Butterflies, Coffee, and Alex

Even though we are rumored to get snow this week we are firmly over the line and into Spring. This time of year always makes me think of butterflies, coffee, and Alex.

I talked to Alex many times before I met him in 1997.

First Contact: I was a brand new Waldenbooks Store Manager. My store was in a strip mall in Fox Chapel Pennsylvania. We called it a CBD (Central Business District store). As a CBD my sales and other results were compared to like stores across the US. Certain results were broadcast once a week to all stores.

One of the results tracked were sales of the Waldenbooks Preferred Reader loyalty card. The card started out free and then increased to just $5.00 for a 12 month membership and earned customers a $5.00 book certificate with every $100 in sales. (Your first sale counts double towards your goal! You'd be....3/4 of the way to your first reward when you join today!)

My team rocked, and frequently were in first place. But not every week. That Alex-in-Rhode-Island. He was good. Real good.

Some weeks we were #1. Then Alex was #1. I'd wait for it each week. Drove me crazy to be #2. We were doing all we could, so I did the next logical thing. Intimidation.

I called his store early one morning after he had stayed ahead of me one week too many. When he came to the phone I told him we were going to be #1 by the end of the week. As I recall it, his reaction was

"Oh you guys! You won't believe this! There's a crazy girl from Pennsylvania on the line threatening me! Stop it crazy Pennsylvania girl."  

I'm sure he was terrified. The faint gasping sounds filtering over the wires, most likely, well-disguised sobs of despair. Or something. Then he hung up.

I want to say that it worked, that we were always first after that. I can't be honest and say that. I've decided, with the hard-won wisdom of years, that my calls motivated him. They pushed him and his team to perform even better just as the competition gave new-manager me a way to motivate my team to success. (You are welcome, Alex!)

Finally Face to Face: Flash forward several years. March 1997. I'm now a Training Store Manager for Waldenbooks. Alex-from-Rhode-Island is a new Trainer and getting ready for his first training session. I drive to Rhode Island via Boston, through a rainstorm that would turn into the fourth-biggest snowstorm in Boston history.

Alex smoked and I didn't, but I went outside with him during smoke breaks. He introduced me to Dunkin Donuts coffee. I would match him, cup for cigarette. He would smoke and I would sip coffee while we talked through the topics, planned the next day, got ready for more questions.

I got a new coffee every time, "three creams please. Make it look like peanut butter." As I lay sleepless at the hotel after a daily dozen large coffees, I thought about the day's classes. The snow. My life. My job. My new-ish friend: Alex. I knew Alex would do for his trainees what he had done for me so many years earlier: Inspire them to be their best. 

It was during the training sessions that the butterfly wings came up. We were talking about ways to engage your staff and customers. Since it was fresh in my mind, I told the managers what I used to do every year on the first day of Spring: I wore butterfly wings.

I used to buy the wings right after Halloween and store them until Spring. It had all the earmarks of a great prop: almost free, easy to store, and made my staff laugh. Alex was poker-faced. Never smiled. Not even a little.

About an hour later we were walking out of the mall into the parking garage. I was watching the sky continue to drop a flood of flakes and sipping yet another coffee that would haunt me later that day as I stood in line to reschedule my flight.

Alex barely lit his cigarette before he turned to me, barely containing his glee. He had told someone on his staff about the wings. (yet another thing the crazy Pennsylvania girl did) Somehow the story got mangled, as stories often do. What came across was that I wore the wings in the store... alone...naked.

Let me refute this.

I solemnly swear that I was a clothed butterfly on the first day of Spring the entire time I worked for Waldenbooks and Borders. (His employees never did look me in the eye the rest of that day, though)

I needed that laugh, if not the caffeine, during the 20 or more hours it took me to get home. The East Coast was blasted by a record breaking snowstorm: Boston got 3 inches an hour at one point. I slept sitting on my monster training suitcase stuffed with binders and a week's worth of clothes. Our plane was routed through Newark and North Carolina (!) on the way to Pittsburgh.

For 24 years I've emailed, texted, or tagged Alex on Facebook about the first day of Spring, and he remembers the wings.

It's shared stories- and their misinterpretations- that make people we work with more than coworkers. They are our co-conspirators, our confessors, our comrades; our friends, and if we are very very lucky: our family.

Hey Alex- if you ever read this- I didn't wear the wings this year because Chapter 11 is a real kill-joy. But I thought of them, and you. I used three creamers in my coffee in that morning (it looked just like peanut butter), and thought about all the changes we've gone through since that snowy day so long ago. One thing doesn't change, though; remembering you still inspires me to be my best.

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