I Said No, No, No...Part 2: Survival in the Wilderness

Following my last post, I learned that you can in fact go to the woods of Quebec for 84 hours, but that you can only survive if you manage to find intermittent cell phone coverage.  Over the last few weeks I was totally freaking out over the thought of a trip to the bush that would leave me completely cut off from my life.  And when I say freaking out, I mean a serious cold sweat and crazy night terrors.

It's obvious that I have a security-blanket type attachment to my blackberry.  I feel comfort when I have it nearby.  I even feel that comfort when it’s not connected to any service.  If I can see it and feel it, it's way better than not being able to reach out and touch it at all.  But it’s sure not the same as the calming effect of the flashing red light.

 

I drove to our wooded retreat with a couple of colleagues.  A Blackberrian who thinks he knows how and when to shut it off (On weekends?  Vacations? Cummon!!!  What an amateur) and an IPhone-ite who loves his apps.   Apparently, if I had an IPhone, I could vibrate every time the Toronto Maple Leafs get scored on.  Interesting.  But not interesting enough to move to a virtual keyboard, that’s for sure.  And who could vibrate that much, anyway?

 

On the ride up, I just knew the second we left the coverage zone.  There wasn’t a sign, and there was no clue.  It was just obvious.  I’m connected to that thing like it’s my twin.  When it’s in pain…when it’s lost…I just know.  I can feel it.  Or maybe it was the big trees, the mountains and the dirt road that gave it away.

Coverage Map for Quebec.  I don't need a map, I can just feel it when I leave the zone.

When we arrived at the beautiful Auberge Lac à l’Eau Claire, I stepped out of the vehicle and my greatest fears were realized.  My friend, my twin, my Torch was nothing but a brick in my hand.  Exactly what I had expected.  3G had not yet invaded the Quebec wilderness.  I took two steps to the right, and suddenly, and without warning, the red light started to blink.  My heart started to beat in time with the twinkling light.  The world was out there.  And it was talking to me.

To my dismay, I took another two steps to the right, and the connection dropped.  Then four steps forward and it was back.  Inside my room it was a brick.  Outside my room it was a lifeline to my world.  For the following 83 and a half hours, the red light would mock me.  I would retire to my room at the end of the night with no service.  Somehow, during the night, and I have no idea how, the blackberry would connect, and I would wake to a flashing light, but again with no service.

It (or I) became the running joke of the meeting.  I was like a gunfighter at a poker game.  I would sit down, and put my weapon on the table.  Over the three meeting days, each of my colleagues took great joy in inquiring as to the current status of cell phone availability.  (Hardly mocking me at all)  One of them even sent me a message, telling me that he hoped that the flashing red light resulting from his message would stave off the impending depression for just one more day…

We went on an expedition to look at bears (who unfortunately didn’t show up to look back at us).  We went to look at beavers doing their beaver thing.  We took a beautiful boat ride on a gorgeous lake at sunset.  It was me, the rest of our leadership team, and of course, my constant companion (sometimes a brick, and sometimes so much more) on a fantastic pontoon boat.  I don’t want to say that I was fixated on what I was missing,  but when I was occasionally graced with connectivity, I made the most of it.  I drank in the red glow of the tiny flashing light, and as fast as it came, it was gone.  

The gorgeous lake at sunset...picture taken with what else?  Blackberry Torch.  Never leave home without it.

The final day arrived, and I jumped out of bed with the knowledge that in a few short hours, I would be back into the land of secure, reliable cellular service.  We met for a couple of hours in the morning, and when my colleagues suggested that we forgo lunch in favour of an earlier departure, I quickly agreed.  If you know me, you know that I haven't forgone many lunches.  Imagine that...getting back to a coverage zone is more important to me than food.  The little red light sustains me.

I sat in the car, almost trance-like, waiting for the flashing light to re-enter my life, and when it did, a feeling of utter relief washed over me.  It’s back.  Life is good.  Whether the news at the other end of the flashing red light is good or bad or neutral, or even junk, it calms me down when I know that I'm in the virtual loop.

 

Since my last blog I’ve heard from a lot of people, some who think I’m completely nuts, others who completely get where I’m coming from, and even others who think they’re ten times more addicted then me.  And maybe they are.  I’ve thought a lot about it , and just when I thought that maybe I should be taking some action on my addiction, I was playing golf today with a group of colleagues, and at more than one time during the day I looked up from my own private blackberry prayer to find the rest of my foursome, their heads all down, connected to their worlds.

