From Scott Albregts

I have two stories that I can share. The first one is just an old work story, the other will probably be embarrassing to Jim. Here is some background info on Jim and me first.

Jim and I have known each other for about 8 years. Jim and I worked together in the training organization at BellSouth before he retired. Today we stay in touch with a quarterly luncheon among some training guys and the occasional dinner party.

Story #1: When Jim and I worked together we sat right next to each other in a couple of cubes. We worked with an eclectic group of individuals, but the one that was most challenging was a counterpart in another state. This person was a real talker and even though she was a nice person, a great worker, etc., Jim and I dreaded getting on the phone with this person because they would talk for an hour or two before you could even say "I've got to go". Thank goodness for caller id because that was the only way you could avoid this person and let it go to VM and then respond with an email (we did that quite a bit). Unfortunately, there were times that we had to get on the phone and it would just kill your day. Anyway, Jim and I developed this SOS plan whenever we did have to speak to this person. If one was on and they were ready to get off, the other would always yell something like..."Jim, we have been called into an emergency meeting..." or "Jim, Jeannie (our director at the time) wants to see you right now." Of course, the other person, would stop talking and we would get off the phone. To this day, that person didn't know what we were doing.

Story #2: One time while we were working together our director decided we needed to have a night out as a team because we had been very busy. We went as a group (about 10 of us) and made dinner reservations at NAVA in Buckhead. As you can expect it was a very nice time with drinks, good food and great conversation (at this point I will emphasize the drinks and the great conversation). Anyway, we had dinner and it was time for dessert. I'm not for sure what it was called, but Jim as well as a few others ordered some kind of banana dessert. I'm not for sure what it was but it had a rather large banana sliced up as part of it with a special sweet sauce. After Jim got his, he started making several comments about how BIG his banana was, that it was SWEET and that he would be more that HAPPY to share it with the ladies in the group. Now when you mix several cocktails and some slap happy employees you have a deadly mixture for people to take your words out of context and that is exactly what happen. It got to the point Jim had to stop talking because everytime he said something a bunch of us turned it around on him and started laughing.

Happy Birthday Jim!
Your friend, Scott Albregts