After I left the power plant and went to work for Dell on August 20, 2001, I wrote letters back to my friends at the plant letting them know how things were going. This is the twelfth letter I wrote.
11/2/01 – Some fun at Dell
Dear Sooner Friends,
Our manager told us to go home early today, so I thought I would take this time to write a quick letter to you about my week. I hope you guys are having a fun time up there in Soonerville.
We had a halloween party / Information meeting this week. I was given a plaque or a trophy because our team completed this great big project that they had been working on. I felt kind of funny getting that since I wasn’t here during most of the time to actually help out with much. But then it occurred to me that there are some people that take credit for the work that others do, only because they are in the right place at the right time (or the right position is more common).
Talking about being in the right place at the right time. Since I am the new guy around here. I have been selected to be a member on the “Fun” committee. I suppose it is much like being on “Men’s Club” up there. Every time they have a meeting, we are supposed to come up with fun things to do.
Since we have about 3 meetings a day, you can see where you might quickly run out of fun things, and you get to the point where you say, “Enough of this ‘fun’ stuff, can’t we just ‘meet’?”
I did have a good suggestion for a Christmas Party. I told them that I knew a perfect Santa Claus that we could hire. He lives in Ponca City and I’m sure he would be the best Santa Claus on the planet Earth. His name is Bud Schoonover, and he is the “Ho-Ho-iest” Santa Claus around.
He only has one Santa Claus suit, and he won’t let anyone else use it, because it is the only one he has. I went on to explain that he has cheeks that are like cherries and a stomach that bounces like a bowl full of jelly, but everyone just stopped and stared at me, until someone else mentioned Laser Tag, and then the room erupted in applause, and “hooray for Laser Tag”, and my idea about Santa Claus just kind of sank into oblivion.
I thought about mentioning that we could get Bud to be the Laser Tag General for our team, but when I thought about his brutal relentless drive to defeat the onslaught of parts grabbers, I thought it just wouldn’t be fair to the others, so I didn’t mention it.
I have begun to think that what they need is a committee that thinks of fun things for the “fun” committee to do while they are meeting to discuss what fun things everyone else has to do. They could call it the “fun for fun committee committee”. The only danger in having something like that would be if one person got on both committees, then he would be stuck in a perpetual loop planning fun for the fun committee while planning fun for everyone else, which would include the “fun for fun committee committee”.
I thought I wouldn’t have very good ideas about how to have fun (and so far the rest of the committee would agree with that assessment), then I had a great revelation (that means an Idea). I thought I would ask you guys for suggestions. Just think of it as the Sooner subcommittee of the fun committee for Meeting enjoyment. If you guys have any ideas how these fun starved employees can do something enjoyable, send them to me.
Oh. I already suggested Barbecue. That didn’t fly either.
Let me know,
You Dell Pal,
Kevin James Anthony Breazile
______________________
Kevin J. Breazile
Programmer Analyst II
Dell Computer Corporation
(512) 728-1527
Power Plant Men 