The Pink Flamingo in Arizona

That’s how I started my first unofficial co-operative education end of semester report from my memory, or for sure I told it to the student taking over for me. 

It’s one of the many lessons taught (or reminded) me that has helped me grow professionally, personally, and in pant sizes.  It’s a lesson I had been taught my entire life but as a college student I needed a random worker to really install it in me, or at least provide the memory that has stuck with me.

I ‘m writing this sitting in The Mill in Bloomington, Indiana surrounded by some of the brightest and most driven workers, business owners, entrepreneurs, and more.  And there’s very little on business I can teach them but plenty I’ve learned these last 2 years and hopefully will continue to learn from them.  The IU Football team is all the talk right now but there’s a whole community here that most people don’t know about that are also making the world a better place.

So this is my little lesson or ramblings I can pass on to you and my future self.

This is the third of hopefully several post of what I’m going to call Rodney’s Ramblings, unscripted, unfiltered, most definitely grammatically incorrect.  And probably too long for most to read but this is written for the future me also.

The first two unfortunately were written and I thought I had gained the strength to let the voices escape but ended up duct taping them shut and throwing them back in my head.  It’s my David and Goliath story and depending on the path we choose the stories may never see the light of day.  But hopefully either path produces positive change, that our losses and fight makes it so nobody ever has to go through our situation again. 

The one thing I can share now from my first rambling and relevant to this is:

“So if you made it this far and are up for a harder fight grab yourself a coffee and donut, or a beer, maybe 2, and try to follow along my ramblings. I hope you find it somewhat interesting, that it makes you think about your own fights and values, and that at least some portions are entertaining enough to fight through reading the full rambling.”

To fully understand the story I’ll have to go through a bit of backstory.  I grew up in a smalltown in Wisconsin where the major employer was Grede Foundries making ductile iron casting likes brake calipers, car differentials, transmission housings, and I think it was the largest privately held Foundry in the U.S.  My father worked there his entire life and by the time I graduated from high school my father had worked his way up with no schooling from a Maintenance Worker to an Electrician to the Plant Engineer and then the Plant Environmental Engineer.  He literally help design, build, and improve most of that Foundry and helped and shared his knowledge with their competitors also.

So when I pivoted and decided to give college a try at the last minute my parents informed me I would have to pay for much of it.  In hindsight I should have had enough money to fully fund college.  I’ll save this story for another rambling but essentially with my various jobs and fairly successful lawn mowing business I should have saved enough for college.  Reality was I fed my addiction to waterskiing instead.  Something I’ll never regret spending all that money on though and something that has brought me lifelong friends.

So towards the end of my first semester my father informed me that the Foundry was looking to hire a bunch of students for some special cleaning projects for good money.  Basically deep cleaning bathrooms besides the fact that the black foundry sand returned immediately and cleaning sand and metal from under the production lines in spots they wouldn’t have been able to talk anyone else into going to except naïve teenagers.  A couple of us stayed on through the next semesters and school breaks.  We went from cleaning to filling in on the production lines for workers out on vacation.  By the second summer I had worked in or knew most departments.

The start of my second summer I was transferring sand from one system to another in the foundry and someone comes out to flag my down and says the boss wants to see me.  My first thought is I screwed up and didn’t hear him correctly and I’m moving the sand to the wrong system.  Luckily that wasn’t the case they had a metallurgy co-operative education student that cancelled that morning and they had one week before the current one left for the summer and they needed someone now to make the transition smooth.  It was essentially a fulltime position for years they had successfully filled with students for years. Raise in pay from what I typically made and half the day in the office and half running trials in the plant made it an easy decision.  Although I had no metallurgy training and at the time was going for Electrical  Engineering he explained that the first semester is just as much about learning the processes and departments as the students did a 3 semester rotation and that part I knew so they could spend that time teaching me what the other students would know already.

One of the early challenges was in the melt department where you would spend 10 minutes putting protective gear on and then after watching an operator who has years of experience essentially take a 10’ long rod with a cup about half the size of a coffee cup into a molten stream of iron and pull a sample out of it without splashing iron on your coworker.  These guys were pros at it.  I swear they could look at the iron and tell just as much about it as our fancy instruments testing their samples could. 

