Woah, The Quirky Engineer Just Hit his Vape on the Company Earnings Call!
Craziest. Friday. EVER! It had been a long week, don’t get me wrong. Customer calls were out of control, Tim put in his two weeks, and Cheryl was out sick on Tuesday which delayed payroll by a day. No one was going into Friday with much excitement, but we didn’t know how hard some had taken it. At 10am, everyone got onto the Quarterly Earnings call with the leadership team.
The meeting started as it usually does. People trickled into the Zoom room, coffee in hand, ready to silently nod along while ultimately doing something to pass the time on a second screen. The leadership team came online, joked around with some of the sales guys, and then got down to business. Earnings were fine, especially with the current state of the economy, but that’s not what caught my attention. About 13 minutes into the call, I spotted Rex, the Senior Software Engineer from Denver, pull out his vape pen. I then watched with wide-eyed appreciation as he brought the vape to his lips, breathed in, and blew a perfectly fat cloud.
At first, I couldn’t tell if I was horrified or impressed by the early-morning actions of Rex. He’s always been nice enough, but the constant heavy metal that he posts in the music Slack channel has always intimidated me. He also has a sword displayed on his wall which is never a good sign. Nevertheless, he changed me today.
For the next ten minutes, my eyes were locked on Rex’s Zoom tile. I don’t think I blinked once. I wanted to pin him, but was worried that somehow he’d find out. I know that’s not realistic, but with Zoom you never want to take a chance. He took gargantuan hit after gargantuan hit, and I felt like I was watching history. Our entire company was on this call, and he didn’t seem to care in the slightest. He obviously has job security, he’s an underpaid senior engineer! This dude could be making double somewhere else, but clearly likes the hands-off treatment he’s receiving here. Don’t get me wrong, he’s pretty sharp. But “vaping on the company call” sharp is a whole new level.
I of course had to Slack my buddy Ryan. I watched as he read my message, and immediately turned his camera off. Bingo, I made him laugh. In a professional workplace, that’s the sign of genuine comedy. I felt a rush of adrenaline.
The call ended with leadership giving us a hollow pep talk about how we’re lucky to be here, and need to keep pushing to avoid another round of layoffs. It wasn’t the most positive way to go into the weekend, but I didn’t care. Rex took my breath away, and pointing him out to Ryan made me the funny guy of the day. Sometimes life can be a wonderful thing. Thank you Rex.