“Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable hemophilia: You bleed and bleed and bleed.” ― David Mitchell
In 1975, we decided to trade in our Buick 1968 for a brand new Dodge Colt 1974. The Buick was fully loaded an excellent car which I had brought with me from Chicago but it was a seven years old and it started breaking down. The Dodge Colt we had was the very first model. It was a white car with light blue borders which Lynda liked very much. One weekend when Maxine was with her father, we decided to put Adam in the back of the car and drive to New York City just for fun.
I was doing very well with my job as I had 100 percent support from Gord Scott. I made necessary changes in my staff by firing some incompetent people and replacing them with new smart people. I started focusing on training them to become more technical and do their own trouble shooting as much as possible before they called me for help. I wanted them to understand that we were in the business of producing necessary information for the dozens of folks who were working in the warehouse to pick, pack, and ship the merchandise to the Beaver Lumber stores around the country. The real challenge was to produce the information on time, otherwise dozens of people would be sitting doing nothing in the warehouse and getting paid. More importantly, the stores would not get their merchandise they ordered. Consequently, it helped to minimize the number of calls I used to get every single night and Lynda was reasonably happy with that.
Gord Scott went ahead and booked me to go for a course in Montreal. He mentioned to me that it’s an interesting course for you but more importantly it was a break for me as he wanted me to take Lynda and the kids with me to Montreal and stay in the brand new hotel which was the highest building in Montreal. We had no cell phones in those days but the pager I used to carry was capable of reaching me in Montreal, too. Gord Scott also gave me the names of restaurants in Montreal where we could dine during our stay in Montreal. It sounded very expensive but he said put it on your expense account. I never had an expense account before and I wasn’t comfortable with that concept but agreed.
We made necessary arrangements for Maxine to go to school every day while we were away and took Adam with us.
We drove to Montreal. This was the first time for me to be there but Lynda said she had been in Montreal briefly once before to see the Olympic Stadium. Anyhow, we checked in to the beautiful hotel on Sunday afternoon. I made the necessary inquiries about the course which was starting on Monday morning as I was nervous about it. We decided to have supper in the one of the beautiful restaurants in the hotel instead of going out to one of the restaurants recommended by Gord. It worked out very well.
The next day we had breakfast together downstairs and I went to attend the course. Lynda and Adam went out in a cab to a mall to do some shopping which used to be Lynda’s favourite hobby. I would grab a sandwich for lunch and go back to the course. Around 5 O’ clock, I would come back primarily to listen to what they did all day and to see what they bought. Then we would go out to one of the recommended restaurants for supper. We had a wonderful week in Montreal and the noticeable thing was that I never got a call for trouble shooting. I was so glad that Lynda enjoyed every minute we spent there.
Lynda wanted to invite Gord and Margret Scott over on one of the Sundays for supper but she was a little hesitant that we don’t have a big house to show off. I told her that they don’t care as they know that we are just starting out and one day we will have everything you want. They came and brought flowers for Lynda. We knew that Margret was an excellent cook but they enjoyed Lynda’s cooking immensely and they were so gracious.
Once a month, I used to take my senior staff out for a nice supper just to recognize and appreciate how hard they were working and helping me to accomplish the targets that I had set for each month. One month we went to a Chinese restaurant and when I got back around 8.00 PM, I started having stomach pains. Right away Lynda told me that it is Chinese food and you are not used to it. Just take a couple of Tums, you will be alright. I followed the “medical advice” and unfortunately, I started getting worse. It was killing me. The pain started shifting to my lower right abdomen. Plus, I got nauseated and started vomiting. She got scared and didn’t know what to do. So she decided to call Estelle to go to a drug store and get something for me. Poor Estelle ran around and found a drug store in the middle of the night and the pharmacist recommended something which she bought and brought it to me. Regrettably, it didn’t help at all. Finally, Lynda decided to call an ambulance.
Subsequently, I found out that it was my appendix and it came very close to bursting, which could have caused severe complications. I was operated on right away and I was made to stay in the hospital for a few days. In the meanwhile, there was a serious problem at the office and Gord wanted to bring some technical people to talk to me to trouble shoot. Lynda told him in so many words that she would not appreciate that.
Lynda used to come to see me at the hospital everyday with the kids by taking more than one bus. The sad thing was that our car was parked right on our driveway Lynda knew how to drive but she didn’t have a driving licence yet.
As soon as I went back to work I found out that Beaver Lumber Company had two Datacentres, the one where I used to work and the other somewhere else probably in Montreal. What they had done was build a brand new building across from Fairview Mall in Toronto which was at least 30 miles, if not more, from the existing Datacentre. They planned to consolidate both Datacentres in the interest of efficiency and productivity which is understandable from a business point of view but what I didn’t comprehend was why I was kept in dark about this initiative. The honest answer from Gord was that we just bought a house in Bramalea and it may upset Lynda to think about moving again. At the same time he realized that it was not feasible for me to drive all that distance in the day time and then drive again to trouble shoot in the middle of the night. It was a messy situation and Lynda was upset.
The other change that I had to face was that I wasn’t going to continue to report to Gord. His office was going to be located on a different floor and I was supposed to report to a guy called George. I didn’t have any problem with that initially as George sounded reasonably intelligent to work with. In due course, I found out about George’s management style and I wasn’t not impressed, simply because George had no clue about how capable I was to manage a complex computer operation team. The good thing was that Gord was always in my office and he was dealing directly with me even though I was reporting to George. Simply because George had no clue about the system I was working on.
I suggested to Lynda that let me give it a try for a little while before exploring the possibility of finding another job. She was smart to realize that I was making pretty good money and those kind of jobs don’t come that easy to find. Furthermore, there has to be some additional compensation considerations for me as I was becoming responsible for extra staff working on two different computer systems.