This was a task I obviously failed at.  It took me longer to take our 1 sample during test than it took them to do 3.  And I swear my one sample spewed more iron on the ground than their entire days of samples probably did.  It didn’t take long until I showed up and I can’t remember his name but I think it was Jack and he looks at me and says something like “do something useful and go get me a coffee and a donut and I’ll grab your sample for you”.  So I head to the break room and I hate to date myself but it’s 10 cents a cup and 25 cents for a hostess donut or something like that.  I come back and I wait until he has a little break and hands it to him and he asks me how many more I need and it was probably like 1 for each hour.  So he tells me to go get donuts and coffee for everyone and not to forget the guy up at the top of the cupola and make sure I come back every hour to get the samples out of his way once they cool down.

And so the coffee and a donut begins.

From what I remember I usually talked it over with them the day before if they could handle taking whatever samples I needed for a specific test and sometimes I still had to do it but most of the time the coffee and a donut covered it.  I upped my offerings by stopping at the grocery store for better donuts and expanded it to other departments and occasionally a beer if they caught me in the bar that night.

So at the end of the summer as I’m preparing to go back to college my boss instructs me to write up a final report summarizing what’s important for the next student, what trials are ongoing, highlights of trials we did.  It was another new student starting behind me and it’s my responsibility to help them succeed.  There were reports for semesters going back that I had referenced multiple times so it wasn’t too hard of a task.

A month or two later I run into the new student in the bar in town and we start talking and he asks me how the hell I did so many trials.  I asked him if he ever figured out a coffee and a donut yet and he says no.  So I tell him for a beer I’ll give him a hint.  As we share a few beer together I give him just enough to set him up for success.  I tell him starting in the melt department next time you run a trial go talk to Jack the day before and see he would be willing to take the samples for you.  Tell him Rodney is buying you coffee and donuts if you will help me out. And here’s $5 stop by the grocery store and get a half dozen good donuts for them and black coffee out of the vending machine.  I’ve learned the cheap donuts only suffice if it’s last minute notice.

And not long after that I get a call asking if I would be willing to come back on a 3 semester official rotation that would allow for credit in co-operative education at my college.  Despite not being remotely related to my original Electrical Engineering and then Mechanical Engineering degree the Plant Metallurgist talked them into allowing it.  I’m not so sure without Jack’s help if I would have succeeded enough to be asked back. It probably took me years to fully realize how much more productive that simple coffee and a donut made me, and how many smiles and chats with coworkers it brought me.

Looking back on it more than any decision I made that coffee and a donut suggestion likely altered my path forever. 

I ended up working in the Foundry Industry right out of college.  Now designing the very same vibratory conveyors I started sucking sand out from under 5 years earlier.  For a company that I got the interview with after I thought I was throwing them a donut (the person in charge or recruitment probably thought it was a snowball) by sending my resume directly to the President of the Company when I didn’t hear back from them.  Despite my subpar GPA the President passed that donut back as I “interviewed” directly with him first.  It was basically “we both know you have a job here if you want it so let me tell you about how I started my company, what exactly we do, and see what questions you have”.  His honesty was one of the main reasons that I chose that job. 

I passed that donut back to him when a few years later when I decided to leave and I waited weeks to meet with him and personally inform him first.  He threw a dozen back by sticking up for me against his own son and then meeting with me for several hours to find out how he and his company failed me on my last day.

I’ve passed out and received so many donuts(pizza, beer, knowledge, help) through the decades that I don’t know if I’m on the plus or the negative side of the equation. My belly says I must be on the negative side unfortunately. LOL

And most recently 36 “donuts” were passed my way by The Mill and The Bloomington Remote Program when we relocated here.  After over 20 years working remote and being the smartest one in the office (our dogs would argue that) it took me one day to realize I was far from it, probably in last place.  So I’ve only partially consumed the first 24 donuts given to me and despite the actual real donuts given back I’m still behind the count.  I hope to finish or let go of the battle with Goliath go and stop wasting my donuts.  Start sharing them with the wonderful people surrounding me in this incredible community who just like “Jack” knew that by helping each other out we can all make the world a better place.

The other piece from the first rambling that I would like to share wasn’t written by me.  It was generated by an early version of Google’s NotebookLM

“You have the power to make a difference, so go out there and find your fight.” – From Google NotebookLM AI generated podcast

So if you made it this far I thank you.  I think you’ve figured out I don’t pass donuts out for the thanks, knowing I made a little difference myself if even just for a few bites in someone’s day is my thanks. If you want leave your interpretation or share your donut lesson I would love to hear it.  I’ll respond back in a week or so with the one word that I think describes the original donut to Jack.

So learning from Google who essentially learned from me I’ll depart on this.
You have the power to make a difference, so go out there and share your donut. – Rodney