Getting a badge and seeing Steve Jobs
After getting clapped in and there were the obligatory "we are so happy you are here!" speeches we are ushered across the lobby in 1 Infinite loop to get a badge. Everyone who goes on campus and is an employee has to get a badge. Apparently, Apple was a bit ahead of the curve here and had some fun with it. Essentially the process was, as a new employee, pick an email, wait to get your photo taken, then a badge was created with your photo. Then you could roam the campus. We had a good number of people there about 15-20 or so, everyone from our market leader Linda, to a couple of guys who ended up being sent to Best Buys to create a store within a store. This short-lived and failed concept was later revisited and now is being run by a couple of my former colleagues. A big moment was picking out your email address. As you may know now my internet moniker is drsoos, drsoos@gmail, AOL, yahoo (I think I lost that one) you get the idea. Here is the moment where I was asked to create a @apple.com email and we thought it was professional to be business appropriate so I made it bsoucy@apple.com. Later I found out that was not really the case when I met sparklepants@apple.com. I blew it, well only for a yea,r and I did get drsoos@apple.com, but that's a story for later. When you finally get to the room where they badge you its pretty cool, you can see inside, and there are props! Your badge is supposed to be FUN! Wow, this is cool! It started to sink in, this is a cool, fun place and then all of a sudden my first Steve Jobs sighting! At this point, Steve is monumental to me. It's like seeing George Washington, Jimmy Hendrix and Dan Marino altogether. The collective was in awe, I included. I will mention that we were told, point blank, leave Steve alone. He just wants to be a regular guy, don't bother him, chase him down, treat him any different from anyone else.
Let me set this up for you. We are crammed into this area to the left of the main lobby. If you can imagine the lobby you walk in and there is this open space and to the sides are the tall glass corridors on the left and right. Partitioning the center lobby from badged areas. On the right was where we came from, past a reception desk. Over there are some elevators and the infamous stairs that are worn from the many people who walked the stairs to avoid getting in an elevator with Steve. At the back end of the lobby is an entrance with a badge tower that you scan your badge and it opened the door to the inside of the lobby and to the main grassy area inside of the complex. Check google maps if you must. As we were sitting there someone saw Steve and we all gawked. Here he was talking to some guy in business casual, Steve was wearing ripped jean shorts, with the pockets sticking out and a black graphic t-shirt filled with holes. He is talking with this guy, no idea who he was, passionately moving his hand's palms facing him moving them up and down like my Italian mother telling just about every story. What's funny is he is not really looking at the guy, more of looking at the ground talking, the guy is nodding and listening. Of course, we can't hear what he's saying because we are between thick glass. Mesmerized we watched as Steve and guy walked into the lobby, the whole time Steve has not stopped and appears to increase his intensity. They move to the elevators and the guy steps into the elevator. Steve did not. The elevator doors close and Steve, still talking and more animated than before... walks into the closed elevator doors! We all gasp and there is an audible hoot, from our market leader, then silence. This seemed to wake Steve and the doors opened again and the guy was there standing and Steve got in and up they went. That was the first of several Steve sightings and the time I began to think, Steve after a is a guy, just a regular guy at the end of the day.
To sum up getting a badge after that is pretty anti-climatic we were all in a buzz and distracted. When it finally came to my turn I simply put my back to the camera and turned around to look at the camera. Funny thing is I was wearing a green shirt and there was a green screen. You guessed it, my badge was a floating head. So not the total loss. I gotta find that thing one of these days. So a side note about our badge. Remember this was 2001, we were "genius" and Apple really didn't know what the hell to do with us, didn't know what to pay us and certainly didn't know what access to give us. Ill get into server access and such another day but this is about the badge. We had access to nearly everything, lots of stuff we should not have had access to. Not knowing any better. We essentially had the same credentials as every other Apple employee, which we thought was cool, but in hindsight not the best idea and later rectified. My group tested it and while I'm still looking for my old photos I can assure you we opened doors to rooms we should not have and saw some stuff, like the Power Mac G4 that was yet to be announced. We quickly stopped opening doors where we shouldn't.
