My first chat with the customer went swimmingly. My point of contact, Chad, was delighted when I finished most of the sentences. He promptly set up a telecon with all his people to establish the relationship between his people and me, the Nevada Test Site. I remember calling into that meeting, and before I had a chance to announce myself, I heard this exchange between Chad and a couple of his peeps:
“Christ, Chad… really? Another pointless waste of time meeting with those flaming-yellow idiots from Nevada? Can I just snort Ricin instead, please?”
“No man, I’m telling you; you haven’t heard from this guy yet. You need to listen to this guy; he is different — his guy is a badass with answers!”
“Hi, this is George Hand entering the meeting from the Nevada Test Site — Chad, are you there, brother?”
By the end of the meeting, I heard balloons popping and champagne bottles being uncorked — I’d say it went well. Chad asked what had happened to the list of 25 facilitators he had been dealing with prior. I explained to him that those were not facilitators as he understood the definition of the word facilitator; rather, they were a gaggle of shameless tattletales, and we didn’t want them because they were just… stupid.
“Whatever it is that you find yourself doing at the Nevada Test Site, Chad, any one of those people are there to do everything in the limits of their power to make you just stop, and with 25 of them, we don’t stand a chance. And they will also charge you top-dollar for their time spent destroying your project.”
“Gawd, Geo… how do you guys bring revenue to the Test Site like that?”
“Thank you, Chad, right??”
A Tad Arrogant
It sounds like I was an arrogant asshole at the helm of this project. I actually get why some bros and sis’ might interpret it that way, as during the entirety of the project… I was an arrogant asshole. I had two huge things in my favor that were protecting me and my project: Distance and Fear — the DF factor, the same factor I used to govern most of my project executions at the Nevada Test Site (NTS).
Fear was usually already an element inherent to such projects; that is, the projects were high-risk, dangerous, and sporting a decent probability of the project manager losing his job. There were always those Boogieman projects, as I called them, of which everyone was afraid of. I grabbed them up, cost-estimated for them, got paid by them, and disappeared down range (NTS) so far that nobody wanted to drive out to mess with me — Distance!
The Importance of Distance
The value of being so far away and having no tattletales on my projects was that I could let my customers do anything they wanted. If something went to southern hell, I had time and distance to conduct damage control — the DF factor, baby!
Wow, the day an entire aircraft augering in and went up in a hu-hideous-hangus fireball was a suck day. The report of the explosion rattled windows in some of what they called “the forward areas.” Yeah sure! I was so far forward of their “forward areas” that they were the back areas to me:
“Hand, there were reports to Bird Dog (Range Control) of a large explosion emanating from up north where your project is executing.”
“Yeah uh… we heard it too — must have been those homos on Tonopah Test Range to the west.”
“Tonopah doesn’t detonate ordnance.”
“Yeah, so… must have been those homos at Nellis Bombing Range to the north.”
“Nellis wasn’t flying range operations today.”
“Well gosh, golly-gee then… it must have been the ghost of freakin’ Krakatoa channeling through the Test Site — now why don’t you emanate your ass out of my office.
And so it went
(continued in part II).
By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends
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