Power Plant Art of Making a Bad First Impression

I had to stop and think why when I was a senior in college and I went to work in The Bakery in Columbia, Missouri that I instantly considered the grumpy old baker named Larry a close friend.  His eyebrows were knit in a permanent scowl.  He purposely ignored you when you said “hello”.  He grumbled under his breath when you walked by.  I immediately thought he was a great guy.

Why?  I had to stop and think about it.  Why would I trust this guy that acted as if he held me in disdain?  Why? Because he acted like so many Power Plant Men I had worked with during my previous three summers working as a summer help at the coal-fired power plant in North Central Oklahoma.

It took me longer to realize that there was a particular art to making a bad first impression.  It happened a lot at the power plant during my summer help years.  One of my favorite mentors of all time Jerry Mitchell was really good at making a perfectly bad first impression.  I wrote about Jerry in the post “A Power Plant becomes an Unlikely Saint“.

I guess some people would read it as acting macho.  The person not only acts like they don’t care what you think, but that you are an annoyance and they wish you weren’t there.  That’s what Jerry would do.  I watched him when he first met Jimm Harrison who was a foreman that had just arrived from another plant.

We were standing just outside what would later become the A-Foreman’s office.  Jimm came up to us and introduced himself and asked if we could show him around the plant.  Jimm was being extra polite in order to make a “good” first impression.  He kept complimenting us even though he didn’t know anything about us.  Not that it bothered me.  I always liked Jimm.  I was glad to do anything he ever asked me.

Anyway.  While Jimm was introducing himself to us, Jerry just stood there staring at him with a cigarette sticking out of his mouth.  Jerry nodded his head slightly like only Jerry could do with an expression that looked like it said, “I don’t care who you are.  You are bothering me.”

I wondered at the time why Jerry would want someone to think that Jerry was a mean old man.  I knew better by that time.  I had seen Jerry’s heart that first summer and I knew that he really did care about things.  I just let it go at the time.

The second summer as a summer help Don Pierce the crane operator from construction that was loaned to the plant would do basically the same thing.  He was a tall countryish guy with a moustache and beard that reminded you a little of Paul Bunyan (well.  he reminded me of him anyway).  I talked about Don in the Post “Why Stanley Elmore and Other Power Plant Question“.

Like this Paul Bunyan only with tinted glasses. Actually, this is a historian named Wayne Chamberlain

When you were first introduced to Don Pierce, he would stand there acting like he was 10 feet tall looking down at you.  He would kind of give you a sneer like you weren’t worth his time.  He might even spit Skoal between your feet if you caught him at the right moment.  Yep.  That was Don.

Turned out that even though Don didn’t want you to know it, he was really a nice guy.  He liked a joke just as much as any other guy, but when it came down to it, he really cared about you.  I would trust Don with my life.  Actually, I probably did a few times.  However, if he didn’t like you, he might point his Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum right in your face and just grin as you sped off.  — That’s right Don.  I remember that story.

Smith and Wesson .44 Magnum

I’m not saying that everyone at the plant gave you a bad first impression.  There were those obviously nice people that acted kind at first glance.  There were those that acted like they genuinely wanted to help right away.  Of course, there were those that you immediately wanted play jokes on like Gene Day (See the post “Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day” for one example of the many jokes I was compelled to play on Gene only because he was such a perfect target).

I’m also not saying that everyone that gave you a bad first impression was the kindest soul on the face of the earth.  Obviously some people who gave a bad first impression did it because, well… because they really were bad and they didn’t care if you knew it.  I won’t name names because well… Eldon Waugh might not like it if I did.

Eldon Waugh was the plant manager from the time I first arrived at the plant in 1979 until the first of the year 1988.  If you were under his “control” (which meant, his chain of command), then he treated you like minion from day one.  Sure, he could act nice at certain moments, but that wasn’t the norm.  Throughout my posts I refer to Eldon as the “evil plant manager.”

That never kept me from praying for him.  I figured that even a guy that seemed to admire “all things treacherous” still had a soul in there somewhere.  The last time I saw Eldon at the plant I had a little “discussion” with him in the elevator.

It was a day when there was going to be a Men’s Club dinner.  Eldon had come a little early so that he could visit people that he used to rule.  I met him at the bottom floor of the office elevator.  The elevator actually rose 6 floors to the next floor which was called the 2nd floor unless you took the Control Room elevator where it was called the 3rd floor.

As the door of the elevator closed on the two of us, I turned to Eldon and said, “Hey Eldon.  You’re not Plant Manager here anymore.  Are you?”  He replied, “No.”  Then as I pushed him around the elevator, I said, “So, I can push you around all I want and there’s nothing you can do about it right?”  Surprised, he replied only by saying, “Ahh!!”  Caught like a rat.

Oh.  I didn’t hurt him.  I just humiliated him a little, just between the two of us.  When the elevator doors opened we both exited without saying a word.  I went my way.  He went his.  Never a word spoken about it until now.

