Erich Stauffer

Tag: Life’s Journey

  • Nightwalking

    I like breakfast. I like it so much I started making an app to help me find biscuits and gravy. I talk about biscuits and gravy so much I rank higher than Hardee’s.com.

    I own the hashtag #passmeabiscuit on social media. One of my favorite restaurants is Lambert’s Cafe “Home of the Throwed Rolls.” But I gave all of that up.

    When I was young I thought big. I thought I’d own a large, vertical empire of companies. Instead of paying for gravel, I’d own a mining company. Instead of paying for contractors, I’d own a construction company.

    I wanted to own a mansion with not just one basement, but several layers of basement, kind of like the uber-wealthy in London do today. I have this thing about digging. I like to dig. Sometimes I think the only way out is down.

    Every spring for the last 2 years I’ve played Minecraft. I like to build roads. When I first started to drive I’d fantasize about building new roads, straighter roads. I wanted to connect more places. I’m a connector.

    I like meeting new people and connecting people I’ve met with new people I’ve met. I guess this makes me a networker. I like to encourage people. I’m an encourager. I’m an introvert. I recharge when I’m alone, but sometimes I get lonely.

    I live in Tipton. It’s a small town, but I’m not there that often. When I’m there I’m mostly at home, but sometimes I go for walks. There isn’t much places to go, but sometimes, at night, in the summer, there’s an intersection where you can find people. I go there sometimes.

    I’m not sure it’s be too different if I lived in Indianapolis. I’d still have to leave the house. I’d still have to find that intersection where people hang out. The nice thing about roads is that they all lead somewhere. You just have to keep going.

  • The Only Way Out is Down

    Sometimes I wonder what life would be like if it was more like Minecraft. I wake up alone in the middle of a foreign, undeveloped terrain full of wild animals and scary beasts. My only tools are my fists. I’ve got 12 hours until sunset.

    Sometimes I fantasize about escaping through tunnels. When I was young I wanted to build a secret tunnel outside my brother’s basement closet wall. I never did, but I wanted to. I still think about digging a hole in my basement floor.

    Maybe that’s because I’m an introvert. At least I am some of the time. I know this because I get energy when I’m alone. But when I’m alone, all I want to do is find things to share with other people. So maybe I’m an extrovert. Who knows.

    The only times I’ve been alone in real life is when I chose to run away. People naturally group together. We are naturally social. It gets harder to make friends as an adult. You have to be more intentional about it, but it’s still possible.

    In elementary I had a wooden fort in my backyard I made from recycled fence material. In middle school I built forts out of osage orange trees and old telephone poles. When I got one fort done, I’d start another. I do the same in Minecraft.

    I go out exploring until I find a good spot to built an outpost. I then spend a few days to a few weeks setting up a small outpost. Sometimes people come behind me and the outpost grows into a town, but by then I’ve moved on.

    I’m a developer. I develop new procedures, new roads, new towns, new ideas, and new products. I help get things started and then I move on. I’m a maker, a doer. Less talking, more action. But enough about me. Let’s move on.

    novaskin-minecraft-wallpaper

  • Between a Rock and a Hard Place

    If you’ve ever found yourself in a sticky situation where both choices are hard, I can relate.

    This can happen both with emotional choices, financial choices, but also with physical objects.

    I once worked for a furniture store. One day while delivering a couch I found my head stuck between the bottom of the couch and the top of a stair. I thought, “This would make a good story someday.”

    Once when I was working as a maintenance man at a summer camp I found myself with my head between the toilet and the floor. I thought to myself, “I’ve got to tell my friends about this when I get back.”

    I have lots of stories to tell because I’ve been in a lot of weird places and had to make a lot of hard choices.

    Do I wish I could have an easy life? Yes. Does an easy life help you grow? Maybe not.

    I recently read Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, which tells stories about people who have grown up or encountered hard conditions that have helped them in life.

    One question Gladwell asks is, ‘Would you want your child to grow up with this hardship if you knew it makes them better off?’ He knows the answer is “no”, but the book is about how good can come from bad.

    I have seen this in my own life, which hasn’t been all that hard, but I have had some hard times. It is through difficulty that we learn and grow and change. And it makes the good times all the sweeter.

  • Lean on Me

    It was an unusually warm December night in 1998. It was our first semester at Kentucky Christian College and a couple friends from high school had come to visit.