I heard on the news this week that feared activist investor Carl Ichan may be making a play to get involved with RIM...he's the guy that's done such stellar work with Motorolla, Blockbuster, Yahoo, and more.  I'm sure he's pumping up for a brawl with Jim and Mike over in Waterloo.  I really have no idea whether Carl's attention is good for RIM or not.  All I can say is that guy better not do something that extinguishes my flashing red light forever.  

Carl Ichan, Corporate Raider

 My name is Sean.  I’m addicted.  So what?

I Said No, No, No...

My name is Sean, and I’m an addict.  I’m hooked on a little flashing red light.  In its own silent way, it calls my name, and from wherever I am, I respond, even from the depths of sleep.  When it flashes, I know it.  I can feel it.  It’s the hypnotic strobe of the tiniest red light, but it tells me I have a message.  It tells me that there's something I need to know.  It tells me that the world is still moving.  It’s my blackberry and I’m addicted to it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with my blackberry lately, mainly because I’m on my way to a strategic planning retreat.  It’s at a beautiful place in the woods of Quebec.  They have bears.  They have moose.  They have comfortable beds and tasty food.  What they don’t have is cell phone reception.  It’s true.  In 2011, there are places that don’t have cell phone reception, and I’m going to one of them.

 I’ve been shaking and sweating about it for the last week.  The idea of that little red light not flashing freaks me out.   On a regular day, if it goes for an hour without flashing, I usually take the battery out and reset it, just to make sure it’s not stuck.  The red light tells me that somebody at work wants something.  It tells me that my kids have something to share.  It tells me that Laura wants to know if I’m coming home for dinner, and if I am, she’d like to know when the hell I plan to arrive.  I've even been known to sneak a look at my blackberry during a flight after the nice ladies at Air Canada have instructed us to shut everything down.  To my knowledge, I haven't yet seriously interfered with those aircraft frequencies.  That little blinking red light is like my pulse.

A bunch of years ago, we rented a cottage near Peterborough, Ontario and lo and behold, no cell phone reception. (Except if I stood on the dock on one foot and held the phone out over the lake and above my head…imagine a chubby dude trying to pull off that yoga pose).  On a daily basis, I was forced to come up with insane reasons to drive to town to check my messages.  I was convinced that I was being pretty smart, coming up with brilliant excuses like needing worms for bait, but I’m sure that Laura wasn’t convinced, and that she knew all along that I was cheating on her with the flashing red light.

clearly NOT me

Two winters ago, we took the kids on a New Year’s cruise.  For the two weeks leading up to it, I was freaking out that I would be completely cut off while floating around the Caribbean.  I was at least hopeful that while in the various ports of call, there would be access to a connection.  You’ll never know how happy I was when I boarded the ship and saw a huge poster proclaiming how proud they were that the Monarch of the Seas had just introduced marine cell phone coverage.  I’m sure the folks that heard my large exhale of relief thought I was just pleased to be starting a relaxing holiday.  In fact, it was almost wholly about the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t have to go for a week without my little flashing red friend.

Schematics for Ship to Shore Marine Wireless.  It's like the modern day Rosetta Stone.  I don't care how it works, but it's changed peoples' lives.

The experts say that the availability of information and data on a 24/7 basis means that we never shut down;  that we never truly experience the comfort of being fully away from work.  I don’t know who the ‘experts’ talked to about this, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.  In the years before the blackberry entered my life I would go away and worry.  I would think endlessly about work and what was happening there.   I thought about the 200 emails a day that were going unread, and piling up, mocking me, awaiting my return.  For control freaks like me, the blackberry meant freedom.  It meant that I could finally go away for a few days and not have to fixate on everything that I didn’t know about work.   Being away from work for a few days with absolutely no information is anything but comfortable for somebody like me.  (And I know I’m not alone.  Admit it.)

 I love my Blackberry Torch.  It’s the latest, and my favourite, in a long line of RIM devices that have danced through my life over the last ten years.  I sleep with it.  There.  I said it.  Yes, I take my blackberry to bed.  While it’s true that I use it as my alarm clock, I only really discovered the alarm function after I was already taking it to bed.   I have worked in industries where things operate in a 24/7 environment, and for years I’ve had staff working during the night and on the weekend.  That was my excuse for sleeping beside it.  The truth is, I’m a junky.   That silent little flashing red light can wake me out of a sound sleep.   And it knows it.

