New England Tech Vignettes

Three scenes from my early working days.  Names have been changed.

(1)

I’m returning to my cubicle after lunch, shoes clicking on the polished floor of the long second floor corridor. Big glass windows on my right look into the wafer fab. The fab interior is bathed in dim orange light. I barely see the workers in bunny suits and slippers carefully moving about the equipment. Smaller windows to my left look out on the gleaming black parking lot under a brilliant blue sky and nearby woods glistening greenly in the bright sun. It’s an actual real wood, with actual wildlife. A flock of genuinely wild turkeys live just behind the wafer fab. They sometimes descend on the road outside the front entrance to the parking lot, strutting, gobbling and thoroughly snarling traffic. It’s considered bad form to run one over.

A half dozen of my co-workers are clustered around one of the small windows. I’m called over - “Hey, JoAnn, you want to see this." All are staring down at a big metal can on the shipping department’s loading dock. It is three-quarters full of furiously boiling white liquid. Steam reaches the bottom of the window, creating a small mist.

“Whoa!” I say and step back from the window. “Shouldn't we...”

“Keep watching!” someone cuts in. The liquid boils and bubbles and abruptly emits a small blue flame. A sigh passes through the group at the window as the flame winks out, and someone says “There it goes again!"

(2)

It’s rumored that we will be moving in about a month. We have been moving in about a month for over a year now.

It’s a quiet afternoon in the lab, the dozen or so engineers intent on their projects. The benches are new and spiffy, cream and cheery orange, and the carpeting is new, but the lab still has a dungeon quality to it, enhanced by its basement location. I’m at a bench next to the door, bent over an evaluation board of my newest prototype, a stack of voltmeters to my right, a winking oscilloscope to my left. My friend Ted is across the room, slumped and staring at a computer screen, puzzling over the latest bug in his lab automation software. Other engineers are out of sight, their presence marked by the whir of turning knobs, the clicking of pounded keyboards, the soft murmur of focused engineers talking to themselves.

The door swings open and a man and two women walk in. They are in suits and white shirts, with clip boards. I've never seen them before. Ted and I look at them, and are completely ignored. The man swivels his head back and forth, scanning the lab. “It’s all gotta go," he says to the women, with drama. The two women nod unsmilingly and note something on their clipboards. The three of them walk out, disappearing through the door they entered, carefully avoiding eye-contact with Ted and me. The entire episode lasts maybe 30 seconds.

Ted and I look at each other. “Did you see that?” I ask.

Ted grins and flings out an arm. “It’s all gotta go!”

(3)

An agonized scream reverberates through the rows of cubicles. “Fifty million dollars! He lost 50 million dollars! Of our money! I can’t believe it.” The screamer is Max and the scream is from his office. I go to investigate, joined by Charlie and Jonathon.  

Max is hunched over at his desk, staring sadly at the company’s annual report. “It’s right here. VBC Enterprises, the emerging technology investment fund started by that asshole vice president. Fifty million dollars down the tubes just last year.”

Jonathon looks confused (he is still a newbie). “I don’t understand. That’s a lot of money. How do you just lose fifty million dollars?”

“It’s lost. Gone.” Max moans softly, his head between his hands.

“But how? I don’t get it,” says Jonathon.

Max looks up and fixes his eyes on Jonathon. “How do you lose fifty million dollars? I’ll show you!” He sticks out his hand. “Give me a dollar!”

Jonathon has his wallet out, but he is, after all, a newbie. “Don’t do it Jonathon,” I warn. Jonathon hesitates.

“I’ll give you a dollar.” says Charlie. He takes out his wallet and rummages through its folds, finally extracting a ten dollar bill. He offers it to Max.

“No. Give me a DOLLAR!” says Max pointedly, his hand still out.

More rummaging. Charlie comes up with a buck and hands it to Max. Max rips the dollar into tiny little pieces and throws it all into the trash can. “There. Now do that fifty million times!”

“My dollar! He ripped up my dollar!” wails Charlie (new wife, new house, baby on the way...). We watch silently as Charlie rustles through Max’s trash can, picking out the shards of his former dollar bill.