Morning at a Digital Startup (It’s Not What You Expected)

The carport offered shady relief for my classy Cutlass Supreme. The Texas heat would otherwise transform my ride into an oven. Between the T-Tops and black paint, I had already lost one cassette to “summer melt”: Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits.

It was the summer of my first job as a newly-minted college graduate.  After locking the car door, I fiddled for another key.  This would let me into our “office” before anyone else arrived.

This was an important role. Opening up shop was a responsibility I was used to after working at a video store years earlier.  And now, I could apply this skill to the coolest of jobs: a startup digital agency. 

I unlocked the door, employees went in, and websites came out.

But this was no gleaming, prestigious office downtown. Our digs were not “sexy” in the least. But the scrappy notion of starting a “tech shop in an apartment” was the stuff of lore and excitement for us.  It was “morning” in more ways than one at our digital startup. We were going to make a big mark… building the early internet and changing the entire world in the process.

But today, unlocking the door and passing through the apartment threshold, you had to first get past the wall of musty odor. The old stucco exterior must’ve seeped the outdoors in. In the darkened space, my desk was crammed near the front door. Another desk sat opposite, in what should’ve been the dining room. A tiny, barrel-shaped kitchen lay ahead, and what would become our “production room” was at the back. 

My boss, an ADHD poster child, would be in various states of distracted readiness upon my arrival.  From time to time a bathrobe was seen, but shorts and t-shirts were the casual norm.  Often, a smoothie blender whirred away.  Thankfully I never arrived so early that he was still brushing his teeth.  Today he was nowhere to be found.

Instead, something more than the cramped quarters, musty smell and casual boss caught my attention.  There was something strange in the middle of the carpeted floor: a red can of RAID bug spray, with its overturned cap next to it.

Why is that there?, I thought.  I’d never seen anything like this out-of-place anomaly before.  Pondering that, I quietly went about my morning routine.

Days started with decidedly non-digital activities, like watering the plants.  To be honest, it was my favorite part of the day:  retrieving a watering can from the kitchen and pulling the plants outside for a good drink. If I didn’t do this first thing in the morning, the busy day took over and plants were ignored. 

Taking a moment to stand in the balmy sun, letting the water drain onto the concrete step before bringing the plants back in, was pure refreshment. And a welcome respite for my nose, otherwise perpetually twitching with pent-up apartment mold sneezes.

Some days were so slammed that I forgot the plants outside. Realizing my folly later in the day, I would rush to collect them. By then, the wet dirt dried to a desert and leaves drooped in the baking sun.

Today I did my job properly and brought them back into the apartment. Still no sign of my boss, I turned my attention to the RAID can again.  Befuddled, I thought it would at least make sense to put the cap and can away before others arrived.  Innocently I approached and scooped up the cap.  To my horror, there was a gigantic roach under there!  I staggered back, expecting it to lurch at me.  Thankfully, it stayed on its back, unmoving, legs folded up into the air.

Suddenly I could imagine the scene the night before… the chaos that lead to this critter being trapped and ushered to its death, and the post-battle exhaustion that left the evidence behind.

With this, I learned one of my greatest life lessons (especially for living in the South).  If you have a can with a cap… keep that cap.  They come in handy as bug trappers.  Spray the bug, follow as it runs, and trap him under the cap.  Scoop him up later with the cap to dispose.  No squish, no mess, very little chase.

Not the first lesson you’d expect from the cool digital startup world, but one of the best. 

And certainly not the last.  The ring of incoming client calls jolted my thoughts and my workday began.

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As always, I hope you enjoyed this and it brightened your day.

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• Category: Early Internet, On The Job