Al Tabor - Halloween 1993

Transcript:

The day was a very strange day for me because it was almost surreal and it was weird enough that I actually took the time...if I can find it here in the notebook...to write down everything that had happened to me that day. And I'm going to be reading it, which I hope works. So you might try to force me to look at the camera every once in a while.

And of course I bookmarked it and pulled the bookmark up. I think its right here. So...uh...and I started...and its in my handwriting which not even I can read, so  there may be a few stumbles here. But, I started, you know:

I got a scone at Cafe Sanchez. One.

2. I took the Concord BART to Claremont and drove to Sierra Designs. (I think I wrote that down because I think I missed my stop and had to come back.)

3. Jack gave a speech in which he resigned. I had lunch with Chuck...uhhh...told him the scenario...um...found out that Jack had almost fired James. (So I've got a.. I'm not buffering any of this. So we can cut it if I am slandering anybody as we go along.)

4. Martin came up and told me he had an enormous fight with Phil about a taping machine he was trying to covertly transfer from the old enterprise to the new enterprise. Martin wondered if Phil might be a traitor. This conversation happened when I went to ask Martin for our friend Michelle (we all owned a boat) if he had mailed in the form blocking the sale of our boat on a Lean and he had.

Ok.

5. Ok. That was the lunch with Chuck.

6. Leslie. (It must be Leslie Howa. I don't know who. Was she working at the...)

Jack Gilbert: Leslie Kirschner.

Leslie Kirschner. OK. I don't even remember this person. [Although I do now, of course. Just couldn't bring her to my minds eye.] Leslie had resigned to go work for Easton. She came up, on the edge of tears, to say goodbye and gave me a big hug.

7. Barbara, who was not a resignee was very angry. (So I spent the next couple of hours talking down Barbara.) I talked to her for a while about how she felt and then I talked to her and her husband, Tom, for a while and then I talked to them out at their car for a while and then standing down the street in front of Celia's.

8. Jack returned and I and the other resignees resigned. This is the company I've worked for the last 17 years from 19th December 1976 where I was hired by Paul Kramer to 1993.

9.  Next, I continued doing mop-up tasks throughout the day. I finished up the details and sat down and wrote my official resignation letter, took down photos and wrote up a software license to Sierra Designs (because I wrote them a letter claiming that I owned all the software that I had written because I hadn't been hired as a software...ah...as a coder. I'd been hired as a spreadsheet jockey. So I'm actually MauMau'ed them into giving me the software.)

10. Kate, Mike's wife who worked for me, who I believe was on leave, popped in to get Mike, I guess, and told me she had a dream so vivid she had to tell me about it. I was demanding that she get back to work at the new place in 2 weeks. "We need you back in there," I said.

At this point I was waiting for Jack to return and waiting to hear tales of his interactions while handling our resignation with Mardy. (So I guess you were going back and forth. Once we had turned in our letters to you. ) To kill time I spent an hour to two trying to rent the computers for the new place.

Sharon Lloyd, announced that she was leaving to go drink. She asked me to write a letter of recommendation. She thought she better get it now and start checking a few other places. Her boyfriend had urged her to do this.

I got up, I decided to go over with Chuck for a beer. As we left, Alan from the North Face arrived. (Now Alan was the one HR person at the North Face that wasn't a total asshole. So I think they sent him over. They said we've got to send an actual human being over there or they'll kill them. ) So he came over and he was talking, walking around talking to people about how they were doing.

On my way out, Nickie who was the receptionist told me, since this might be goodbye, I thought I should tell you I'm going to have a baby. "Congratulations!" I replied. "Well," I said, "I guess." "So how pregnant are you?" I asked. "Oh about a month." End of conversation.

(Ok here is my favourite part. ) Jack came back with Mardy to talk to us and told Paul to come over and get Chuck and I where we were still drinking. Jack explained why he and Mardy both wanted to keep this going, SD going. They would cooperate on the change. Mardy talked about he would have done this differently but quote "This is America. Not like overseas!" and folks could pursue their own "economic destiny". In the background, they were changing the locks on the doors.

Chuck and I went back to have more beer. Chuck told me that James who was the, the money guy at Sierra Designs, was going to call in sick and then use up all his vacation time and then decide what he was going to do.

I spent a few hours running down Lizard King with Paul Porter, who was going to be my replacement. More people came, Continued drinking.

(And that's the end

So.

I can actually. Although I can't remember any of what I did, I have it written down.)