THE Lunch Table
When you work for a company a long time, you meet good people and, not so much bad people, just people you’d rather not want to associate with on a daily basis.
However, if you meet great people, people you want to see every day, it will not seem like work at all.
Let’s start from the beginning—sort of.
Started a job back in nineteen-eighty-four at a large telecommunication corporation, what they used to call (maybe they still do) a blue-chip-stock company. First day, plopped down in a communal area with twelve-desks lined shoulder-to-shoulder where every conversation and key stroke was overheard by the group.
When asked if I liked my job at the time, I said I did, and love the people I work with. Then was told, ‘don’t make friends with them because once you leave, you will never hear from them again’.
Nearly forty years later, I could reach out to any one of them without hesitation (well, except for one guy, but that’s a story for another time).
But, this post is not about those folks.
It’s about these folks.
Jump ahead to the beginning of this century (how old do I sound?)
I was let go from my job, but hired back a few months later as a contractor with the same company. As a computer programmer, I was tasked to mechanized a good portion of my new group’s work.
Over time, I started to meet the other employees, all very nice, but they had been together long before I got there. So, I was still on the fringe, still the ‘new guy’.
And this new guy didn’t have a seat at their lunch table.
At the time, there was a group email that went out, not to the bosses, just us folks with boots on the group. Basically, it was an electronic gripe session that we were all in on.
One day, Tammy (a major player at the lunch table) sent out an email to the group. Her gripe? She recently purchased a combination microwave/coffee maker that broke down soon after her purchase. She sent and email to customer service, they replaced the product, which then also broke down.
In her frustration, she sent a copy of that email to our group.
Let the games begin.
As the email with new comments went back and forth within the group, I was hung up on the idea of a microwave/coffee maker combination.
I was new to Photoshop at the time, so I took the notion of a microwave/coffee maker just a bit further.
Created a new product with Photoshop, attached that photo to the group email, and sent it on its way.
My new product?
I created a microwave/coffee maker/toaster/can opener/breast pump combination .
I guess Tammy liked the new product, appreciated the humor behind it, because soon after the email went out, I was sent an official invitation to join the lunch table.
It was an honor just to be nominated.
So now, I was one of the cool kids.
Side note, turns out Tammy inadvertently included the customer service address on the gripe email. So, if in the future, GE comes out with a microwave/coffee maker/toaster/can opener/breast pump combination we’ll know where their idea came from.
Every day, for about an hour, there would be anywhere from ten to fifteen of us at a long table, both sides filled. But it was more than just eating lunch, it was therapy.
If you had a problem, you brought it to the table. There it was dissected, and then hopefully, solved. Problems with family, friends, work, marriage, dating (hopefully those last two not at the same time) were all fair game.
Day after day, month after month, year after year, we spent our lunch hour at that table. It was an unwritten reservation, an invisible velvet rope to keep others away. This was our table.
Then, one day, the unthinkable happened.
As a group of us walked toward the table, we stopped a the same moment, and stared ahead in disbelief, like deer caught in a headlight.
Other people sat at our table.
In silence, we looked for empty tables, slid over to them, sat down, and never took our eyes off the interlopers who dared to invade our space.
We ate a quiet lunch that day, never took our eyes off our table.
It was like our table was cheating on us with other employees.
Fortunately, it never happened again, so all was forgiven.
Inevitably, as people changed jobs and moved to other buildings, the lunch table was no more.
Smaller versions of the lunch table popped up here and there as some of our new jobs kept us close, but it was never the same.
Once, when I told my daughter, Amanda, about the lunch table she said, “Dad, you make it sound like high school.”
I looked at her, and smiled.
“Amanda, if there is one thing you have to learn in life,” I said, “it’s always high school.”
