Staff Stories
The annual Christmas parties are always so enjoyable for me, and provide great memories. One party in particular I recall was when the venues lighting was significantly too bright, we almost had to wear sunglasses inside; on top of that there was no staff to serve us, so we all got to be our own bartenders for the night and make our own drinks!
For an office space that is tucked on the backside of a building, we have had a lot of solicitors… One audacious solicitor walked into the office, and just starts cutting up orange slices…. Turns out he was selling bushels of oranges, and took the “you break it, you buy it” rule and turned it into “ I cut it, you buy it”. Apparently a great sales tactic because we all bought some oranges that day!
When you are at your office working late, what do you do when Darth Vader informs you that you aren’t supposed to be there…..
Our office space was in a greenhouse at the time, I was working late so everyone had already cleared out, when in the doorway appears a man in a hazmat suit letting me know he just treated the whole greenhouse property with a chemical to kill bugs…. I left immediately.
I have traveled to Canada on business many times, and when you look like I did, (Long, slicked back, black hair) you tend to get questioned more than the average joe.
This particular time I was coming back into the States from Canada, I was stopped, and explained what I did and why I was in Canada. Certain that there was no way Greenhouses and Software could be related, he instructed his muscle bound partner to crawl into my trunk to search for anything suspicious.
I was allowed to proceed shortly thereafter.
Working for Innovative Software Solutions for 20 years, I have had the opportunity to travel to many different places around the world. One trip to Guatemala in particular was memorable for me.
I was launching a shipping process at the customer site. The working environment was a workstation in a truck trailer, that was running on satellite internet. Oh, and naturally all their programs were in Spanish….
One particular day, I was in the middle of coding a fix for their shipping delay when our driver informed us that we needed to wrap up soon since it was getting dark, and it was not safe to travel at night apparently….
I was really under the gun to get this completed right away. Thankfully I was able to get everything done in time, and I am still here, so everything turned out just fine on the way home!
The Cultivate Tradeshow has long been a tradition for our company, a place where countless memories have been made.
One year in particular that comes to mind was a year that it seemed as though things were going from bad to worse. John had just gotten a new car, and was driving down with Adam, when in the middle of the highway they encounter a cinder block….. playing chicken with a cinder block on the highway is not recommended in the owner’s manual, and low and behold the car lost. A tow truck and rental car later, they made it to Ohio.
After a morning of burned bagels, and a visit from the fire department we finally made it to the show…… where we encountered a number of connectivity issues, which required some quick thinking from our staff; we were a technology company after all!
But hey, we are celebrating 30 years this year, so it all worked out!