    Life's Journey at KCU

    After dinner, in the pitch of darkness, we all piled into my white, 1984 Caprice Classic, and drove out to Grayson Lake, which was a place we went to hang out often.

    As we drove through Grayson, Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” came on the radio (we didn’t have Spotify back then) and immediately everyone began to sing along.

    Sometimes in our lives we all have pain
    We all have sorrow
    But if we are wise
    We know that there’s always tomorrow

    It was one of those serendipitous moments you knew that was special, but you couldn’t hold onto. I tried as hard as I could to enjoy it while it lasted, knowing it would be over soon. Update on 9/4/2019: I had a similar feeling in May of 2017 when I went out for an evening in La Crosse with Jason and Ryan.

    Lean on me, when you’re not strong
    And I’ll be your friend
    I’ll help you carry on
    For it won’t be long
    ‘Til I’m gonna need
    Somebody to lean on

    One of the girls leaned her head on my shoulder as she sang. I would later lose touch with her within a year despite connecting on Facebook and regularly seeing her brother.

    Please swallow your pride
    If I have faith you need to borrow
    For no one can fill those of your needs
    That you won’t let show

    I didn’t have a camera in my pocket, but I did have a VHS camcorder. We didn’t have YouTube then, but I later copied the tapes to DVD. I was a YouTuber before it was cool.

    You just call on me brother, when you need a hand
    We all need somebody to lean on
    I just might have a problem that you’ll understand
    We all need somebody to lean on

    Sometimes friends we have are only with us for a time, like seasons. Despite being connected on Facebook, people can still drift out of our lives. It’s up to us to make new friends.

  • All I Really Need to Know About Process Management I Learned Washing Dishes

    The first job I ever had was in during high school at a fancy restaurant called Heiskell’s Restaurant and Lounge. I washed dishes 3 nights a week (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Although I worked there with several of my friends, it was still one of the worst jobs of my life. For 3 years I traded my precious weekend evenings washing someone else’s good times down the drain, but it’s from this literal pit of despair that I learned all I really needed to know about business process management or BPM.

    Pots and Pans

    When you first show up to work, the prep team is just wrapping up and the wait staff have yet to arrive, but the pots and pans have already piled up. There’s a mound of crusted cheese and baked on food to work through before your first dish hits the Hobart. This is where you learn the first business process management task, Design. Before the night heats up, focus on the “work flow, the forces that act on it, interruptions, deadlines, procedures, service level agreements, and inputs and outputs.”

    “Good design reduces the number of problems,” for the rest of the night. “Whether or not existing processes are considered, the aim of this step is to ensure that a correct and efficient theoretical design is prepared.” The flow you develop washing the pots and pans, getting a feel for the water hose, dealing with interruptions from the chef, and preparing for deadlines (“We need more cups!”) will help you meet the service level agreements you and your business have made with the customer.

    Inputs and Outputs

    After the first orders come in, it’s only a matter of time before the dishes start to come back. First comes the bread and salad plates, then comes the dinner plates, followed by the cups. Wait staff will bring huge trays of dishes all at once and often times there will be several people trying to drop off a tray full of dirty dishes at once. This is where Modeling is learned. “Modeling takes the theoretical design and introduces combinations of variables to determine how the process might operate differently.”

    “What if the wait staff staggered their trips in and out of the kitchen? How would that affect the time spent dropping off dishes?” or “What if I anticipated the next tray of dishes by stacking dirty dishes to make room for more trays from the wait staff?” We call this process the Staffing Model or Utilization Model, depending on its use. “A Staffing Model is more of a predicting tool for management, whereas a Utilization Model is more of a reporting tool after-the-fact, but both are effective BPM tools.”

    Forks, Knives, and Spoons

    While plates stack nicely in a tray, silverware lay loose in a tray and need sorted after they come out of the washing machine. As a result of this process, silverware is saved up and ran only when the tray is full (or when we need more silverware washed to meet demand). This creates a “packet size problem”  that exists in everything from Internet traffic to Items Processing runs. In business process management, we call the study of figuring out the best way to do something, Optimization.

    “Process optimization includes retrieving process performance information from modeling or monitoring phase; identifying the potential or actual bottlenecks and the potential opportunities for cost savings or other improvements; and then, applying those enhancements in the design of the process.” Based on those inputs, “Recommendations will be made that overall creates greater business value.” Over time a dishwasher learns the optimal number of silverware per tray.

