My habit of holding onto old e-mails and documents paid dividends today.<\/p>\n
At Natalie and Beau’s wedding reception Saturday night I found myself talking to Natalie’s cousin. I was trying to figure out how long I knew them. I ran the numbers in my head, and I decided that it was almost exactly five years ago.<\/p>\n
Natalie worked for me at EB Games in Cary. I hired her before Shore Leave 2004<\/a>, which meant that she’d have started in late June, so I’d have interviewed her a week to ten days before then.<\/p>\n (By the way, I am still seriously<\/i> embarrassed that at that Shore Leave my geek-like knowledge of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band failed me<\/a>. It was also the Shore Leave where I ran screaming from a room when Richard Roxburgh’s Dracula from Van Helsing<\/i> was brought into conversation. And the Shore Leave where Robbie Greenberger had dyed his hair blue. That kid lived life without fear.)<\/p>\n The numbers I came up with then, at the reception, for when I met Natalie? I must’ve interviewed her about the 22nd, which was when we met, and I’d have called her — because her application came from another store — a few days earlier. Say, about the 18th. That’s what I decided.<\/p>\n When I did my store schedules at EB Games, I used a spreadsheet that the company provided. I still had my store schedules for June 2004 on my computer. And years of confidential EB Games e-mails and sales figures. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n What did my afternoon researches turn up?<\/p>\n I e-mailed my boss on June 25th<\/a>, saying that I needed an employee number for her. And her first work day was Monday, June 28th. Those are definite.<\/p>\n (The strange thing about the June 25th, 2004 link? It’s about That Thing You Do!<\/i> and its soundtrack. One of the CDs I took with me this weekend for the trip to eastern North Carolina? The That Thing You Do!<\/i> soundtrack. Life’s full of weird coincidences. Like getting an e-mail from Shore Leave before I left Saturday morning that The Oneders lead singer, James Mattingly III will be a guest at this year’s convention.)<\/p>\n Looking at the schedule, I would have most likely interviewed her on June 18th. Probably at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Therefore, I probably spoke with her on the phone for the first time on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 15th to schedule that interview.<\/p>\n Which was precisely<\/i> five years ago yesterday. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n I’ve never forgotten her interview. Months later, she asked me why I’d hired her. She thought she interviewed poorly. “I was nervous,” she said. “I stammered.” I thought she interviewed fine. And, as is typical with almost every hiring decision I’ve been a part of, I played the hunch that she’d work out and do well.<\/p>\n My hunches paid off more often than not. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Beau I would have met, in all likelihood, on July 3rd, a Saturday. It was my last day before vacation, and in those days he would pick her up after work on the weekends.<\/p>\n So that’s how long I’ve known them. Five years exactly. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My habit of holding onto old e-mails and documents paid dividends today. At Natalie and Beau’s wedding reception Saturday night I found myself talking to Natalie’s cousin. I was trying to figure out how long I knew them. I ran the numbers in my head, and I decided that it was almost exactly five yearsContinue reading “On Friends and Five Years Gone”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[228,4093,4124],"class_list":["post-2396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-eb-games","tag-life","tag-work","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}