As a Canadian, my heroes should be Terry Fox, or Rick Hansen, or Roberta Bondar or someone like that.  You know who my heroes are?  Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.  Those boys from Research in Motion have changed my life.  I know RIM is a little under fire right now because of their recent product launch, but who needs another tablet anyway.  Leave that to Steve Jobs.  What I need is a little handheld device whose flashing red light keeps me going.  It put Waterloo on the map, and it’s given people like me the ability to breathe.

What started out as a simple device that allowed me to work on the fly, and sometimes get away from the office and spend time with my family while keeping on top of things has become the umbilical cord that connects me to the mother ship.  It's not just a phone (in fact, often, that's the last thing it is).  It's not even just the email.  I don't know what I ever did before Blackberry Messenger and texting.  I travel a lot for work now, and my blackberry allows me to keep in touch with my girls and Laura, my friends, and of course what’s happening with customers and people back at the office.  It keeps me sane.  Thanks Mike and Jim.

 So as beautiful as it is (and it is), the thought of sitting in the woods of Quebec, disconnected from my life, with no BBMs or emails, even for 84 hours (are you surprised that I counted?) completely freaks me out.   Maybe it is a sickness.  Or my addiction.  In the immortal words of the late Amy Winehouse, "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said No, No, No..."   I choose to think of this as evolution, the new way forward.  Whatever it is, if the flashing red light is like my pulse, the absence of the flashing red light feels like a flatline. 

If you're an addict like me, visit www.crackberry.com

Donald Trump Makes It Look So Easy

Before I start, I want to say that firing people is not fun.  If you’ve done it, you know what I mean.  I’m sure Donald Trump doesn’t even like it.  And for those of us who have been on the receiving end of the boot, we also know it’s not that much fun.  In every case, before I’ve ended someone’s employment, I’ve lost sleep.  I think and rethink and over-think how it’s gonna go down.  I wonder if they’re going to cry, or lash out, or even if this is the time I’m going to get beaten with a chair…  Luckily I haven’t been beaten yet.  The reality is that you’re changing someone’s life unexpectedly, and it’s a big deal.

That being said, sometimes the circumstances surrounding a termination are pretty funny, if only in retrospect.  Think back to my young friend Skater Boy who came and went so quickly.  He didn’t get out of bed that day expecting to get busted while busting.  It’s always unpleasant, but there were a few situations that make me laugh when I look back.

About 15 years ago, I had just become the acting manager of a small branch office.  Someone I had hired was just not cut out for the work she was doing, and she had to go.  The team knew it, I knew it, and I’m pretty sure she knew it too.  So I went through all the required steps to end this woman’s short career with us.  I had the paperwork in hand, and I called her into my office.  I was clearly nervous, and she decided to take advantage of the situation.  I uttered those nasty words, “I’m sorry to tell you that we’ve made a decision to let you go, effective immediately.”   I’m not sure what I was expecting from her, but I sure as hell was not expecting her to say, “No.”  I was shocked, and she launched into a hundred reasons why she shouldn’t be fired, and somehow, and to this day I don’t know how, she left my office with her job intact. 

 

Everyone knew she was in there getting canned, so imagine the crap I took when they all found out that she was staying.  It was an unpleasant Friday afternoon, after publicly failing in my first grown-up manager task with that team.  Thankfully, this woman went home, thought about it, and called in on Monday and quit.  It took a very long time for me to live that one down.

A couple of years later, with a few more terminations under my belt (I’m not saying it that way because they’re badges of honour, they’re more like battle scars), I got a call from a customer.  The last thing I expected him to be calling about was to tell me that one of my staff had just threatened to kill him.  It’s a shock, right?  Turns out that he owned a bingo hall, and the husband of one of my staff was unemployed, and spending lots of time there.  Apparently he got mouthy, and managed to get himself banned from the bingo hall.  He called his wife at work to tell her, and she immediately got on the horn to Bingo Dude.  You’d have to know this woman to really understand the situation.  Dainty and delicate she was not.  Much of her working life was spent in the railroad unions across the prairies, and she was about as rough as they came.  She was initially hired by us to work alone overnight, but when that shift was eliminated, she was moved to days.  With people.  And customers.

