The guy that hired me, Rich, was indirectly responsible for this lunch meeting. He was my boss, and to this day, the best boss I've ever had. Rich retired ten years ago, and a few years ago got a virus in his heart. He's had to give up everything he loved to do, including fishing. Rich emails "forwards" once in a while, but has never answered me if I reply back to him and ask him questions. But last week when I received a "forward" from him, I asked him if we could have lunch. To my surprise, he quickly answered "yes".
I managed to contact most of our old IT team. We're scattered to the four winds now. I'm at Crane working for a contractor. Don invested 32 years at Kimball when they saw fit to release him during a layoff frenzy. After all, he was getting close to retirement age. Ever notice that companies never lay off one of the many VPs they have? Nope...they tend to get rid of the "Indians" and not the "Chiefs". The work then gets pushed to others, who are already overloaded.
Stan, who was my boss after Rich, is a plant manager, I think--and still at Kimball. Other than some gray in his goatee, he hasn't aged a bit. I actually made a couple of confessions to him during dinner--things I had done during my tenure as a network admin. Hey, when you have that kind of power, why not use it to pay back someone truly "deserving"?
Steve, the tall one of the bunch, is still with Kimball and even in the same building we worked at. Like Stan, his kids are growing up and each has a son in college. When we worked together, Steve would bring in scraps that his little kids left behind. If you entered his cubicle in the morning, he'd have a sandwich bag full of Pop Tart pieces. That year for Christmas, I bought him a couple of boxes of Pop Tarts for his very own--unbroken ones that hadn't been grubbed on by little runny-nosed kids. I used to cut my sandwiches in half when I went to lunch, and boxed up half for him. I never could eat a whole sandwich. And today, I ordered chicken livers. For old times' sake, I boxed up the leftovers and made Steve take them.
Lisa now works for OFS in a town close to Jasper. She was the scheduling expert on our team. She learned the scheduling portion of the software we were implementing, and she knew her stuff. When Kimball pulled her off our our IT team for SAP implementation, it put a big hurt on us. She still looked the same. Actually, other than a few gray hairs, no one has aged a bit--except for me.
Diane sat next to me. I hadn't talked to her since I left six years ago. She quit her analyst job at Kimball and went to work for her church. She loves it. Her daughter is now grown and teaching elementary school. Diane was taking the afternoon off to go help out her daughter's class for a "presidents" program they were doing. Diane didn't look a day older than she did six years ago.
That leaves me. I left Kimball because things were getting bad business-wise, and I didn't agree with the stupid decisions that "management" was making. I loved my job there and hated to quit. But at the time, I was offered another job by another company. The goober we had as a manager at the time was getting rid of people that had been there for years, replacing them with his friends from the defunct unit they came from. When he replaced our HR manager with his old HR manager that couldn't hit her butt with both hands, that's when I left.
So none of us work together anymore. Only two still work for Kimball. We've all moved on--some on purpose, some against their will, and then there's me--who left to make a point. I guess things can't stay the same forever, but I'll never quit missing our IT team and my old job there. It was great seeing everyone and we really need to do this once in awhile.
...the only constant is change, I guess.
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