Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The story continues

One evening in March, 1976, I received a call from Ravi Sardess, who described himself as
the Technical Director with Gamma Supplies. We primarily discussed my background and qualifications and after a lengthy conversation, he told me he would like to pursue employment opportunities further. Ravi suggested we meet at the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting which was being held in New York City a few weeks later. I agreed to meet with him there and he said he would call me back with complete details on how I was to meet
with him. A couple of days later, I received another call from Ravi and he gave the
directions and time to meet him at a hotel in Manhattan instead of meeting him at the ACS
employment clearing house site.

The scheduled interview with Gamma Supplies representatives fit well into my plans since I had already made arrangements to attend the ACS meeting in order to use their Employment
Clearing House. The Employment Clearing House is a service provided by the ACS
which allows prospective employers to browse through hundreds of resumes and then
schedule interviews with prospectives employees in a gymnasium type atmosphere over a
period of two or three days. An interested employer can interview numerous candidates
for any number of openings and the potential employees can talk to representatives from
several companies, large and small, from all over the country in the span of several hours.
I had always felt this was one of the more useful services the ACS provided for its
members, and I used it whenever necessary.

I went to New York feeling very optimistic. First, I had just been given a performance
rating by my present company and I was told I had received the second highest rating out
of more than 50 employees evaluated. Second, the evaluations had been done at a time
when the company was having financial difficulties, and the company was asking people to
leave based on their poor performance.. The high performance rating would make me
more attractive to other companies and the financial problems my present company was
having gave me a legitimate reason for wanting to leave. Third, the job market was
improving rapidly and I already had Gamma Supplies expressing interest in me. Things were
really looking up.

My first interview was with Gamma Supplies. I met with Ravi Sardess, the Technical
Director and Darth Korey, the Executive Vice President. Ravi was an Indian citizen,
who had moved to the U. S., worked for a major oil company and then had become a consultant
before finally joining Gamma Supplies. He was aggressive and obviously had a large ego, but he
let Darth do most of the talking. Darth was a short stocky man who did not fit the
executive role. He had a nervous laugh as if he was uneasy and it become immediately
apparent that he had a very condescending attitude toward people. This attitude was
evidenced when I mentioned how much I disliked writing memos as a routine practice in
large corporations. He proceeded to give me a lecture on why people wrote memos and
used a crude analogy about people building fences. It wasn't so much what he said, but
rather how he talked down to me in a manner which implied I did not know the purpose of
writing memos. Otherwise, the interview went well and I was invited to visit Gamma Supplies in Chicago in April.

I approached my trip to Chicago as I did any other interview trip except that I was a
little more enthusiastic than usual. I had already talked to the two people who would be
making the decision on whether I should be hired, and they apparently had been impressed.
Upon my arrival at the Chicago airport, I was met by Darth Korey and Arnold Cline, the company President.. Arnold was a young man in his mid 30s, good looking
and had the appearance of someone who came from a wealthy family. In many ways he
sharply contrasted the almost mobster like appearance of his vice president Darth. After
a short exchange of pleasantries, Arnold said he would talk to me later and that Darth would
take me to the Gamma Supplies plant.

The day was clear and warm by Chicago standards. On the trip from the airport to
Gamma Supplies, we drove through the impressive, exclusive neighborhood of Blue Fish Bay on the shores of Lake Michigan. I was shown the impressive house that Arnold Cline lived in
and was told that his father George T. Cline was also a resident of the community. I
was very impressed by the magnificent homes in the area and remarked about how much
more extravagant and diversified the homes looked compared to exclusive areas of east
coast cities. I also commented about the nice weather because I knew what a pronounced
psychological effect an areas weather can have on people and their life. I had seen vast
differences in peoples' behavior when I lived consecutively in Seattle, Washington, a city
known for its cloudy, cool climate and Gainesville, Florida, a Sunbelt city. I definitely did
not like the overcast Seattle weather. Darth assured me that although Chicago had
cold winters, it was free from overcast skies and it was sunny most of the time.

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