It was bound to happen..

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    For those who haven't figured it out by now I work for a pc/printer repair company.  I work mostly on printers and for the most part HP printers to be specific.  I am an HP Certified Field Technician.  I have been to almost every major company in the Silicon Valley to fix printers.  I was called out the other day to go the mother of all companies in the valley.  In a way, a company that in a round in about way gave me a job.  This company of course was HP.  I was actually called out to fix an HP printer inside an HP building.  Not just any building.  The one that holds the executive office of  Carleton S. (Carly) Fiorina.  My escort pointed out the glass enclosed executive office area as we walked by.  I screamed out some choice words for the woman in charge. (All in my head of course)  For me the whole repair/fix was ironic.  Here I was at Hewlett Packard fixing one of their machines. You would think someone there, maybe the engineer who designed the machine could be called up to fix the piece of equipment.  The machine was so bad off I had to talk to HP tech support on my cell phone.   When I called, a phone a half a room away rang and I heard in stereo "HP tech support Joe speaking, how may I help you today." Just kidding.  That did not happen, thought is would be funny just to put that in.  Anyway I asked my contact why couldn't they call one of their guys from IT to resolve the problem.  She didn't know.  Again here is a company that put together this huge merger with Compaq in 2002 and yet, on the same floor that she sits Carly couldn't get the end user/customer satisfaction.  You walk thru the hallways of this company and you see the future of  HP on the walls in the form of high tech posters of digital cameras, printers, computers, and partnership programs.  I walked by one room that had glass walls and when I looked inside I saw what looked to be the HP museum of products.  Some new computers, old computers, calculators, and other machines that I can't identify because it was before my time. 

    Almost every company that makes a product does this.  Sometimes it's just a glass cabinet in the lobby or in HP or Apples' case a whole room dedicated to products of the past.  At Intuit the software company that creates QuickBooks and other accounting/tax software they instead have a wall in the cafeteria that shows the company history timeline of the last 20 years.  What I find interesting about that, is they also have pictures and quotes of the top headlines for that year as well.  I.E. 1982 Intuit is the highest seller of accounting software, Michael Jackson releases Thriller. 

    In conclusion, I finished fixing the printer, and on my way out,  I strolled past the executive offices one last time and this time I thought I saw Carly eating a big ass Meat Ball sandwich.  I could be wrong, so Carly when you read this, tell me that I'm wrong.  That is wasn't you I saw slurping down a chunk of onion with with a chaser of meatball sauce.

......as much as I mock, I enjoy going to these big companies, and for me to see a high profile CEO like Carly Fiorina or Steve Jobs or a Larry Ellison is like an average Joe seeing a movie star or a rock star. It's almost like having a backstage pass.  If you plan to major in business I suggest that you pick up a job as a repair technician to get the behind the scenes feel of different companies.  In the dot com boom I saw it all.  I've been yelled at by a 20 something ceo about how my type of business is nothing more than a leech sucking of a bigger entity.  I know this one tech George who worked at Oracle and forgot to get off the elevator and Larry Ellison had to remind him.  Remind is a loose word if you ever read anything Larry.