John

Airplanes are neither like conference sessions nor lunch hours. You aren’t sitting in front of a session speaker who consumes your attention. You aren’t looking for a place to sit and eat. No, you have an *assigned* seat (unless you’re on Southwest…). Yet, somehow, you can easily remain anonymous sitting 0.5 inches from the person next to you. That 0.5 inches is all the excuse I need to avoid contact!

But i was still thinking about my wife–the woman who never met a stranger and who enhanced our experiences by making friends wherever we go. I was flying Southwest, but I drew a B boarding pass. That meant that all the window and aisle seats were occupied by the time I made my way down the aisle. (Looking from the front of the plane all the open seats were in the middle. Why do people do that?) Picking a seat in this situation is weird. I don’t want to pick a seat between two women for fear of looking like I’m a flirt. Even choosing an open seat between a man and a woman could be incorrectly construed. My preference is to find an open seat between two men. I scanned the faces as I walked down the aisle toward the back. Fear struck. Would I get all the way to the back without making a choice? *That* would be embarrassing. A few rows beyond the exit rows, I spotted a couple of guys who didn’t look too settled in. I excused myself and asked for clearance to take the middle seat. Granted.

I have fast-forwarded to the plane ride home at the end of the conference. Both of my seat-mates immediately pulled out books to read. It seemed like it was going to be a quiet flight home. Safe at last!

I noticed that the man to my right, John, a middle-aged sales guy of medium height, short tousled hair, and broad shoulders, was reading a copy of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success. Being enamored with Gladwell’s previous work, Outliers is on my to-read list. I couldn’t help myself. I asked John about the book. He said:

My company is going through a lot of changes right now. I was told that this book might help us get through them.

I asked about the company, his job, and the changes. It turns out that John is the perfect bookend opposite Reggie the IT guy from a wine manufacturer. John told me that his company produces pallets–the portable platforms used for storing or moving cargo or freight. They have more than 70 million pallets out there. Yeah. Millions. Reggie’s company is one of their customers. Those million+ cases of wine go out on John’s pallets.The changes are innovation and technology. Business is good, and they are hoping changes will make it better.

Here’s the thing that intrigued me: The pallets are marked with RFID chips. These chips are used to track product and location information. John told me that these RFID chips are eventually going to mark the cases and the bottles such that they will know exactly when and where each bottle of wine is sold. They will be able to predict with amazing accuracy when the local grocery store will run out of wine and speed up or delay the next shipment.

Reggie’s 32 million daily transactions plus John’s 70 million RFID-enabled pallets mean lots and lots and lots of data.

People really can be quite fascinating.

Reggie

It was lunch time at the conference. Flying solo during the presentations is easy since everyone is preoccupied with the session speaker. Lunch is different. It’s not as easy for the interaction-averse (like me) to hide.

I filled my plate from the vendor-supplied buffet and looked for an open seat. I saw a man sitting alone at one of the small tables. I fought down my natural tendency to leave him–and everyone else–alone and approached, asking him if I could join him. Of course. He seemed happy to have me join him.

I introduced myself, shook his hand, and spotted his name and his company’s name on the badge hanging from his conference-supplied lanyard. Reggie, an IT guy for a major wine bottler. As we ate, I asked him many questions about his job and his company. What I learned is priceless.

Reggie told me that his company ships more than 1 million cases of wine per day. That’s cases. As in cases of 12 or 24 bottles. That is a bunch of product! Reggie’s worked for the company for 22 years–all of it in IT. He wrote their first inventory database. He wrote the database–still running on 1990′s vintage DEC hardware–that tracks the company’s brandy supply. He is also in charge of a database that takes in 32 million (yes, million) transactions per night. Each transaction details a single sale and includes where the wine was purchased, the age and sex of the purchaser, and what else was purchased on the receipt. The company uses this information to decide what, where, when, and how to advertise. They understand what’s selling and what’s not. They understand who is buying and who is not.

When I asked about the economy’s effect on his business, he said, “When times are good, people drink. When times are hard, people drink but they spend less on it.”

Sometimes speaking up yields an interesting story.