On a side note… I found throughout the years that all things become equal in an elevator when occupied by just two people.  I will not mention encounters in the elevator again in any posts in case there are others of you curious if your names are going to be mentioned in the future.  The rest of you are True Power Plant Men, of which I have the greatest respect.  Eldon deserved a little payback.

If you met Eldon off of the plant site.  Say in Stillwater, Oklahoma selling Honey.  He would be a nice old man.  So it was with his assistant plant manager.  The difference was that Bill Moler would make a good first impression.

Jar of honey Eldon might be selling

Which brings me to those that make a good first impression, only to find out later that they aren’t quite the good person they appeared to be.  I won’t go into them because I want to focus on Power Plant Men, and those guys are definitely not in that category.  I quickly learned to tell the difference thanks to my mentor Jerry Mitchell.

So, by the time I met Larry the Bakery Man in Columbia, Missouri, I could see through his scowl immediately.  I could look right through the facade of orneriness to see that he was no more harmful than I was.  We eventually became good friends.  He said he could tell me things that he couldn’t tell another living soul.  Well at least no other living soul that wasn’t all “country”.

When I arrived in the electric shop as a new electrician November, 1983, I came face to face with Ben Davis.  Yep.  Bad first impression.  Small jabs of insults.  Acting like he didn’t want me around.  Like I was a nuisance.  I was in his way.  Needless to say…. I had to like him right off the bat.  I knew his kind.  He was really a great guy and I could tell.

Ben Davis somehow reminds me of Tony Dow.  The guy that played Wally Cleaver on Leave It to Beaver.  Ben has always been clean-cut and good to the core.

Wally Cleaver. See the resemblance?

I thought about writing this post because lately I have realized that I have taken on the habit of making a bad first impression.  For many years when I am meeting a new person or a group of people, I seem to purposely look or act “unfriendly” or aloof.  It comes in different forms depending on the situation.  But it has become my philosophy.  I think unconsciously until now.

I have even been saying that now.  It is my philosophy to make a bad first impression.  Just as people in the dorm when I was in college never knew what to make of me, so it is 35 years later at Dell where I work today.

I have found that by making a bad first impression, then I am starting at the bottom of the barrel.  The only way from there is up.  Sure there is a time when someone will not know what to think of me.  After a while when they know me better they come to realize that I’m not that bad of a person.  In all the time I have been at Dell (12 years), I have found only a couple of instances where someone couldn’t get past that first bad impression.

For some reason when someone has a low opinion of me and then find out that I’m not so bad, it seems that they like me more than if they understood who I was right off the bat.  Maybe it’s because they have set lower expectations and I surpassed them.  I’m not sure.

When I think back about Larry the Bakery Man now, I realize the reason that I could nail him so quickly as having a good soul.  He was just like a certain Power Plant man that I had encountered the summer before.  He was a welder.  He would give you the same scowl when he looked at you… or well… when he looked at me.

This welder looked at me as if he didn’t like me.  Like I was a nuisance and he didn’t want me around (have I said that before?).  Anyway.  The more I knew of Dave Goosman, the more I admired him.

Dave had his idiosyncrasies like everyone else, but he had a good heart.  He would help you without hesitation if you needed help.  You learn a lot about people when you are shoveling coal side-by-side.

I learned that Dave had a kind soul.  He was quiet and in some sense, he was shy.  He mumbled under his breath like Larry the Bakery Man.  He knit his eyebrows when he looked at me just like Larry.

A few weeks ago Fred Turner (a True Power Plant Man) left a comment on the post “Sky climbing in the Dark With Power Plant Boiler Rats“.  He told me that “Goose went to his maker a couple of weeks ago. I always liked him.”  That pretty well sums up what everyone thought about Dave Goosman.

Dave Goosman

Notice the scowl?  Yep.  I replied back to Fred.  I said, “Dave Goosman always had a smile on his face like he knew what you were thinking….. even when you weren’t thinking it.”  Yeah.  It was a smile to me…  I knew a smile when I saw it.  I could always see the humor behind the scowl.  The humor that said…. “I’m really a mean guy.  Don’t mess with me.”  Yeah.  Right Dave.  He never fooled anyone.   All the Power Plant Men loved Dave.

Dave was born 19 years and 2 days before I was born.  When he was old enough he joined the Armed forces for a couple of years before settling on a career as a welder.  I know that Dave loved his country as he did his fellow Power Plant Men.  I think it is fitting that he died July 4, 2013.

Dave shares the day of his death with two of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who incidentally both died on July 4, 1826.  Exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams died in Quincy, Massachusetts.  Thomas Jefferson died in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Within hours of each other, these two great Americans died 560 miles apart.

Thomas Jefferson — good first impression

John Adams — bad first impression

All three patriots.

When the True Power Plant Men like Dave die, I like to think of them meeting St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.  I can see Dave walking up there by himself.  Handing his ticket to Peter and scowling at him as if to say, “You don’t want me in here.  I’m not good enough for a joint like this.”  St. Peter smiles and says, “Who do you think you’re foolin’ Dave?  This place was made for people just like you.”