Letter to the Power Plant Men #30 — Driving to Dell

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 thirtieth letter I wrote.

04/18/02 – Driving to Dell

Dear friends,

This morning I heard a conversation outside my cubicle that I thought was very interesting.  It was this morning after I arrived at work.  On my way to work I noticed that a policeman had pulled someone over apparently to give them a speeding ticket.

After I arrived at work, and opened my briefcase and took out my laptop and slid it into my docking station, the stairway door near my cubicle opened and someone came walking in, just in time to meet a friend of theirs right next to my cubicle.  They stopped and started to talk.

The guy that had just come in the door told the other guy that he had been pulled over by a “cop” that morning, just down the road.  I realized that this must have been the guy I had seen on my way to work.  —  He continued to tell the other guy that he was never going to do that again, not after the “B–t Chewing” he had just received from that policeman.

The other guy said, “You mean you aren’t going to speed anymore?”  (About this time I was standing up rather straight so I could look over the top of my cubicle, —  You know, so I could admire the wonderful new morning that was emerging out the window — That’s how I knew that…) The guy that had the ticket looked at the other guy rather puzzled and said, “H–L No!!!  I’m never going that SLOW again!!!  Not after that policeman explained to me the hazardous situation I was causing.”

Now the other guy looked puzzled, and asked him what he was talking about.  The Ticket man continued by saying, “The cop explained to me that I was going 40 miles per hour in a 45 mile per hour zone.  At first I thought, ‘so what’, then he explained to me, that I was creating a driving hazard for the rest of the people on the road.

He took me over to his squad car and showed me how the average speed of cars on that road was between 65 and 70 miles an hour.  If I kept driving that slow, there was going to be a bad accident, and I was going to end up dead, or even worse, ‘In the hospital!!’  I saw his point, so I told him I wasn’t going to do that again.  He let me off with just a warranty (his word not mine), because I was pretty new in Texas and didn’t quite understand these things.”

Then the other guy expressed that he was pretty new in Texas too, and now that he knew that, he was going to make sure to stay with the “flow of traffic” as it is called down here.

Then they each went their separate ways, and I sat in my chair and began to think about what they had said.  How many times have I just been dawdling along on my way to work, not paying attention to my speed, and causing a road hazard by only driving the speed limit!  I was probably lucky to be alive today, and (apparently) Really lucky I hadn’t ended up in the Hospital!  I consider myself fortunate to have learned this important safety tip “before the accident happened” (to take a phrase from the Yellow Flag film).  —  The things you can learn when you least expect it.

Note to Reader, To learn more about the Yellow Flag Film see the post:  Power Plant Imps and Accident Apes.

Drive Safely everyone,

Your friendly Dell employee,

Kevin James Anthony Breazile

______________________

Kevin J. Breazile

Programmer Analyst II

Dell Computer Corporation

(512) 728-1527