I think we all experience this same emotion. It the feeling you get when you are over extended, overwhelmed. You have made commitments that you cannot keep up, or you have created an impression with others that you are desperately trying to maintain. You find yourself at the moment of realization that you have taken on more than you can handle and at the moment you can only think that you could really use some help. I am not sure what English word describes that emotion, but we have probably all experienced it.
I taught computer science for years and one day I got this “brilliant” idea to start a consulting company. I started providing job experiences for students in my program at the college. I was thinking this would be a great way to make a little extra money and also provide students with some real work experience so that they could find jobs. Well, one thing led to another, and I found myself running a company with many employees and a payroll due every two weeks. There were times I had to borrow money, or use my own paycheck from the college to make that payroll. It was an exciting time for sure.
I started working with a few manufacturers during one of the housing booms in Southern California. This particular manufacturer was growing quickly and had a lot of locations and their supply chain was not keeping up with demand. They needed some serious help and they money they were going to pay me would cover payroll for 6 months. Needless to say, I was hyper-focused on winning this deal. Well we won and then I had to mobilize a team to handle a multi-site deployment of a bunch of new firewalls and routers. We were replacing an aging frame relay WAN topology with IPSEC tunnels. We planned a cutover at 10PM PST on a Friday night. After weeks of planning that fateful friday finally arrived. Late that afternoon, one of my team called and informed me that he could not make it due to “personal reasons.” That created a major problem and sure enough, this had me heading to Compton, CA with a new firewall and router in the passenger seat.
If you do not know Compton, CA it is rather famous. It where are all the major LA gang movies have been filmed. So with a little fear and apprehension, this white boy headed to Compton to handle that spoke of the install that evening. When I got there, I had a hard time getting into the building. Luckily for me, I met this man named “tiny.” He quickly escorted me out of the alley way of this building and commented what an idiot I was and after some explaining, he finally understood what I was trying to accomplish. I followed Tiny up a ladder into an office building. BTW, Tiny was not that tiny. A sense of irony was clearly a profound gift among his co-workers. Tiny and I got to work. He watching me with a dispassionate suspicion and me trying to figure out where in this building a new circuit had been handed off by the telco.
Well what should have taken a few minutes of command line work, turned into 4 hours of troubleshooting. It ended up being something simple and the circuit came up. Only 3.5 hours past the change window, but hey working is working, right? Tiny decided that he would be a good boy scout and escort the stupid white boy back to his car. I am glad he did and after we gave each other a hug goodbye (no, that did not happen, he just grunted and said whatever dude). Anyway, I got into my car and noticed for the first time that in my haste I had forgotten to get gas and left my wallet and phone at home. For a moment I thought about going back and asking Tiny for some cash, but quickly dismissed that as a bad idea. I found a gas station, and barely made it into one of the pumps when the car started sputtering due to lack of fuel.
There I was stuck at a gas station in Compton, CA on Sante Fe Ave. The gas attendant was behind thick glass windows, with bars on them and definitely not interesting in giving me any cash. When I asked for a pay phone he looked at me like I was asking him to register as a Republican and I went back to my vehicle to look in ashtrays, cupholders and seat cushions for cash. I found a nickel, all gummed up and had difficulty prying it free from the residue at the bottom of one of the cupholders in the rear seat. 5 cents is all I had. I thought I might be able to find something in the trunk of the car, so I got out and started looking. No such luck. Yeah, like I was going to find a $5 dollar bill in the trunk. Why did I even look.
Anyway, while I was digging around I suddenly felt a hand grab me on the arm. I looked up and stared into the tired eyes of a vagrant. He was obviously homeless and looked like he had been dumpster diving most of the day. He did not seem to be aware of the notorious gang tensions in the area because he wore both blue and red and every other color of the rainbow. He immediately launched into his pitch. He was a smooth professional. He knew he had a gullible guy cornered just right and he was just reaching the point where he would ask me for a commitment to fund his desperate situation he stopped talking and took a long pause.
He must have seen something in my eyes or perhaps my demeanor. He looked at me sort of cockeyed and reached both hands out and grabbed me and said, “you a’right man?” That is when I unloaded on him. I told him all my problems. My wife and new baby were at home, I was stranded. No gas, No way to call for help. The installation I was working on barely worked, and the client was going to kill me and threaten to cancel our contract in the morning (that did not happen btw). I just let this poor little man have it.
He just listened, nodded his head. He sort of rolled his hand as if to say, move on, when I was talking about the IPSEC tunnels failure to establish a key pair. When I was finished, he took a long pause afterward and he looked closely at me and with half a grin said,
“Man, you’re f##ked!”
That expletive just about explained my situation exactly. This man in all his sage street wisdom summed my scenario up exactly. He then reached deep into one of the jacket pockets he had on (he was wearing three) and said to me. “Don’t worry man, I got u.” It was then he pulled a roll, not a wad, a roll of cash out of his pocket. The kind of roll that looks like he was a bookie at an old school sports book. He peeled of about 20 ones and gave them to me and said, “you get home to that baby and get yourself right man. You going to be al’right.”
I filled my car with gas and sat there for a minute and reflected on what just happened. I definitely learned a life long lesson in this encounter and it was not something I was going to forget.
First, from that day forward, if I have cash on me and a vagrant at a gas station asks me for money, I do not hesitate. I give a few bucks without even thinking about making judgement. Sure that guy in Compton was making a living on pan handling, but he changed my entire perspective on the matter with one incredibly kind act.
Second, it does not matter who you are talking to. Client, C-Level, mid level management, friends, family, colleagues or employees. Everyone has problems and challenges. Everyone is overwhelmed and living the struggle. That is with us all, no matter who we are or where we are from. As a consequence we should all live by the example of my little Angel from Compton. We should stop talking, stop our pitch and pay attention to the person in front of us. We should listen carefully to what they are dealing with, understand the problem and then and only then, offer a possible solution. A solution that requires us to give a little of ourselves, a commitment on our part with the correct intent to help another. You might make progress with will power, manipulation, high pressure tactics but if you figure out out to help people with the difficult emotion of this daily struggle then you will move mountains. People will respond to you, you will build relationship, you will garner trust, you will find that you are involved in really helping people.
That is my story. Pay attention to others and listen to them, you just might learn that everyone needs help.
Guy Reams