She informed Bingo Dude that if her husband’s bingo privileges were not reinstated, like NOW, she’d gather up her biker buddies and head down there to put him out of his misery.  Since Bingo Dude was a customer, he of course called me, demanding that something be done about her.   All it took was one call to my friends in HR and wheels were in motion for a termination.  They were genuinely worried about what could happen to me.  They insisted on having both security and an outplacement consultant at the termination, and they were demanding that we hire security for my house.  I figured that was taking things a little far (but it was good to know that they cared), so we settled on security at the office during the termination.  She obviously knew what was happening because she called in sick on termination day, so I sent the security and outplacment folks away.  Everybody came back the next day, and she showed up.  To her credit, she was one of the most respectful, polite people I’ve ever had to terminate.  And she didn’t firebomb my house.

Sometimes the circumstances are just bizarre.  I had an employee who’s downfall was that he obviously didn’t really understand the company’s acceptable computer use policy even though he signed it on more than one occasion.  Before I tell you about that situation, let me put some context around this guy…

I once walked into the men’s room, and if you’ve been reading these posts, you’ll remember that I’m not too cool with public washrooms, even at work.  I walked in, and saw him, at the urinal.  I almost turned around and walked out, but I was sort of frozen, stalled there in awe.  There he was, pants round his knees, one hand on the wall, as if holding himself up, and in the other hand, the newspaper.  Not just holding it, but holding it up and reading it.  For the ladies, I’ll just tell you, that this is an exercise that should not involve multi-tasking.  You’re there for one reason, and you should give it all your attention (and at least one of your hands).  And, men's pants and underwear are both designed in such a way that they do not ever have be down around your knees while you’re using the urinal.  Just as I was starting to back out of the men's room, in one quick motion, he turned around and said, ‘Hey Sean, how you doing?’.  He didn’t turn at the neck, he turned at the ankles.  You’ll understand why that image is forever burned into my mind.

That, of course, was not the reason he got turfed.  For weeks, every time I walked by his office, he would quickly switch programs on his screen.  I began to get suspicious, and with the magic of the modern network, it turns out that corporate security is constantly taking screen shots of everything that is on your screen, and archiving it.  One call to security, and twenty minutes later, pages and pages  and pages of your online activity can be forwarded to your manager’s computer.    Remember that.  It turns out that he was having X-rated conversations using three different identities with multiple unsuspecting women across North America.  All day.  Every day.

 

Now anybody can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home and it’s none of my business, but when it turns out that you log into your various chat room accounts the minute after you log into your work account, and you post every five minutes for the full day, logging out just in time to go home, it becomes my business.   Add to that all of your complaints that you have too much work that you can’t get done, and that you really need an assistant.  The most shocking thing was that even after a warning and a second chance, he was surprised to be terminated after getting busted again.

Terminations suck.  Ask anybody who’s ever got the boot or given it.  In over 20 years of doing it there’s been lots of unpleasantness, lots of tears, and even a few laughs.  No regrets.  Except for one.  And that’s a completely other story.

Go West Young Man!

About sixteen years ago, my lovely wife and I moved to Calgary.  It was a first wedding anniversary gift to each other.  The alternative was surely divorce as in the first year of our marriage, I wasn’t exactly the poster boy for excellent husbands…I wasn’t fooling around or anything like that, but I was blowing through cash like a crazy man, and not exactly sharing the state of our financial health with my new missus.  We figured we could either give up and go our separate ways, or throw a dart at the map and try for a new start, so that’s what we did, and before we knew it, we were on the road, pointed west. 

Laura and I sold almost everything but a selection of our crap we thought would be important, and together with our dog, and a couple of cats took off in the middle of the night.   In Wawa, Ontario, one of the cats, Tigger, decided that he could no longer live with us and decided that life on his own was better than being cooped up in our freaking truck for one more minute.  I choose to think that he finished out his days as a gas station cat in the woods of northern Ontario.

We had the most horrendous trip to the west, in the crappiest Ford Bronco that you’ve ever seen.  We completely overpaid for it, and let’s just say we saw the inside of every transmission shop between Ottawa and the Rocky Mountains.  We even spent a day and a half in beautiful Portage La Prairie, Manitoba waiting for a new axle to arrive.  Our U Haul trailer, filled with an eclectic mix of our remaining belongings, was left sitting on the side of the highway (covered in transmission fluid, of course).  Even now, every time I pass a lonely trailer parked on the side of a highway, my heart totally goes out to the owner.

