Chicken Little and The Barry Bonds Incident

After my last post regarding my chin's affinity for softballs, a good friend reminded me that I have a clearly defined history of saying exactly the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time. So, I thought I'd share this thoroughly embarrassing gem from my past***. Readers, I give you "The Barry Bonds Incident."

***It is important to note that at the time of the incident, Barry Bonds was pursuing the single-season home run record. In those heady days, he was considered one of baseball's premier assholes but was neither the poster child for baseball's steroid era or the ruination of the sport.

The Barry Bonds Incident
At the dawn of this millennium, I was working for a start-up software company. My job was to design and develop a training curriculum to teach our customers how to use and administer our software. Glamorous stuff, I know. It was a fun job; I met a lot of people and had a blast teaching classes. Frequently, I'd teach a multi-day system administrator class. Often, class participants would be a mix of our customers and our newly hired employees who would eventually be helping our customers to configure and administer the software.

Generally, the system admin class was uneventful. I taught people about the structure of the database, the nature of what could be configured in the software, and provided some examples of how to quickly customize the software. Then, we'd do a ton of exercises that let class participants make the changes. As an instructor, I quickly noticed that participants could be categorized based on their behavior in class.

• One type of person, for example, would always be about 15 pages ahead in the text, doing their own thing, rarely listening or contributing to any group discussion.
• Another type vocally asked questions or declared answers in an attempt to paint themselves as the "most knowledgeable" in the room. Mostly, they were not.
• Another type was the ideal class participant: attentive, responsive, polite, and intelligent. On the whole, most participants fell into this group.
• Perhaps the worst participant type, however, was "The Chicken Little." Often, this person was a customer who had a deer-in-the-headlights expression that was a mix of genuine surprise and barely suppressed terror. Frequently, Chicken Little had been randomly selected to configure or administer the software, a set of tasks that might've been far above their skill level.
  

During one class, I'd spent a great deal of time with a Chicken Little from one of our new and prominent customers: a small-framed lady with a Noriega face and glasses. With each topic I introduced, I felt like I had to talk her down off the ledge because everything I said seemed to drive her toward jumping. I was in a bizarre juggling act of roles: part instructor, part sedative, part self-esteem coach. Honestly, the subject matter could be overwhelming but, at the very least, it was logical and well-documented. If you didn't understand everything discussed in the class, you had a great text to guide you through it. If you could read, you could get it done.

After a couple of days of teaching, I grew tired of seeing the horrified expression on her face with each new topic I introduced. The other participants seemed to be getting everything just fine. They'd ask appropriate questions and would trust that it would make sense (eventually) and that they would master it. This was absolutely not the case with Chicken Little.

Near the end of the course, I introduced a complex concept. The reality of it was that our administrator software greatly simplified the tasks required to implement such a concept into the software. So, the "a-ha" moment of this section was set to be when people understood the complexity of the concept and how that complexity was greatly reduced by our software tool. Well, wouldn't you know it? This was lost on my favorite student. So, I decided to use a little metaphor.

As the class had been chatting about baseball during one of the breaks, I decided that I'd use a baseball reference to highlight the value of our software. Mentally, I formulated my approach: If you were in the Major Leagues, hitting a home run would be pretty tough. This would be the equivalent of life without our administrator software tool. Using our software, however, would be like putting a ball on a tee and having Barry Bonds take a whack at it; it makes hitting a homer very easy. So, I ran through my checklist. Highlight the difficulty without? Check. Use metaphor for how easy it is with? Check. Get a little laugh from everyone? Check.

Time to go to work.

With this in mind, I began to speak. Everything was going pretty well, I thought, until I heard myself say: "It's like putting a ball on a tee and having Barry Bonds whack off on it."

As those words tumbled from my lips out into the ether, I immediately felt the rush of the air being sucked from the room as everyone there gasped. In slow-motion, I saw people staring at me, open-mouthed in disbelief at what they heard. Others were starting their guffaws, tears beginning to stream down their faces. My gaze fixed on Chicken Little: the light in the room danced on her pock-marked cheeks, glinted off her glasses. She became rigid in her seat; her mouth contorted as her face twisted into a confused expression.

"Actually, it's nothing like that. Not at all like that," I immediately said, trying to wipe away the image that I'd just created for everyone. "If a ball was on a tee and he took a whack at it. That's what I meant. The other thing is completely different."

"Why are you looking at me?," Chicken Little implored as if I was in the midst of some freaky fetish fantasy. "Why are you looking at me when you say that?"

After that exchange, the details get a little fuzzy. I do remember that I abruptly concluded class and went to tell my boss, Larry, why I'd be fired in the very near future. To this day, I can't look at Barry Bonds without blushing.