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A team of four

2011-04-10 - 11:50 a.m.

Last week was really surreal at my job. My supervisor was let go last Thursday due to multiple circumstances in the organization....none of us saw it coming, so it was a complete surprise. Although he and I did have our differences, I genuinely liked him and I thought he was incredibly intelligent and had grown our city's local presence into what it currently is. It felt really sad in the office the next day, and our prior group of six is now down to five, which will be going down to four next Friday when our Vista team member leaves after his one year term is up. I started thinking about all the people I've worked with over the years, and people that I reported to...there have been a small handful that I've liked very much. It started me thinking about when I first arrived in LA years ago.

I was working as a Proofreader at a national Floral directory company in LA back then, and our department had a sum total of five people. Shawn and Lisa were two of the five, and Shawn, one of our designers, was probably more miserable than anyone I knew. Nothing made him happy. He was tall and lanky and had long curly black hair that hung over his sad eyes, which echoed the vision of a depressed zoo Panda, kept isolated behind a glass wall. It was like he couldn't get out. Lisa was a smart Administrative Assistant and had a big Mexican family and was kind of a firecracker. Her husband was a really hard working mechanic and a nice guy, and went and had her face tattooed on his arm when they first got married. Although she had gained a lot of weight after the tattoo she told me, he absolutely adored her and told her that he didn't care because her size wasn't going to stop him from loving her. I thought that was great, although at that time I could not think of one person's face I would want on my arm staring back at me as I journeyed through life, or worked under a car.

Travis was the supervisor in my department, and was honestly one of the best I've ever had. He was married to a woman who was a little more on the meek side, but she was sweet and very supportive of him, and balanced out his charismatic personality. He was a 'geek' in every sense of the word, but he used it to his advantage. At the end of every day he would strap his helmet on over his glasses and turn to face us before getting on his Honda to ride home. Then he would say something cute through the helmet that made him sound Darth Vaderish.

"Good night. May remorse be with you."

Jean was the other designer there and my favorite person next to Travis. She and I used to sit about 10 feet from each other, but since it could get very quiet during deadline, we'd IM back and forth about the CDs collection we brought to work to listen to, and would make each other laugh with "Would you Rather..?" questions. Until the IT Administrator got a hold of our IM chats and called me over to his desk for a talk one afternoon.

"You two need to stop making fun of the entire company".

"I didn't think we were making fun of the entire company, we just like to joke around a lot."

He then told me that he could see that I left him no choice, and started reading from his computer:

"Ohell - "Ok - gun to your head, and you have to choose one, would you rather sleep with Travis or with Shawn?

Jean - Neither.

Ohell - You have to choose Jean, there's a gun.

Jean - I can't.

Ohell - Me neither. And we need to stay away from desert islands.

Jean - Would you rather die in a fistfight? Or work here for the rest of your life, including Saturdays?

Ohell - Fistfight. Would you rather forfeit all your Johnny Cash CDs and never listen to him again in exchange for one live Jeff Buckley concert?

Jean - Is he already dead?

Ohell - They're both dead, but Jeff Buckley comes back to life for one last concert. Johnny Cash can sit next to you, but that's it.

Jean - I'd have to think about that. ' "

The IT Administrator asked if I wanted him to keep going, and I said no, that was fine. I wondered to myself if I had ever written anything about the IT Administrator? Off the top of my head I thought he looked exactly like Ernie from Sesame Street.

Travis was more intelligent than most of the people in the company, and although he understood computer terminology and jargon that no one else did, he always asked how he could help us to be better at our jobs, and would then explain to us in detail how to do something. He never hoarded his experience or tried to out-think us like some of the more entitled tech wizards might have, and he always maintained the department to where it felt more like a mini-community.

I was making pretty good money at the time, and although I liked the company and the department and it was a great position to have, I was bored because I felt like I needed to get into something that would inspire me. I had been interviewing with a company that would allow me to meet more people and move around more, and they had offered me the position if I wanted it. But I hadn't made a decision yet.

On a Friday I went into work and dumped all of my bags on my desk. I called over to Jean to bring her CDs over to swap because I was tired of listening to mine.

"Have you heard the Dee-Lite album yet?"

Lisa was sitting on top of her desk, frowning at me. Jean was sitting next to her on Lisa's chair. Shawn was peering at me from behind his glass cage, as usual.

"What?"

I walked closer to them, and noticed even Jean was staring at me weird.

"Why are you guys all staring at me?"

Lisa said, "Ohell, Travis died in a motorcycle accident on his way home from work last night."

I stared back at all of them. Then she told me to sit down. Then we cried for a while on top of her desk.

I remembered seeing Travis right before he left the previous day. It was raining pretty hard, and Lisa told him he should be careful on the bike. He said he wasn't worried, but that he would ride slower than he usually did. Apparently a truck that was on the freeway didn't see him and hit him from behind... he flew up into the air on the bike and landed on his side, skidding down the wet highway in the dark. I don't know the rest but I really didn't want to know, it was too terrible.

Shawn had tears rolling down his face, and I hugged him.

"He was my only friend", he said. In a fractal second, I regretted all the IMs I had ever sent to Jean about him, and changed him into a free-roaming Polar Bear in my mind.

There was a funeral, which was paid in full by the company, as Travis made a very modest income to support two people, and their rental home, and his wife's college tuition. We played the entire Jeff Buckley Grace album on the way to the funeral, because it's sad and beautiful like the funeral was, and the casket was open so we could all see his face and say goodbye to it. His wife was sitting in the front in a chair, and she was quiet, and somber, and later she thanked us for being such a great team that he could be proud of, and we felt crushed over her saying she hadn't gotten pregnant in time, at least to carry on his name.

Since we were under a deadline at work to finish the quarterly directory, we stayed till 8 or 9pm like we always did during deadline week...we really wanted to honor Travis somehow in the directory, as it would be soon going out to all the florists in the country. The team asked me to write something from all of us, and we put it on the back page under a big picture of his face:

"One never knows the answer

To what degree one is affected by another

Until a time comes

To put that question into action

And we don't believe

It is possible

To span the length of

What you've come to mean to us

In the time that our paths have crossed with yours

What you have given us

And what we will take with us

Countless patience

Knowledge

Acceptance

Love for life

We respected you as teacher

Regarded you as friend

And you gave more to us

Than you had to

We will remember you

And we want to thank you

You etched yourself

A place in us"

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