Shortly after graduating college I got my first job at a
company called Verifone. It is one of
those companies that you have seen before but never noticed. They make the credit card terminals that you
use every time you go to McDonalds.
Come
on admit it... you like McDonalds and you eat there. We are all friends here. Anyway this job required quite a bit of
travel. They told me when they hired me
that it would be 50% travel but it turned out to be quite a bit more.
At this point in my life I was married and had one of my 4
current children. Our family of three
lived within a 10 mile radius of my parents, and 20 miles away from my
grandparents. We have a family tradition
that has been going on for a very long time, something we call "Family
Night".
Every Thursday night we have
dinner together. Family is also used to
describe anyone that comes to dinner that night. It was at one of these family night dinners
that my father asked how the new job was going.
More importantly he wanted to know what I was doing in my off
hours.
I told him that basically I was
going from work to the hotel room and vegging out on the couch. Now for most parents that might have been an
acceptable answer but not my family. He
continued to probe and ask the right questions.
Was I stopping by the hotel bar for a drink? I told him that I didn't like to eat alone in
a restaurant so occasionally I would eat in the hotel bar and have a drink. Now even though he had been raised Baptist drinking
was not off limits at our house but it was always something to do in
moderation. This is when he launched
into something I was aware of but didn't really put much thought towards. Drinking in moderation was not an issue,
traveling alone is no big problem, having no accountability other than to
myself is something that I could handle.
But putting all of those "risk" factors together was putting my family
at risk. Now the important thing to
understand at this point is that I know and understand myself. I love my wife more than anything and putting
our relationship at risk would be really stupid. Combining alcohol which reduces my
inhibitions, being extremely lonely during the week, being a very extroverted
person that never met a stranger, and having ready access to a prepaid hotel
room was a recipe for disaster. Never
fear my father had a plan. He also traveled
quite a bit when he first started working out of college and had worked out a
fool proof way to keep out of trouble when on the road as well as have
fun. All that and more in the next blog
entry.