Apple job and an earthquake
1983
On Monday, March 21st, 1983, after an entire weekend of living in California, I reported to Apple for new employee orientation. I loved so many things about my new life: my job, the company, Silicon Valley, and California. And once I was properly oriented, I went to my new office and was thrilled to see my name on the wall in six-color cardboard. I didn’t even notice that parts of the Apple logo were misshapen. What would Steve Jobs think?
In those first few weeks, I spent most of my time at the Apple building where my office was. Barbara was still in Denver, finishing out her job. I was working, playing, learning, exploring, and hanging out. What else did I have to do that was a better use of my time? Nothing.
My first job at Apple was working a telephone hotline that helped customers who had questions about their super cool new Lisa computers. Two interesting things about this job:
Very few people bought these super cool Lisa computers, which sold for $10,000 each. Herbie Hancock had one, and called us sometimes. I think he was our only celebrity customer.
They were so easy to use that very few customers needed to call and ask us questions. And because the Lisa applications didn’t have a lot of features, my co-workers and I quickly became experts in how to use them.
My 3 co-workers and I (theoretically) talked to customers from all over the country. That meant one of us had to start at 9:00 AM Eastern time, which is 6:00 AM Pacific time. My co-workers and I decided to rotate this early shift. My genius idea for my “early” week was to stay up as late as I wanted the night before, get up at 4:30 AM, work from 9 to 3, then go home and sleep in the afternoon. This brilliant plan succeeded in leaving me exhausted all the time. And I was sleeping at 4:42 PM on May 2nd when a disastrous magnitude 6.2 earthquake hit Coalinga, California.
The epicenter was more than 150 miles away, but we felt the big quake strongly in Silicon Valley. I woke up startled. Earthquake! I jumped out of bed, landed wrong, and strained a muscle in my thigh. So I managed to be injured by a quake 150 miles away.
Because there were few customers calling our customer service hotline, and the ones who did had few questions, I had plenty of time to learn and explore other Apple technologies, like Lisa Pascal Workshop, the software development system for Lisa. I didn’t know it at the time, but that extracurricular study would come in handy later when I moved on to the Mac.
Yep, I'd know what you meant about the Maytag repairman. :)