Over the weekend, I spent some of my downtime at a cottage with an old friend. I’ve noticed that spending time in the country, close to nature and to water, really relaxes and rejuvenates me.
My friend’s father is close to 83 years old, and sadly he suffers from dementia. He speaks of wonderful stories, as though they are the 1st time he’s ever shared them. Unfortunately, they are many, many 1st times, sometimes just minutes apart.
He’s gentle and polite, so you need to respond to each of his stories as though they were the 1st for you too. Sometimes your response may be shorter with each iteration, but they always need to be respectful.
At one moment during our conversation, he asked what I do for a living. As he’s not a techie by any means, I said I help people with their computer problems.
“Ah, you go over to their place of work and fix their computers”, he said.
“I don’t need to, as everything is connected now”, I responded.
“So you use Zoom?” he asked.
I was impressed he knew what Zoom was, and said, “Something like that. The computers I talk to are in the cloud”.
“Ah, so you fix the clouds?” he asked.
“That’s right”, I smiled.
The takeaway
One of my favorite questions to ask a candidate during an interview process is, “How do you explain what you do to a 6 year old?”. You now have a new answer to this question. “I fix the clouds”.