    We Need More Cups

    Cups, like silverware, run in batches, but there is a finite amount of cups that can be loaded per tray. This is where Monitoring comes into play. “Monitoring encompasses the tracking of individual processes, so that information on their state can be easily seen, and statistics on the performance of one or more processes can be provided. An example of the tracking is being able to determine the state of a customer order so that problems in its operation can be identified and corrected.”

    “The degree of monitoring depends on what information the business wants to evaluate and analyze and how business wants it to be monitored, in real-time, near real-time or ad-hoc. Here, business activity monitoring (BAM) extends and expands the monitoring tools in generally provided by BPM. Time studies can also depend on whether or not the business consultant is recording times as they are or as they should be,” which every dishwasher who’s ran a Hobart knows well.

    Kitchens are for Closers

    In the end, it’s all about Execution. “In practice BPM analysts rarely execute all the steps of the process accurately or completely. Another approach is to use a combination of hardware and human intervention, but this approach is more complex.” It doesn’t matter how good your procedure is, sometimes the silverware tray tips over in the bottom of the Hobart or the garbage disposal gets clogged. No matter what, you’re going to have to stick your hand down in a deep, disgusting, wet hole.

    “As a response to these problems, BPM processes have been developed that enables the full business process (as developed in the process design activity) to be defined in a way to improve business operations. Compared to either of the previous approaches, directly executing a process definition can be more straightforward and therefore easier to improve. However, automating a process definition requires flexible and comprehensive infrastructure,” which is something a dishwasher knows well.

  • A Letter to Chris after Leaving First Merchants

    9-11-2011

    Things have been a little rough lately, but life doesn’t stop throwing you curve balls just because you change careers. Rather than focusing on the negatives though, which is easy to do, I’d rather tell you about the good things that have happened and what I hope will happen in the future. I have started reading Proverbs in an effort to read one chapter per day. I can say that I have done that so far and began reading a little ahead each day so that on the 11th I’m actually around 14.5. I didn’t realize there was so much business advice in Proverbs, or at least that is how I am viewing it in my current mindset. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man” says Proverbs 24:33-34. This view of doing nothing leading to poverty and being diligent leading to success and riches is repeated over and over in Proverbs. Another theme is righteousness and integrity. “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity,” says Proverbs 11:3. Be one man. Be a righteous man. Be a diligent man. And you will be rewarded for it on earth and in heaven – these are the themes I’m picking up from Proverbs. Solomon, who wrote most of them was very rich and successful, and very wise. Proverbs says to seek wisdom, listen to your parents (who I view as both the actual parents, a metaphor for our leaders, and our heavenly Father), and the word (God’s commandments). There have been times since I have been reading that I have been in situations where I will look upon another woman and think about her as a path to sheol or wanting to bait me with her honey and lead me to death. There have been times when I’ve been tempted to be a different man when I’m alone than when I am with others. And other times when I have been quick to anger. Filling my mind with these proverbs is like a hand on my shoulder throughout the day.

    I don’t know exactly what to do or focus on in my business. I have somewhat condensed my two target customers to web design/social media management (Telablue) and computer repair/mobile phone support (Geek Hand), but have had no new customers with each yet. Thankfully, some customers have increased their use of me, but I’ll need more in order to continue along this path. The strange thing is if you asked me what I wanted to be doing (to make money) I wouldn’t have an answer. I am simply doing what has worked in the past. And from the client’s perspective, I haven’t really identified exactly what they are most frustrated with and what they are hiring me for (so that I can do more of this for them and others).

    Three days ago I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead about a guy who does a juice fast for 60 days. I did it for 2 days (Thursday and Friday) and it was really gross. I lost some pounds and had a clear head, but it made me sort of sick of food (like get sick at the smell of food) so I stopped it. I’ve taken today to rest and think about things. Tomorrow is kind of a big day for me in small ways. I got out of my lease at my office in Tipton and the landlord lady (who locked me out after being late on rent) is letting me in to get my computer. It’s going to be really embarrassing. Things like that make me feel bad, but I guess I should be glad that I learned from the experience and am saving $600 on future rent. The weird thing is that part of the reason I leased it was to be able to use it during the Pork Festival, but that was the very time when I was locked out.

