The day I thought "I have to work here"

In 2003 I was working for a little company called Electronic Data Systems (EDS) as a Systems Support Lead and we had a terrible memory leak in the client portion of our client/server software platform. I was privileged enough to travel with three developers to the Microsoft campus in Charlotte, NC to use their lab and expertise to fix it. I don't know if you've ever heard of EDS, but one characteristic about the company was its strict dress code. https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2019/07/ross-perot-legacy.aspx You can imagine my shocked surprise when approaching the Microsoft building, walking behind a dude wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and flip-flops with a skinny, scraggly ponytail secured low on his otherwise bald head. "Beep, click" as he passed his badge across the scanner and opened the door. What?!?! HE WORKS HERE?!?! You could have picked my jaw up from the floor.

We were talking with some really smart people, troubleshooting our software when one of the Microsoft dudes (besides the receptionist, they were pretty much all dudes) announced that he's gonna go grab something to drink and asked if we'd like anything. "Yes, please," I said as I dug in my purse for money. I pulled out a dollar and asked if I could come with. "Sure," he said, "but you won't need that." He pointed to my money. "Thank you, but no, I can't let you buy my soda. I've got it," I said. He smiled to himself and said, "I wasn't offering to buy. I said you wouldn't need it." I didn't know what the heck he was talking about, but whatever, I'm just following the guy. "What would you like?" he asked. An array of colorful options stood before me. "Um, how do I...," I looked around for a place to put my money. He opened the door and grabbed a can. "Oh! You just ...take them?" I glanced around like we might get caught. "They're free?" I confirmed. "Hehe, yeah, they're free," he said as he allowed the door to shut and headed back. I wished I had brought my purse.

A guy walked in around 10 am and set down his motorcycle helmet. "Hey," he said to Microsoft dude #1. "Hey," replied Microsoft dude #1, and he grabbed his backpack and left. I looked at motorcycle dude and asked, "Hey, um, where'd he go?" "Oh, yeah, he asked me to stop by and help you guys. He's got training." Oh, okay, yeah, alright. I tried to be cool. "What kind of bike you got?" I asked. "K1200LT Exodus." I blinked five times and tilted my head ever so slightly. "Its a BMW," he explained. OOooooh, yeah, yeah, I've totally heard of those, yeah, bad ass, man, right on...

We headed to the cafe for lunch. There was literally a guy wearing a tall, white chef's hat who served me some fancy chicken. I went to pay for it and it was $2. There were TVs mounted up high all over the dining area. I started to wonder if Microsoft had a location in Texas.

Motorcycle dude took us to the company store. Everything was super cheap. I bought cordless optical mice for the five guys on my team. Remember, this was 2003. They were cutting edge. I didn't want to leave.

The memory leak was found and fixed. Motorcycle dude called another guy he knew who stopped by, took a look, pointed at something in the code and told the developers how to fix it. This memory leak had plagued us for months. Our best people had poured over the code many, many times, and some guy who looked like he hadn't even brushed his hair that morning, stopped by on his way to somewhere else, and found it. What?!?! It was so surreal. How was this possible? It was an epiphany moment. Right then I thought to myself, I want to work with people like that. I want to work at a place that doesn't care what you look like. As a female, this was very important to me. I want to work at a place where it doesn't matter that I'm a girl. I just knew that Microsoft would be like, "Hmm, okay, a girl. Does she know her stuff?" I just knew that would be all that mattered to them and I thought to myself, they're doing it right. This is what all the employment discrimination laws were trying to achieve and they've figured it out. This is what it is supposed to be like. As we were leaving, I spotted a pool table and nudged one of my colleagues. "They have a pool table?!?" I whispered. "Yeah, I heard rumors about that, so I guess its true," he whispered back. "Think we should ask <insert manager's name here> for one?" We busted out laughing so loud our two colleagues in front of us glanced back at us like we were crazy.

That's the day I thought to myself, "I have to work here." The seed was planted.