2020 Sept – Fruit Flies & Flybys, a lesson of synchronicity
Synchronicity, a term used by Albert Einstein, that restores credence to coincidence. If occurrences that have no causal relationship to each other, but are grouped in a way that has meaning to the observer… then they have meaning. Don’t try too hard to rationalize the abstract.
Yesterday may have been my very last trip to the Google Dublin office… maybe. Long overdue, and in limbo, 5 months since my official departure, and held up in, well you know, 2020. I tried many times to log tickets to facilities and security, anything to find a way to retrieve my personal belongings left behind in March. I obsessed about this as if this junk had any big value. A few folders of achievements, thank you cards through 7 years, some gifts, a rickshaw toy from India, a Captain America keepsake, a bottle of bourbon… and some cables and equipment that I could use now in my home office.
A few years ago, I crossed fates with a total legend in Google’s facility team, Aidan Cooney. A real north-sider, with a Dublin city streets accent, a scrappy lean stature no more than 5’2”. But he probably made a deadly featherweight in his day. Always buzzing about the office, like a field agent, on point, on mission. He was like the Terminator in our large grouping of Google HQ buildings – when he was set to task, it was going to get done.
I was busy managing my large team of 60, that took up about the entire floor, including a micro-kitchen (Google’s term for breakroom), and we had been having increasing problems with fruit flies. It was getting out of hand, flies everywhere in the sink, and at the desks, my reps and managers constantly filing tickets to ask for help but not getting anywhere. So I stepped in to escalate with authority. And terminator met terminator head to head, when I found out that Aidan was assigned to the case.
He’d run around diagnosing the complaint, setting his team and resources to a new frequent rotation of cleanings, weekend exterminations, poster awareness campaigns, structural dampness assessments… I mean this guy was deadly. Alas, little changed about our infestation, respawning faster than we could kill them.
So it was a little embarrassing, amidst my impatient clamoring for results, that I left a plate of unfinished lunch at my desk one day in a rush to a meeting. It was a rare moment of hasty negligence on my part. And wouldn’t you know it, Aidan made his rounds just in time to catch this indiscretion – confirmed with my surrounding team, this “was indeed, Paul Carreo’s desk?”, and took a picture of my food. Mortifying! Caught by the assassin!
My loyal team of course informed me what happened when I returned. Putting every shred of my ego aside, and recalling how insistent I had been that our fruit fly issue was not a team hygiene issue, I wrote him an immediate apology note. I was wrong and we needed to meet facilities halfway. Aidan and I had a nice chat later in person, him from his world, me from mine, but not so different in our approach for results.
We became good friends. And that paid off many times in the future. Like the time I left my bike overnight in the bike pen, and it got confiscated. Normally they just donate the bikes straight off, but Aidan knew a way to get it back to me. Or the time he helped me negotiate a floor move to sweeter digs for my team. Or even just the gossip we shared in the rare moments when we both caught our breaths at a breakroom for coffee. I’d let him know what the site leaders were planning for people expansion, he’d share what rumors for renovations they were getting approved. There was shared respect and appreciation in every passing hallway encounter throughout our very different, very busy days.
So it was a great relief this week, when I tried one last futile attempt to retrieve my personal belongings from an office, still on lockdown, and in a time when I was feeling most ready for closure in transition to other job prospects – that Aidan picked up the case ticket.
I made my final walk of shame into the office lobby, as an ex-Googler, and found my box of stuff all neatly packed for me. When I found some equipment missing, the security guard made a quick phone call, and who appeared like Batman around the corner in minutes? You guessed it, the Terminator himself. He was buzzing around like he was as busy as ever, even without the 5000 employees raking havoc on his turf. He was warm and told me how most things had been cleared and thrown out, but he had kept a special eye on my stuff, even knew who had taken my missing equipment, assuming it was Google property. He resolved that in 2 minutes flat, and my belongings were finally all in hand.
We chatted a bit longer, exchanged a bit of gossip about what’s to come in both our now diverging fates. I told him what a pleasure it was getting to know him. And of course, I made the lockdown joke, “at least you could finally get that fruit fly issue under control!”, to which he froze briefly in recollection, then threw his head back in a magical roar of laughter.
I walked home with my box of crap, that I now don’t even think I ever really needed. Realizing it was only my excuse for a richer, more synchronous farewell. Synchronicity – my way of imbuing meaning to a collection of occurrences, or a box of crap. If I had left Google any other year, it wouldn’t have gone this way, it wouldn’t be so drawn out, I would’ve packed my own stuff, said some random goodbyes to random people. Maybe even been escorted out by security.
Instead, I got a nice send-off from a friend. One that helped me recall the karma of good work, honest work, & shared values with good people. A send-off that helped me understand my effect on others, and reflect on what we leave behind. Reflections on diverging fates with those people throughout our lives that pass over to legend.
And… speaking of legends, thanks and praise for Aidan, in case this homage ever reaches you literally or karmically. Your fate is tied to good fortune in this world, my friend, may our paths cross over again.
Paul Carreo 