time that morning.
Needless to say there was a backup due to the “rush” of employees eager to have “Breakfast with the C suite.” Really, we just wanted the free food.
The lines were slow because they were making the food as people arrived and since food takes time to cook lines were getting long. While we waited we all would just chat about whatever. We didn't care. We pretty much knew this event would have us not do much work for the first half of the day so we were going to milk it.
I wanted pancakes and so did a few of my team members so we got in Chad's line for pancakes. He was flustered with making pancakes and getting them to people. If you've worked fast food you know the stress of hungry people waiting in a long line and I don't doubt Chad was feeling that pressure.
I don't recall what one of my team members said. He made a little joke that had all of us laughing, even Chad. He then said to us, “Hey, guys, sorry. I'm really trying to get these pancakes made for you. Give me a little patience here!”
I was standing right in front of him as he poured pancake batter onto the griddle when I jokingly asked him, “So. Are these pancakes being made in Internet Time?”
He stopped and stared at me. It felt like everyone in the conference room got quiet and turned to stare at us, me and Chad, the CIO who could fire me in an instant if he wanted to. They were all wondering what Chad would say or do. It was a tense moment because Chad stared at me hard as I looked at him squarely in the eye, absolutely unafraid of him. Someone else made a joke to break up the mood and Chad went back to making pancakes ultimately giving me that one particular pancake and smiling as he put it on my plate. I smiled back and said, “Thanks!” and went off with my team to eat.
I did have a few folks come up to me later and compliment me on how I used Chad's favorite phrase. He didn't use “Internet Time” much after that incident. I think many people were secretly glad, too. LOL
I have another story about the time Chad humiliated me in front of everyone, but I was able to flip that back on him too. That's a story for another thread however. If you've gotten this far, thank you. I know this post takes longer than “Internet Time” to read.
I'd love to hear your petty comeback stories!