    I’m sure you’ve heard about God opening and closing doors or using green lights and red lights. I’ve had what seems like several doors close or red lights to things in my life in the last month: My app developer didn’t want to work with me any more and sent my money back. There’s the office thing. The guy I was working with to start a seminar/training business stopped talking to me. I told my parents we couldn’t go to Missouri to see my grandma’s funeral after several unexpected expenses came up. Although I had two interviews with ExactTarget, they didn’t call me back. My $200+ a month blog, Nook Share, started paying out less than $10. Those are the door closings. The open doors: I wrote a book and published it on Amazon. I hired (I’m paying him with experience and food) an intern who I’m training to help me out and learn what I do, which is what Michael Hyatt talked about today (building a team). I attended a two-day blogging conference on a client’s dime. I found a BNI group to attend in Carmel this Thursday and a networking Meetup to attend in Carmel tomorrow. I attended a LinkingIndiana event in Indianapolis where I met several people. My intern passed out Geek Hand flyers at the Pork Festival and I got to ride in the parade with my daughter, who won the mini-4H princess contest.

    If you put the door closes on a scale against the door openings you’d probably have a lot of lost income on the door closings and a bunch of hope on the door openings, but it is what it is for now. I’m still me – a smart guy with a lot of potential. I’m just trying to figure out how to transfer that into a form that other people can recognize.

    Have a good week!

  • The Story of Us

    I started out in Kansas City on the east side of the Missouri where I grew till I was eight and in not so much a hurry
    My wife had just turned six when I moved out to Indiana
    Born and raised a Tiptonite she was a little bannana’s

    When I was twelve I moved down to different piece of the American pie
    And my wife’s dad moved up to his own real estate in the sky
    We both it was rough and we had to adjust, but for her it was harder
    She had lost her friend, her soulmate, her one and only father

    For a while there it seemed like all my girlfriends were forty-five minutes away
    And I was driving out on the road for over and hour and a half a day
    Just to get the chance to have a dance with a philly from the Net
    Never knowing that the girl this time was my wife whom I had met

    11/27/09

    When first we met in July of 2001 I was mowing grass for $7.00 an hour after having received a 50 cent raise for doing good work. A week earlier I had been hired on at Old National Bank after convincing the interviewer, Corey Jennings, that while I was not currently a fast keyer, I did prefer to use the 10-key and I could improve. I did improve and continued to earn $7.47 an hour keying. As my relationship with you progressed I realized I was falling in love with you. From the very first night I knew you, I knew that I had found my wife. Then I re-entered school for my first and only semester at Ball State after attending Kentucky Christian College for two years and spending one semester at Milligan College in Tennessee. By September of that year you had accepted my proposal for marriage after which you asked me to ask your mother for permission. I remember asking her at the bottom of the steps in what is now our house. She cried and said, “Yes.”

    By October, the mowing season was coming to an end and I quit mowing. My boss at Clean Cut, Troy Harshman was so pleased with my work, he offered me $7.50 an hour to stay, but I felt I could not continue to work two jobs and go to school. However, by November I was offered a job cleaning a hotel so again I began working a second job, this time earning $5.50 an hour. That Thanksgiving was the first Thanksgiving I spent with your family and I remember showing up late after having cleaned people’s hotel rooms all morning. I continued to work at the hotel through Christmas, but when Old National moved to Indianapolis, I was promoted to Balance Controller, earning $10.25 an hour. I quit the hotel and transferred from Ball State to IUPUI. You were still attending Depauw University. I would visit you on the weekends and you would visit me some nights at work. One of my fondest memories is the weekend trip we took together to Terre Haute.

    I was still at Old National in August of 2002 when we got married and I stayed at Old National through the birth of our first child, Magdalena in 2004 and our second child, Carmina in 2006. I graduated from IU in August of 2004 at which point I began working a second job with Neighborhood Geeks. I continued to earn raises at Old National until eventually choosing to go back to school in 2006 after reaching $13.50 an hour. In June of 2007 I decided to become Microsoft Certified and begin a career in the IT field, both of which I accomplished in four months. Although I worked temporarily at two call centers, I was in school and working for my parents landscaping business to make ends meet until October of 2007 when I began working for AllThingsIT for $20 an hour. That same month I started my own business to help people market their services online, which provided a steady source of income in 2009. In June of 2008 I left AllThingsIT to begin working for First Merchants Corporation for $20 an hour.

