San FranBLOGcisco

Today we arrived in San Francisco so Russ could work and I could be in San Francisco.  And why not, it is one of the best cities in the world.  As we flew in one of my favorite stories came to mind so since it has just the slightest connection to dieting I thought I would share it with you.

Back in the mid 80’s my Dad got a job at the soon to become Sprint telephone company.  It was the merger of two existing phone companies, one based in San Francisco the other head quartered in Kansas City.

Part of my Dad’s job was to assess where the new headquarters would be and who were the smartest people in the various Sales and Marketing teams from both companies.  Not everyone was going to get to keep his or her jobs, a fact that seemed obvious to my Dad.

When getting to choose where to live in the “accessing stage” my Dad chose San Francisco, wouldn’t you?  He arrived in his normal big personality way and called a meeting of all his direct reports for three o’clock that very day.

It was a request he did not feel was unreasonable since it was the first time for everyone to get a chance to make a good impression on the guy who was going to determine his or her fate.  At about ten in the morning a very friendly man, let’s call him Kevin, who was like a senior director or higher came into my Dad’s new office and introduced himself.

After the normal how-do-you-dos, Kevin told my Dad that he was really sorry he was going to have to miss his three o’clock meeting because he had a “make-up aerobics class.”

My father had spent fourteen years working at Avon so his first question was, “Is that a class where you put on make-up quickly or is that an Aerobics class you are going to in place of one you missed?”

“It is a workout that if I don’t go to the three o’clock class I lose the $10 I pre-paid for it,” Kevin casually responded.

My Dad had never met anyone who told their boss they would leave work in the middle of the day for anything, especially not Aerobics.  That was Kevin’s last day at that telephone company.

Eventually the two merged companies headquartered in Kansas City where the mid-western work ethic was strong.  Very few San Franciscans made the journey East.  I think they worried that aerobics had not made it there.