George Mallean

When I was younger, I worked in aerospace--defense contracting stuff. And it was very fun cause there was a bunch of money to do science, and a bunch of smart people, and it was interesting work, trying to prove that one solution or another was a viable strategy in the battlefield of the future. And the people were really interesting, because everybody is pretty sure they are smarter than everyone else and are looking for an opportunity to prove it.

So I kinda stepped into a loaded situation, where I was a contractor and people at the customer site were waiting to tear my work apart, which they did, immediately and with great vigor. And so I got assigned to work under this really, really negative guy, George Mallean. And he was great. He started out our first meeting with "I know your type and you think you're just gonna sweep in here with some magical bullshit and it's not going to prove anything." And so forth for like a half an hour. It was pretty severe. But because I pretty much expect the worst (especially when the president of my company warns me that I'm really in for it with this Mallean guy) So anyway, long story short, I just say: "Look, I'm 27 years old, I have no idea what you're looking for, and I'm not prepared to defend my work as the greatest thing since sliced bread. You know what you're looking for, tell me what I need to do here." Apparently people don't roll over that quickly in that industry, but it sure worked, because everything got a whole lot easier from there on out. George was happy, my boss thought I was a fricking genius cause George was happy, and I was able to get access to the information that George wanted in my reports.

But that's not the real point of this post. I had George's trust, and the great benefit of his experienced guidance, but the thing that George really taught me was something else. One day George was all bent out of shape (probably justifiably) at something his company was doing and he gave me these words of wisdom: "Erik, if you just think of people, and you expect the absolute worst from them, you know, 99% of time you'll be... absolutely correct."

And, you know, happy people don't think this way. They think people are their friend and that good things will just fall from the sky, like rainbow scented jellybeans from the asses of flying unicorns. But George wasn't interested in being happy, he was interested in being correct. And that, dear readers, was a very significant life lesson for this cowboy.

God love you, George Mallean, where ever you are. I'll not forget you.