My first "real" job was working behind the counter at a convenience store. A pretty ho-hum type job until Memorial Day weekend 1982. I had worked all weekend, 10-hour shifts, because the owners were away enjoying their long weekend. That Sunday night I got held up at gunpoint. Not a fun experience.

I was pretty tired when the guy walked in and mumbled "Gimme the f#$%$@@ money!" So tired, in fact, that I asked him to repeat it. That's when I found out robbers don't like to repeat their requests. Anyway, he made me get down on the floor, face down, while he took the money and some smokes. (Apparently, robbers do not heed the Surgeon Generalęs advice, either.) The police ended up catching him a hour later, but he got off because of a "Miranda problem."

Looking back, the strangest thing I did was show up for work bright and early the next day, like nothing had happened. I guess I didn't know any better, at least not until my mother made me quit a day later. I think she said, "your NOT getting killed over $3.25 an hour!" or something to that effect. My guess is, her real reason was the fact that we had just made my first college tuition payment and she didn't want to be out that money.

The hours may be just as bad, but a technology career is a tad safer.

When I interviewed candidates for technology positions, I used to administer an acronyms test. I would compile a list of four fairly common industry acronyms, and I would make up one. I would then ask the candidates to put themselves in the role of explaining to a non-technical manager what the acronyms meant.

In doing so, I accomplished several objectives. First, I got a feel for their knowledge of the technology/industry, because if they didn't know what POP meant, they probably wouldn't be a great e-mail sys admin. Second, I got a feel for their ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people, something that is very hard for many technologists to do. Third, since this exercise was often a little stressful, I got a feel for how they handled themselves under pressure.

Finally, I got a feel for the degree to which they would let their egos interfere with their judgment. I respected candidates who would honestly respond that they weren't familiar with an acronym rather than trying to guess, especially with the fictitious acronym that I made up.

Everyone in IT knows how important acronyms are in the computer industry. In 1993, I traveled to Syracuse University for a round of interviews for a position that included a session with the search committee that was chaired by then-Director of Network Systems at the university, Dave Molta (yes, that Dave Molta). Things went pretty well during the first hour and a half, and I thought we were starting to wrap things up. At that point Dave announced that he had one final item on his agenda -- an acronyms test.

At first I thought he was joking -- he wasn't. For what seemed like the next three hours Dave grilled me on every acronym in the book and some that I still believe he made up on the spot. I'd never had a pop quiz in front of an audience for such high stakes before, nor do I expect to repeat that experience again.

I must have passed the test because I got the job and enjoyed working for Dave for a number of years. To this day, when I interview someone for a technical position, I always save a pop quiz for the end.

I was the Project Manager for a major project, and my wife was the Technical Lead. I chose her because she's that good, but she can be prickly about chauvenism in technical fields. Our cubicles were arranged so that you had to pass through hers to get to mine -- the thought was that we'd get more accomplished if we were arranged this way.

One morning I'm sitting in my cube trying to figure out how we're going to meet deadlines, and the VP of IT walks into her cube and says, "Is Don in?" I hear the Technical Lead reply, "What do I look like, his secretary?" And to my unbelieving ears the VP said, "Yes, would you get us some coffee?"

Our ride home was... interesting.

Working as a Technical Architect for a Fortune 500 company, I had spent six months gathering statistics and information about major database vendors because our management staff was hoping to standardize on one primary and one secondary vendor. After a four-hour presentation that showed them the strengths and weaknesses of each of the vendors, and included detailed comparison charts, they decided not to standardize after all.

At my next performance review, my boss told me, "Well, I marked you as 'Failed to Meet Expectations' for the database standardization project -- it doesn't matter how hard you worked on it or how much information you provided. Because management chose not to make a decision, it doesn't benefit the customer, so you failed." I was looking for a new job the next day.

I was the hotshot young programmer at a tax software company, one year out of school and known as the corporate geek. One day a request for an enhancement comes in from a nationwide bank that was using our software at over 1,000 locations. Because the customer was adamant that we make the change in the middle of tax season, they brought it to me and asked me to make the change quick. I threw the change in, tested it, and sent it to my boss. Thinking that I was good enough that he didn't need to send it through the testing process, my boss sent it to the customer in an attempt to show how much we appreciated their business.

Unfortunately, there was a bug that only showed after repeated use of the program, and the net result of the problem was that the customer database our software maintained was destroyed.

After months of being courted by an Internet startup, I accepted a position as a programmer with them. After two months of 70-hour weeks, the president called me out into the parking lot to tell me that he felt I wasn't giving my all... because I wasn't working Sundays.

A former boss of mine (who also happened to be president, CEO, and owner of the small interconnect where I worked) left little doubt in my mind that my paycheck was being signed by Balthazar -- the Prince of Darkness himself. As the embodiment of Evil, this upstanding small business owner constantly misrepresented the size of his technical staff as being "20 factory-trained technicians who support every system ever manufactured on any continent" when, in fact, he couldn't hold on to three mediocre technicians at any given time. It was always fun to be posted at the door of a customer's office while our CEO rifled through desks looking for competitors' sales quotes. Ah yes, then there were all the times when El Presidente helped himself to job materials, fax machines, printers, and breadsticks when his customer base wasn't looking.

It was quite common for Mr. Upstanding to take a technician on the road with him -- after all, he needed someone who could actually talk about what he was trying to sell. A typical post-sales ritual for the Paragon of Virtue was dropping off the technician at a fast-food restaurant, handing him a dollar for coffee, and then heading downtown for the nearest available prostitute and something to ingest that would help his body chemistry get to where it needed to be in order to properly celebrate his fine business sense.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this employment experience was listening to his gloss-the-customer speech that ended with a narrative on how "you can put your trust in me, I answer to the MAN UPSTAIRS on Sunday." Yessir, I'd have liked to have heard what the Man had to say during those Sunday talks with Senior Honesty.

Oh, yeah, did I mention the diamond dealer calling who wanted his money? Or how the Antichrist would scream obscenities at his wife (who happened to be the company VP) in an office full of people? Or how customers would get gouged on job adds that they never authorized? Boy, those were the good old days.

It was my very first job. I must have just turned 16 and was in a little neighborhood pharmacy that had somehow -- probably by a well-placed bribe -- gotten a license to sell hard liquor "for medicinal purposes." Since the pharmacists, a father-son team, spent most of their time in the back room playing cards, there wasn't a lot of ID checking going on. My popularity jumped almost overnight as pints of Southern Comfort and sloe gin sold like hotcakes to the high school crowd. To this day the smell of Southern Comfort makes me queasy.