We arrived in Calgary a week later than we expected, and to our surprise (not), the house we had arranged to rent had been rented, and we found ourselves homeless.  Luckily, the landlord had another place available, which, shockingly, was bigger and more expensive.  Being stuck, we took it.  As we were moving in to our three-bedroom house, it became sickeningly clear that we chose the wrong eclectic mix of crap to truck across the country.  We brought a dryer, but not a washer.  We brought a mattress, but not a box-spring.  We brought a stereo (of course), and some pots but no dishes, and because we had planned to buy new furniture when we arrived, we brought absolutely no furniture.   Incidentally, we  blew through all of our cash in the Pan-Canadian Transmission Shop Odyssey.  We were so screwed.  

You can now understand how important it was for me to get a job.  Fast.  Luckily, I got hired by a hotel in downtown Calgary and started right away.  But we were so stuck for cash that by this point, we were selling gold.  Not in the dignified way that you sell gold today, by visiting Russell Oliver, or sending it away in the mail, but in the most undignified way possible, pouring it out on a counter at the flea market for pennies on the dollar.  You do what you need to, to get the grocery money.

It became obvious that the hotel gig was not going make us rich.  It halted the immediate bleeding, but we weren’t improving.  By this time, we had gone to a third-hand store (that’s where the crap that doesn’t get sold at second-hand stores goes to die).  We picked out two chairs that most likely had something living in them, but they were better than the milk crates we were using as a living room suite.  Things were so bad that when the guys who loaded the chairs into the bronco went back into the store, as Laura just sat there in horror, I hit the gas peeled outta there.  That’s right, I ripped off two crappy chairs from a junk store.  Not my proudest day.  The next day, I started looking for a second job.

I managed to quickly find a job at a Swedish build-it-yourself furniture store working in the Customer Service-Returns and Exchanges Department.  It was an excellent job.  I loved it, but because we had a very, very liberal returns policy in those days, we got lots of stuff returned, and some of it wasn’t even purchased at our company.  Lots of crazy people with lots of crazy stories.

So between the hotel and the store, I was effectively working seven days a week.  We were making progress in terms of financial stability, and due to an excellent employee discount, and the ability to charge purchases against future pay cheques (just what we needed), our house was becoming fairly well-furnished in Scandinavian style.  Where I was improving financially, working seven days a week was having a pretty negative impact on my mental health, and my usual happy and friendly demeanor was pretty much shot to hell.  I was seriously bitchy and a little bit tired.

You need to know that there was really only one rule in the department…when you returned an item, you got your money back in the same way you paid for it.  For example, if you paid by Visa, you got a refund on Visa.  If you paid by cash, you got cash back.  If you paid on debit, you got a debit refund.  Of course, as with most things, the clerk had the authority to circumvent the rule to satisfy a customer.

At the end of a very busy shift, a customer approached my counter to return a seven dollar can opener.  I don’t know if it was the weather, or my bitchy mood, or the customer herself, but something in me snapped.  She was completely insisting on getting a cash refund for the seven bucks even though she paid by debit.  I dug in.  The more she demanded, the more adamant I became, at one point even shouting at her while pointing at the sign that listed the return rules.  I was not in the mood to circumvent or to satisfy.

The arguing went on for a few minutes, and I recall very clearly stopping everything, looking across the counter and saying quite loudly, ‘What exactly do you want from me?’  ‘Seven dollars,’ she said.   To that, I responded, ‘FINE!’ and turned around to the cash register where I pounded on the keyboard with such force that I’m sure it had to be replaced after my shift.   The cash drawer shot open, and instead of pulling out a five dollar bill and a couple of loonies, I opened rolls of nickels, dimes, and quarters and collected the full amount in a handful of change.  The poor customer had no idea that she was about to be the owner of enough change to fill a mason jar.

With a big breath, I turned around and slapped the change down on the counter with such force that the coins scattered all over the counter and across the full floor of the returns area.  She looked at me with such disgust, and to her I simply said, ‘Have a nice day,’ and I walked away.  I’m sure she was crying as she got down on her hands and knees to gather up the shrapnel.  I went directly to the store manager’s office and I remember very clearly saying, ‘Peter, you may be getting a complaint from a customer.  I’m not sure what set her off, but you know how bitchy customers can be in the returns area.’  I don’t know if she ever complained or not, but somehow I didn’t get fired, I didn’t get reassigned, and I never heard anything more about it.  I’m pretty certain however that the customer is probably now shopping at Sears.