    When you told me about the finances this past summer, I didn’t get mad. I didn’t leave you. I stuck with you. I worked harder, but the harder I worked, the less time I had to spend with you. And the harder I worked, the more angry I got when things like the laundry didn’t get done. When I found out what you had been doing at the turn of this month I was slow to anger and quick to forgive, but when I saw your lack of a contrite heart and a failure to reconcile with me, I found it unbearable to be around you. I kept bringing up the past and you retaliated with bringing up more of my past. All of a sudden I was someone who had been mean to you our entire marriage, I was someone who was always trying to leave. All of a sudden I was someone who never wanted to be with you. This is the same guy who has worked two jobs for you and our family for 8 years. This is the same guy who has married you twice, who swore he would take care of you no matter what. Yes, I left, but I came back. I was willing to work things out and I still am. I love you. End of story.

  • Explaining the 2015 Internet to 1995 Me

    Dear Erich from 1995,

    I can listen to whatever I want whenever I want. When you’re 20 you’ll get excited about being able to share MP3 files with complete strangers on the Internet, but in 2015 music is streamed over the Internet whenever I want.

    Go find some music to play. I’ll wait. Get the From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah album and put it in the CD player. Play “Sliver”. It’s track 8. I’ll listen with you. Because I can. I looked that up on Wikipedia.

    Whenever I want, whatever I want. That’s what I need you to understand. Let’s say I want to know what a street corner on a remote island in the Atlantic looks like. I can see it in 5 seconds using Google Street View.

    Google Street View

    This is Erich from 2015. It’s different here, but most of the stuff is the same. For now, lets focus on how the Internet, or more specifically the way we access the Internet and how people are using the Internet has changed.

    You’re still on dial-up and your favorite browser is Netscape. AOL is still popular and information is still hard to find. Well now Netscape doesn’t exist anymore (thanks to AOL) and now we have so much information we have to use software to help us sort it all out.

    Instead of dial-up we have broadband, which I think you heard was coming. Strangely enough I still use the tech you were looking forward to: cable modems. But once it gets in the house or business it’s broadcast over “WiFi”.

    You may be wondering how our desktops are wireless or how I could afford to have a laptop. Well laptops are like $250 now and the phones are the more expensive items to own. They are equally powerful, they just vary in screensize (but they are increasingly equalizing).

    You’d think everyone would be taught and know how to create their own web pages by now, but programmers made it so they never had to learn. For example, I’m typing this in a “Word”-like document and the software adds the code on the back end automatically.

    But the biggest change is the phones. Everyone has a cell phone. Everyone. And all cell phones get online and run “apps” like browsers, but there are MANY apps and many don’t talk to each other. Its kind of like all of the CD-ROM software you have at Wal-Mart now, except they all cost 99 cents.

    Let’s compare our days for a sec:

    1995: You might wake up around 6:30 to catch the bus around 7, arrive at school at 8, go to 7 classes (of course there’s lunch), and then repeat the bus ride on the way home. You might get online in the school library, but if not you’re dialing up at home with Windows 95 on your Gateway 2000 desktop.

    2015: My phone wakes me up around 6, I check my text messages (short messages made of text sent to phone numbers or email addresses) and email on my phone. I might check social networks (I’ll get to that in a second) or check the news. And then I’m basically always online for the entire rest of the day.

    Social Networks and Cell Phones

    The Internet is like a utility now. How much time do you spend thinking about how electricity works? The President just asked the FCC to start treating it as such and now one of the biggest companies in the world (Google) wants to take broadband wireless global with a private space company named SpaceX (more on SpaceX and Google later).

    Nowadays people think “Facebook” is the Internet and they demand access all of the time. By the time you’re a grandpa, it will be added to the Bill of Rights. Facebook is a social network. That’s a place online for people to share things with anyone or very specific people. Almost everyone on the planet is on Facebook.

    By 2009 Facebook had either connected everyone you know or ruined your life. Those who survived went on to trim their friends list to actual friends and their kids moved on to new social networks like Instagram, Tumblr, and direct message systems like Whatsapp, Skype, and Snapchat. But who cares, right? Because phones.

