Working hard...

My mom sent me this great picture of dad at ANS yesterday. Apparently it was Hawaiian Shirt Day, and since I don’t think dad OWNS a Hawaiian shirt (I can’t even remember him wearing a Hawaiian shirt in Hawaii…) he borrowed one from a co-worker. This is pretty much what engineers do all day, anyway. They hang out by inflatable palm trees, drinking pina coladas, and probably laughing about how the outside world assumes they’re designing circuits or something. Ha! So very naïve is the outside world… Okay, I’m just kidding. They really do work now and then. Actually, I think the outside world probably assumes just the opposite – that engineers are a bunch of boring, nerdy people who do nothing BUT work. However, I can say from experience that engineers and their cohorts are some of the nuttiest, most imaginative people out there. I guess you’d HAVE to be pretty nutty and imaginative to think it would be a good idea to electrocute people to make them feel better. (Okay, “electrocute” is probably too strong a word. But seriously, who would’ve thought that little electronic devices would be a GOOD thing to have implanted within your body?)

I worked at my dad’s company, Hi-Tronics, for about a year after high school. It was probably the most fun I’ve ever had at a job. It was a lot smaller then, of course – so where I worked in manufacturing, it was just me, a woman named Paulette, and a guy named Frank. Plus Bill Parr, the supervisor of our little group. (Bill Parr was just plain old “Bill,” whereas my dad was, and forever shall be, “Mr. Bill.” So any time a phone call would come in, the receptionist could announce it either for Bill or Mr. Bill… and that way, there was never any question who it was for…)

Frank was an interesting guy to work with. I wasn’t so sure about him when I first met him – he had long, scraggly hair; he always wore jeans and a flannel shirt and big clunky boots; he drove an old, beat up car; and he was one of the nicest people you could work with. Frank loved listening to classic rock – we had a radio in our work area, and it was always programmed to a station that played lots of Rush, Led Zepplin, Queen, Pink Floyd, etc. One January, a few months after I’d started working there, the FDA decided to make a surprise visit to check out how things were running at Hi-Tronics. In the morning, right before they walked through the manufacturing area, Frank went over to the radio (which was no doubt in the middle of a Rolling Stones song… or maybe “Hotel California” or something similar…) and popped in a tape. He hit “play,” and the sedate sounds of Simon and Garfunkel – “The Sound of Silence” – drifted through the speakers. I may have started laughing, I can’t remember. But I do remember that at the very least, Paulette and I must’ve been giving Frank a strange look, because he turned toward us and simply explained, “FDA music.” So we listened to Simon and Garfunkel until the FDA left…

Back then, when Hi-Tronics was small enough that everyone knew everyone else, people could get away with some strange things. I remember one time when one of the engineers received a package at work, and it turned out to be a camping tent. And instead of waiting until he got home to check it out, he set it up in the break room. So for the rest of the day, any time someone wanted so much as a glass of water, they’d have to squeeze past the tent in the break room. I imagine these days, something like that would be frowned upon in the halls of Hi-Tronics – but at the time, it was one of those quirky things that made working there so much fun.

I guess camping tents may not be allowed at ANS, either, but I’m glad to see inflatable palm trees are still an acceptable form of office-area decoration. But dad – instead of Hawaiian Shirt Day, I think you should propose “Go to Hawaii to Buy a Shirt Day,” where everyone is set loose on the island of Maui to purchase their own shirt. Now THAT would be great for office morale… :)