I sat next to the coffee machine. I’d never seen one in real life before. A pot on top of hot coffee. A pot underneath being filled. The filters. The smell.
My first client. A busy team around me. I still remember them years and years on. The senior team leader was the oldest in the room at 26, the managers who would drop in from time to time were 29. I was 18, before I went to university. They named me “youth”, and when I wore a white shirt and striped tie I could have been in school uniform.
Among the other junior members of the team there was FedEx, who was the one who had to take some documents to Aberdeen overnight (I really wanted to go on that mission), and H. Because that was the first letter of his name.
I think that was the only time I worked in a place with nicknames.
And there was an energy in that team. That came as much from the nicknames and camaraderie as it did from the coffee. Some of it may have been deliberate but I suspect it was as much as anything accidental — especially as it wasn’t there in my next team. And it definitely didn’t feel imposed. It was just natural.
As I look around the untied team now, I’m conscious to ask where does that energy come from? How collectively do we motivate each other? Will people remember this in a positive light, years into the future? And who knows what the results will be?