    “Grandma take me home…Wanna be alone.” I love that song. But it’s so true. We are more connected than ever, but we never talk anymore. Why visit an old friend when you’re already caught up to date on Facebook? Why call someone when you could just text?

    When I get a phone call I have to assume someone has died. Unfortunately I’ve gotten 2 phone calls this month. Don’t worry, it was your wife’s family. She actually had the same Nirvana album when you first met her. That’s partly why you liked her. But she never listed to it. Not once.

    But seriously, the phones

    I could be inside a building I’ve never been in my life, do one Google search, and get the layout of the building. I could be stuck in traffic and know exactly what’s happening 1 mile ahead. I can see exactly where my wife is at all times. I can even pay for things with my phone.

    That brings me to SpaceX and Google. When you’re busy going to college, a South African man is coding up a way for people to email each other money while two other college dropouts are making the worlds best search engine. The first guy sells Paypal and creates a private space company to replace NASA and the other two later give him 1 Billion dollars to give the world Internet access.

    1-billion-dollars

    Mike Meyers goes from Wayne’s World to making a hilarious set of “Austin Powers” comedies, but he makes most of his money from voice acting a green ogre for kids. The world does not make sense, but this is the world you find yourself in 20 years later.

    Software is eating the world

    Our daughter is 10 years old and she’s learning to code. You know those guys who were coding instead of chasing girls in college? You know, the ones who made Facebook, Google, and Paypal? You didn’t do that. You didn’t even invest in those companies. Bad Erich. Bad Erich!

    In 2015, money is not earned, it is created by writing software. We have a new type of currency called “making apps.” One requires learning how to develop for Apple (yeah, they don’t suck anymore) and the other for “Android” (Google’s mobile operating system).

    Android is like “Windows” and Apple’s “iOS” operating system is like a Mac. Mac’s still exist, but they are shiny and cool. They are cooler than Nike. I asked my 8 year old what “Nike” was and she had no idea. I asked her what “Apple” was and she said, “A computer and phone store.” Get it?

    Microsoft is still around and still making a boat load of money, but they’re doing it the same way they’ve always done it: by selling Windows and Office. All attempts at making new products have failed (Xbox gaming console, Bing search engine, and the Surface tablet PC).

    The elephant in the room is of course, Amazon. Imagine an online store where you can buy anything and have it delivered to your house next day (sometimes same-day) for free. You know them as a place to buy books. You can still buy those too. I just bought one last week.

    Some advice for you, Stauffer

    Get a job, any job, then put all of the money into buying Apple stock. Work there until the year 2015 and you’ll be a millionaire. Seriously. The stock goes up like 1400%. You could work at McDonald’s for 20 years and be a millionaire.

    Learn to code. Knowing how to write software is like knowing how to type in 1995. Your local library won’t have books on it so you’ll have to go to the university library and get around people in the computer science departments.

    Don’t go to college. There is nothing there for you but heartache and student loan debt. (SEE working for McDonald’s above.) By 2015 if you didn’t invest in Apple, but instead learned to code, you could make 2x your student loan debt a year easy.

    Final words

    Are we better off? The movies are better. I can time travel letters back to you. That’s pretty cool. But I don’t know. I kind of miss having to get home to call someone rather than getting off the phone because I’m home. I kind of miss having to stop at the gas station to buy a paper map to get where I’m going and not exactly knowing how I’ll get there.

    I suppose me telling you all of this kind of proves that point. You’ll never get this letter because you use Juno to check your email and they lost your email when the server crashed. You’ll go to college, get on CollegeClub.com, and get married. Life will happen exactly as it happened. And the world won’t care.

  • If You’ll Have Me

    The living room glowed with excitement. They had bought bagels and cream cheese. It was a historic moment.

    If You'll Have Me

    Two weeks ago I had walked into my job, poured a cup of coffee, and been escorted out the door. Now I’m sitting on a couch.

    As Matt went around the room he mentioned each of the team members. Jennifer and Joy were sales. Michael was outreach and product development. Marcella was wholesale. Madeline was Marketing. Madeleine was finance. Joseph was logistics. And I was IT.

    “If you’ll have me!” I said, immediately embarrassing myself. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut? Turns out it didn’t matter.

    I worked there full-time 6 weeks while I continued to look for another job. Eventually the job ended and I was still looking.

    But the bagels were good.