After living in Texas for a few years, I felt my time there was over and I gave my resignation letter to my boss at Viscotek in late spring/early summer of 1998. I had been working on this big project for them though at the time and I promised to see it through to completion. I was going to fly to France and make wine with my uncle again and then try my hand at importing the wine. As soon as I came back from France, I was to pack up my few belongings in a small U-Haul and drive to Georgia to stay with my parents while I started up my importation business. My brother flew down to help with the move and to drive my car for me while I drove the U-haul. As I was making those travel plans, I heard about my High School’s 10-year reunion. Normally not the type to go to a reunion, I decided it would be an easy and interesting stop since it was on the same weekend as my moving plans, so I made sure Phil and I would make a pit-stop in Huntsville on the way. It was fitting in a way, because everyone was catching up: “Are you married? Do you have kids? What do you do for a living?” And I was like, nope – none of that – no wife, no kids, and no job. They looked at me and were like “Weren’t you class valedictorian?” Heh heh – I kind of enjoyed their puzzlement because I was actually feeling pretty good about taking my life into my own hands and trying something new!
However, what I wanted to share in this post was the last job I did for my employer before I went to France. I had been working for months to get this robotic arm to automatically prepare these PET (A type of plastic) samples for the company’s viscometer and share out the results electronically such that hardly any human was needed. The company didn’t really have anyone else qualified to do the install on short notice and I wanted to see it through to completion so we agreed that would be my last day of work. The installation was for Wellman’s PET processing facility in Bay St Louis, Mississippi:
I flew into the New Orleans airport and drove out to their facility on a Wednesday only to find that the new lab that was to house our automatic quality control system was still under construction. There was no power even, but they had all seven crates of equipment neatly arranged around a lab bench. I uncrated everything and did as much as I could to make sure everything was in good shape and ready to go. I was thinking hard about the fact that I had a ticket to France out of Houston the following week and the installation takes 2 or 3 solid days of work. I remember the feeling of my mind just going through all the possibilities and I turned to the plant manager who was being super-nice to me and showing me around and being apologetic about not having everything ready to go and I said:
“Listen, here’s the deal. I’m pretty much the only one at my company that can easily get this thing up and running, but I’ll be honest with you, this is my last job for them and I’m flying to France next week. So, I want to do this job and I know you want this job done. Here’s my idea: I’ll take my weekend early: tomorrow and the next day. You use that time to get power and running water to this part of the lab. If you do that, I will work night and day to get this thing working and train your guys before I go to France.”
The plant manager looked me kind of dumbfounded and slightly in awe and said “Well, Ken, I guess that makes sense.” I went to New Orleans for a couple of days and when I came back, they had everything ready to go for me. The manager was so impressed with me, he invited me over to his house for dinner one night and introduced me to his daughter. I finished the job and flew to France the following week and that was the end of my Viscotek adventures.
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