“Giving is its own reward.”
-an ancient saying.
“Should we keep this?”
My wife showed me a bunch of papers. She had pulled that out from a drawer in our basement.
“Old loan papers? shred it.” I told her.
Lakshmi and I had discussed to go through our drawers that day. The plan was to get rid of older documents and receipts.
“Hmm… Can you tell me what is that about before you shred it?”
“This looks like a technical paper you wrote long back.” Lakshmi had already taken the first set of papers from the bundle to shred.
She was sitting on the floor. She leaned forward and handed those papers to me.
I started flipping through the pages.
“It was Y2k related.” My wife noticed a change in my tone.
“So it must be over 20 years even before Megha was born.”
“Yes,” I said. “There is more to it.” Memories started rushing through my brain.
“This work, in fact, saved my job. you remember the first “three-in-one-printer” that we bought on that snowy night?”
I had worked on this paper very late on my personal computer about 20 years back. I had printed the report using the then “state of the art” three-in-one printer.
She stopped pulling out papers from the drawer and looked at me to hear the rest of the story.
This was the year 1999. This company had hired me to do Y2K remediation work for almost a year back. The full-time employees were working on the development of a bigger project. There was one another contractor, John, working with me on the remediation project.
My first anniversary of “Coming to America” was 3 months away. My first wedding anniversary was beating the other anniversary by only a month.
John was an Illinois native. He was also newlywed. We used to discuss our daily tasks often during coffee breaks. We both were a bit concerned about our job status because our work was nearing completion.
“Hey Raj, Deb is taking you out for lunch today. She had asked you to join her in the lobby. ” Deb’s secretary went past my cubicle like lightning bolt.
This place was fun to work in those days. Deb used to take us for lunch once in a while. So I did not expect the potential danger lurking on the horizon.
John was taking a day off. “So, the contractor’s side, it’s going to be just me,” I told myself.
“Wait a second, did she say Deb is taking only me for lunch or the whole team?” I looked back, but the secretary had long gone.
When I met Deb, she was sitting on the sofa by herself. I asked about other team members. She smiled at me.
“John is off today,” she got up and started walking.
We went to Jimmy’s Charhouse. I noticed that she was not in her usual jovial mood.
“You know how much we, as a team, appreciate the work you and John were doing. Without you two, we would not have completed the Y2k project. Kudos to you two.”
I was happy to hear that from Deb. But, the words “were” and “completed” got into my head and started buzzing for the next couple of minutes. She was also talking about other things.
I broke my silence: “We still have some work to do. At least, two to three months of work is pending to keep us busy.”
She looked down at the leg of her chair and then moved back and forth a couple of times as if she was not comfortable with her chair. I thought she didn’t hear what I mumbled to her.
“I will not be your manager starting next week.” She paused for a moment.
“Steve is replacing me from next Monday. Your last day will be 10 days from now.” She finished talking. I became speechless.
I had heard about her wedding plans from one of my colleagues. I also came to know from him that she was going to resign after her marriage to dedicate herself to family.
When the Y2k work was nearing its end, a lot of immigrants had lost their job. Consulting companies had started booking return flights for their employees on the bench. Anyone who lived through that experience would know what I am talking about.
The internet had full of jokes about immigrants returning to their home country. I was thinking about a picture that my wife had shown me like the one below a couple of weeks before my lunch with Deb.
“This is what people are thinking about us in India.” Lakshmi gave her disapproval of the cartoon.
Deb started talking after a while. “I called John today and told the same thing.”
The company didn’t have any obligation to give us a notice period. She still decided to give us a two-week notice period. I felt good about what she did.
“Let me know if I can be of any further help. I enjoyed working with you and also learned a lot from you.” She had finished her lunch by then.
I had helped her fix a Microsoft browser-based bug in her computer a couple of months back. That bug had crippled her from doing work for two days. I guessed she might have been referring to that incident as her learning experience.
Lakshmi and I had a silent night. I knew a lot was going in her mind.
“Did you talk to your consulting company? Did they call you? Should we apply elsewhere?” She finally decided to break her silence with a sequence of questioning tactics to test my mood.
“Hmm, No,” I responded. I was reluctant to open that conversation.
“You should be able to find a new job. You were doing a great job.”
The next day I met with Steve. He was talking as if he was not aware of John’s and my job situation.
John and I went to the coffee station later that day.
“I received a call from my consulting company.” John started while sipping his coffee.
He continued. “They told me it’s going to be tough in this market. They promised me that they will find something soon. How about you?”
I told John about my immigration status and what will happen if I don’t find a job in the next couple of weeks.
“That’s ridiculous.” He shrugged shoulders and dropped his jaw to express his shock.
“Hey, this is Steve. Do you want to join a meeting to discuss an emergency?
“What emergency could that be losing my job, Steve?” I was thinking.
Steve went on. It’s urgent but not urgent for you two guys. You two are welcome to join.”
“How did he read my mind?”. I turned back to tell him I will be there in a few minutes.
John decided to stay back. First, I was also planning not to go. Then something inside pushed me to go and attend that meeting.
“John, let’s go and see what’s going on. I don’t have much work to do anyway.”
“Me neither. Let’s go”
When we went to the cafeteria, we saw the whole team there. Glenn was talking.
“It’s that printer that produces reconciliation report. No one knew it was there until it broke a couple of days before. We are losing money. People were using that report to reconcile missing payments.”
“What is the best and quickest way to fix those printers? Steve interjected.
“One of us going there,” Glenn responded. This center was about 1000 miles away.
Internet and IP-based printers were in the early stages of testing the market. We from the Chicago office had no access to those printers over the network.
Glenn made arrangements to go there that evening.
“Do you know what are you going to do to fix it?” Steve asked Glenn.
“Not 100%, I will do an initial investigation and call you after the first set of troubleshooting.”
I heard Mike talking over the phone the next day around 11 AM. “What is it?, FoxPro? Oh okay FoxPro, I got it. I will talk to folks over here to see who could help”
Mike then hung up and went to Steve’s office.
The next day morning in the team meeting, the printer was the top item on the agenda. Steve and Mike had sent an email to all departments asking for help. They were yet to hear from other teams.
“How about we talk to our consulting vendors?” Steve sounded as if he was getting impatient.
“I am on it.” One of my team members responded.
“Steve, I had used FoxPro for about 3 years before I came to the US. I can be of help.” I couldn’t resist taking the initiative.
“There you go. We should have sent you with Glenn. Can you go there this evening?”
“Let me first talk to Glenn if I could.” Then I will plan a trip.
Steve was okay with it. The problem got fixed that evening. It was not Y2K related. But, Glenn found that the code required Y2K remediation big time. He told me that his team had missed this application for the remediation.
Steve called me the next day and asked if I can look into remediating the Y2K issues in the program. He also asked me to come up with an estimate to fix it. He assigned Mike to work with me in this case.
I brought Steve’s attention to my last day which was only a few days away.
“We are working on it Rajesh. We will do everything to see you two out of here as quickly as possible.” He winked at me.
I met with Mike and presented my Y2K report on Friday morning.
“You did this in a couple of days? quite impressive.” That was Mike’s response to my report.
Lakshmi was holding a copy of that report 20 years later.
This company renewed John’s and my contract for one more year. John and I got reassigned to the flagship project to work on the next set of deliverables.
I still love FoxPro for giving that lifeline at an early stage in my career.
We decided to spare the document from shredding.
Cheers folks!