Last week, a longtime coworker and friend, Chris, left to pursue another career path. The stars aligned to produce for him not just a card and a few gifts, but also a special story written by Becky and including some of our favorite quotes and words we've heard Chris use over the years. I liked it so much, I wanted to share it. It reads a bit like a MadLib, with the underlined portions submitted by various coworkers:
In Compendia’s beginning, there was tohu-bohu. We needed someone to add a little colour to our daily interactions. So we brought a software developer in for an interview. When asked what he could bring to the company, he explained, “What if you had more hands? But you couldn’t control them.” This didn’t really make sense to the interview committee; they wished he would have answered the question more directly. “If wishes were horses, then we’d all be eating steak,” he responded. Strangely, this cavalier approach was attractive to the folks in the room. They were willing to overlook the man’s lack of pants* and offer him a job. Upon accepting the position, he remarked, “I can tell you right now, we’re not going to get this perfect. That’s my commitment to you.”Before Becky had decided on the above format, I had written this other bit about him, and my desire to use it somewhere became the seed for this blog post:
He began his tenure with a simple goal in mind: “We have to cure the cancer in the tomato genome!” After a quick recalibration from his peers, his talents were redirected to organizational psychology. He introduced us to Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and the Satir Change Model. He renewed our religious faith with tales of resurrected web servers on Easter Sunday and desires for ecumenical software approaches. And throughout it all he also kept us attentive, reminding us “My crazy runs wide and it runs deep.”
He stayed with the company for over six years. Looking back on that stretch, he thought, “That’s too bad, I understand the way this works now…I was hoping to avoid that.” But the time came when he was needed to impute good motives somewhere else. The wabi-sabi he brought to Compendia was imperfect in its imperfection. It was time to move on.
Though we think your departure is quadtarded (“it’s not just retarded, it’s quadtarded”) – we will forgive you. You are absolved. We acknowledge that your exit will deplete the company's vocabulary by 75% in one swell foop, but we will remember what you told us: "You can't feel badly, you feel bad."
We will never forget the caged tiger who rocks abidingly and not unlike thunder. Chris, you rock not unlike thunder. Thank you.
An excerpt from The Compendia Compendium, pg. 86:
And finally, last night I had a dream that Chris came into work to help me on a project before going in at his new job. He just handed me some green index cards with his notes on them, which is completely plausible. The noteworthy thing, though, was that he was dressed in an elaborate green plaid suit with a white ruffled shirt. He said it was Scottish. And as he was walking out, the people in the office gave him a standing ovation, though I wasn't certain if this was for him or his suit.Many believed the 2008 company Christmas gift of iPhones for all employees was Management's way of saying "We are a cool company. Thank you for your hard work." But the real reason behind the technological benefaction was to put electronic dictionaries at the fingertips of all employees to enable them to understand the advanced vocabulary Chris used regularly in all-company meetings.
Your daily presence will be missed, Chris. If you could have one of your new coworkers start a twitter feed to capture your bons mots and incomparable analogies, though, that might help us meet our recommended daily intake of enlightenment.
*It's not that Chris doesn't usually wear pants--he does--but it's a long running joke originating, I think, with a work dream he had.
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