Why Am I Still Alive? Pt. 7: Enron part 1 - Jeff Skilling and an Unwanted Text Message

(This post is part of a series of 50+ short stories from my adventures over the years. It will be eventually assembled into a book under the same title.)

It was perhaps my second or third year consulting at Enron with Diamond Management Consultants and we were designing (my job) and coding (the team’s job) online trading systems for Enron, the energy giant who been rated for seven years in a row the “Most Innovative Company in the World” by Fortune magazine. These systems were designed to ultimately replace the paper and pit-based trading processes of yesteryear. 

After several months of gathering requirements and understanding the trading process, I had created a prototype. Using a mix of FrontPage and hyperlinked PowerPoint I created a mock-up of our first system - gas trading - for a reveal to the senior executives. In the room were Dan Reck, Chris Kravis (our two primary bosses), my boss Jeff Huff, and as a surprise, Jeff Skilling himself who had made an entrance in the back of the room. 

Nervous but with confidence I began to share the navigation of the mocked-up GUI with the leaders in the room. Meanwhile running behind the scenes on my laptop connected to the projector was a new version of Yahoo Messenger which we had begun using extensively as the leading-edge tech cutthroats we were. Five minutes into the presentation and mid-sentence a popup appeared in the upper right corner of the screen. I had failed to shut down Yahoo Messenger. And there for all to read including the 40 execs in the room as well as my boss and team was a text from an obnoxious friend of mine, “Hey fuckface! Coyle! What the fuck are you doing right now???” 

I nervously tried to kill the message, breaking stride with my monologue, and a second later as I minimized the unwanted message I lifted my eyes to the room, and every single person - including Jeff Skilling - was laughing their asses off. Wiping a tear from his eye with his sleeve my client boss said simply, “that was hilarious - keep going, Coyle.” And so… I did.

PS: (Me with hair…) Due to “living” at the Hyatt for 2 years, every week I was awarded the presidential suite which was two floors and featured a grand piano and a bathroom with a full-on waterfall between two Greek Pillars. Of course, I was hardly there as we worked from 8 am to midnight every day.