1. Kevin Kivisto
When I started working at McDonald’s, they assigned me to the Multimixer making milkshakes.
Back then, you made a shake by sliding a cup with frozen mix up onto a spindle and letting it spin, making a little whirlpool as the chocolate or strawberry or vanilla syrup spiraled in and mixed with the mix.
The problem was, you had to get the timing just right when you pulled the cup off. Too slow, and much of the milkshake stuck to the spindle. To fast, and the spindle would spray stripes of brown or pink or white across your blue McDonald’s shirt.
I was new. And I didn’t have the timing down. On my first night of working the closing shift, the layers of brown, pink and white began accumulating on my chest. I was frustrated. Kevin was working the grill nearby. He must have heard my exasperation.
“Don’t get angry, David,” he said without turning his head. “It’s a long time until close.”
Good advice: It’s a long time until close.
2. Jim Putman
My grandfather was an engineer, and when I was a senior in high school he got me a summer job as a draftsman’s aide an Gilbert-Commonwealth. I worked for the senior draftsman named Jim.
When the end of that summer crept close, Jim talked to me about my plans for college. And he told me how he had been accepted to a university but had decided instead on a blue collar drafting career (something that in those days was a solid guarantee of a good middle-class lifestyle).
This was difficult for me to comprehend.
“I wanted to raise a family and spend time with my children growing up,” Jim told me. It was years before I fully understood.
Good advice: Spend time with your family.
3. Art Rasmussen
Not long after I started working after college, I was transferred to work on RTDS. It was a small team. It was an exciting place. The people there were at the vanguard of a new way of building control center software. And I was in the middle of it.
Still, the excitement seemed to be passing me by. While the guys I was working with would frequently hurry off to urgent meetings, I sat quietly day after day in the corner at my workstation cranking out code.
Art must have noticed my frustration. He asked me about it one day at lunch. I told him that so much was going on — that I wasn’t part of it.
“Be patient,” he said. Eventually I would get invited to one of those meetings. And then he said that I should just “say smart things.” If I did, they’d start including me. He was right.
Good advice: Say smart things.