The Monday before Thanksgiving, a few of us at work took our co-op James out for a lunch before he returned back to Michigan where he attends the University of Michigan studying Computer Science. James was part of my Scrum Team since June or so – really bright, with a good attitude and easy to work with.
James was planning to leave after work on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and drive straight through from The Triangle to his home In Grand Rapids – with his entire collection of personal possessions from his apartment stuffed into his mid-size sedan. Grand Rapids is about 800 miles from RTP – in Thanksgiving traffic. Ahhh, the boldness, energy, and optimism of youth!
James originally was slated to work for a different manager when he started in mid-May. As luck would have it, the day he was to arrive, we had a fire drill right as he got to our building. He recalled that he showed up on that first day just as everybody was evacuating the building into the parking lot. Then he found out that the manager he interviewed with would not be his manager. Quite an auspicious start and a hectic first day.
I remember that fire drill. I was milling around with my other department members and some other colleagues, waiting to get the “all clear” to return back to the building. I was chatting with Willie, a colleague from our Test Team. Unbeknownst to me, Willie had actually been allocated the responsibility of showing the new guy James “the ropes” – items like helping him get familiar with the building, getting access to the various systems we use, and getting his hardware/software setup and configured.
Willie is an all-around good guy, but he was clearly relishing the assignment of shepherding James. You see, Willie is a Michigan State grad. That’s right, it was going to go down. East Lansing vs. Ann Arbor. Sparty vs. The Victors. Duffy vs. Bo. Magic vs. CWeb. Willie had been contemplating some additional “responsibilities” that he thought might make James’ stay with us at IBM more beneficial - for both James and Willie.
I chuckled as Willie started in with “James can make my coffee every morning” and “James can fetch my printouts in the Printer Room” before moving on to “James can clean my gutters” and “James can wash my cars every week”. I am pretty sure that Willie was joking. I think.
