Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Cleaning and MacroMind

Left the trades. Can you blame me?


So, what to do immediately? Got a job at Brooms Unlimited. Yes, back to the old standby.


They handled many small client accounts. Brooms also had an account with Arthur Andersen. Loved days with A.A. accounts. You would get 4 units in the same building. Could get them all clean in 4 hours and paid for a whole day.


About 2 months into cleaning I am sent to clean at a business on Wolfram Street; and my life is about to change.

The job on wolfram is a small business with a kitchen. They need the place swept, vacuumed, bathroom cleaned, kitchen cleaned, dishes washed.

It's a small bustling company. And, the phone's ringing away. Marc Canter, my future boss, asks me, "Do you know how to answer a phone?"

That's all it took was a wry look of disbelief that any human being could not answer a phone, and asking the name of the company.

He hired me that day. However, I did let him know that Brooms got a two week notice.


MacroMind was at the time a small company in Chicago. With two spaces down the street from each other. One space was the office, the other space was the studio with a first floor mail room. The studio is where all the computer artists and programmers worked together. The office was the logistical part of the company, accounting, sales, customer service, support. It was a very Organic company. There were under 30 of us.

When I came on board the big project was MacroMind Director. Animation software for the Macintosh / Apple system. This is 'pre' Swivel 3D kiddies. I can still remember the day we got the 512K computers in; and were excited at the amount of memory they held.

Still crisply remember the day one of the first midi cards came in. It was cutting edge at the time.

Could have stayed with MacroMind forever. Grew from a reception job to administrative assistant to the president in no time. Got to beta-test new software. I could make a system crash faster than anybody, plus accurately log how it happened.

The company got an offer to move to California. However, I was newly married and had to stay behind.

So, the company left just the same as it came in for me. Helped them pack. Saw them off. Cleaned up the space. Turned over the keys.

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