GBS 3 – Letting It All Hang Out
General Business Systems (GBS) didn't pay well but it was a fun place to work. The company was just a little over 2 years old and still on the small side, under 100 employees. Consequently there were lots of opportunities to do many things, you could take on as much work as you could handle. It was a fast paced and loose environment. GBS had 3 or 4 branch offices. I worked at the Burlingame branch which was also the company headquarters. I knew everyone in the Burlingame office which was maybe 40 people. I also knew some of those working in the other branches as they would need to come to HQ every now and then either for training or to meet with upper management.
It was a fun work environment because pretty much everyone got along and was supportive of each other. It had a real family feel. There seemed to be little if any undercutting. We worked together and helped each other. It was not the cutthroat corporate environment that gets depicted in the movies. Friday night everyone went out to a nearby bar and partied together, well, most everyone. Some of the sales people would start early if they had nothing going on as would others but the programmers usually didn't hit the bar until after 5 when the office officially closed. I soon became friends with two of my fellow programmers, Rocco and Mona. Rocco, like me, was from the East Coast, Boston. Consequently we had a number of things in common. Mona was from Hawaii but like me she had done her college at the University of Oregon. We also sometimes hung out with our boss Gary, who was a Bay Area native. Mona and Gary would eventually go on to form their own company after GBS.
Mona lived in the East Bay and Rocco down the peninsular. Gary and I lived in San Francisco. Mona like myself was a top programmer so we generally got the tough assignments and difficult problems and as a result we consulted each other frequently. We got along well and became fast friends. Rocco was a charmer, popular with the women, but with both of us having east coast sensibilities we became good friends as well. We often did things together on the weekends. The three of us all bonded together. I hung out with Rocco more frequently because Mona was married and she and Danny lived across the Bay, but in reality I was really closer to Mona. We thought more alike. Rocco was a little more of a schemer but he was so likable and friendly. If you met the 3 of us at the same time he was the one who would make the strongest impression. Mona and I were not as forward or engaging. The three of us, plus Danny, ended up doing many things together.
Besides hitting the bars together many of us also went hiking and camping together, and even on ski trips. Silicon Valley and IT in particular was largely populated by young people, most of whom were single. In small start-up type companies it was common for the employees to both work and play together. There were many inter-office romantic relationships as well as marriages. We were young and coming up on the '80s. We headed to the bar after work and shared drugs in the parking lot. Coke was becoming a popular thing especially on the weekends. Reagan would soon be in office and begin his war on drugs but his war was really only on the poor, particularly the black and brown, communities. The rest of us were really left alone. The war on drugs didn't exist for those of us who were white and middle class. I didn't understand until years later what the war on drugs was all about.
One of the earliest GBS group activities I remember participating in was a trip down the Russian River in a canoe, or maybe it was a kayak. We parked our cars in the area where we would end up. We then were all transported a few miles up river to a spot we could put in to paddle and float down river for a few hours. Knowing I would likely be a bit wet when I finished, I brought a change of clothes so I'd have something dry to change into afterwards. We eventually got down to where all our cars were. I pulled out my canoe and joined the others chatting about our adventure in the parking lot. I then remembered I had some dry clothes in the back of my little Toyota pickup truck. Now it had not been all that long ago that I was in Eugene and I was still in that Oregon counter-culture thinking mode. I walked over to my truck, which was just a few yards away. I opened the back of my truck and I completely stripped down. I pulled out my dry clothes to begin putting them on. It was at that point that I noticed some of the women from the office making a bit of a fuss about something. When I looked over I discovered that the something was me. Everyone was looking my way. This (changing clothes in front of everyone) would have been a completely natural thing to do with my friends in Eugene but it turned out to be quite a novelty with my Silicon Valley co-workers. Too late now. So I finished dressing, packed up, said goodbye, and drove home.
Monday at the office I found that my disrobing in “public” was the talk of the office. I did my best to down-play it, but I received more than a few comments and inquiries. In spite of my faux pas, or who knows, maybe somewhat because of it, I later ended up being asked out by a couple of the women in the office. Not only that, I evidently so impressed a third woman from the office that she decided to marry me.
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