Once again during our business trip we start talking about different trips and stories. Here is another from “My Boss”.
People often ask me what it was like being a woman in technology in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Honestly, it wasn’t much different than it is today.
Walk into a room with four technology professionals, and chances are only one is a woman. Back then, most of the executives I worked with were men. Over the course of my career, I can only remember a couple of situations that made me genuinely uncomfortable.
This is one of them—although, looking back, it’s impossible not to laugh.
At the time, I was working for a consulting firm that had just landed one of its largest software implementation projects. The client operated more than forty locations, and the engagement was a big win for the company.
Inside the consulting firm, I had earned the nickname “Stealth.”
I wasn’t the loudest consultant. I wasn’t the one trying to impress everyone in the room. I simply kept my head down, worked hard, and had a habit of finishing projects that everyone else thought would take months.
The afternoon before I was scheduled to fly out, my project manager called.
“I need you to lead the design session for the project and job costing module.”
I paused.
“I’ve never implemented that module before.”
There was silence for a second.
Then he said, “You’ll figure it out.”
That was the entire training program.
I looked at the clock and realized I had about twelve hours before I needed to be on an airplane. Somewhere between packing my suitcase and getting a few hours of sleep, I also needed to become an expert.
Fortunately, software has always made sense to me.
I spent the night reading documentation, mapping processes, building examples, and creating the presentation. By morning, I had convinced myself I knew exactly what I was doing.
Or at least I looked like I did.
The presentation went surprisingly well.
There were ten people in the room—nine men and one woman—with my project manager sitting beside me. Anyone who has worked in consulting knows there’s always someone silently fact-checking every word that comes out of your mouth.
I expected questions.
I expected someone to catch me.
Instead, every recommendation was accepted.
By the end of the meeting, one of the client’s project managers—I’ll call him Xxxla—had become one of my biggest supporters.
A few weeks later, my project manager was reassigned, and I was told I’d be traveling with Xxxla to roll out the system at two additional facilities.
He was a genuinely kind man.
He was also very much a product of his generation.
He had an endless supply of jokes that today would probably earn a trip to Human Resources. I never laughed very hard, but I also never took offense. I understood that, at the time, women leading enterprise software implementations were still relatively uncommon.
For the most part, we worked well together.
There was just one thing.
Every single time we passed a Hooters, he’d ask if I wanted to stop.
Breakfast.
Lunch.
Dinner.
It didn’t seem to matter what time of day it was.
“There it is,” he’d say with a grin. “Let’s eat.”
Every time, I’d politely decline.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Maybe later.”
As the trip went on, it became our running joke.
On our final evening, we pulled into the hotel parking lot.
Only then did I notice that the hotel he had booked was practically next door to a Hooters.
He smiled.
“Before we call it a night… let’s stop over there for dinner.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Xxxla,” I said, “I’m not going to Hooters with you. Not tonight. Not ever.”
Without missing a beat, he looked at me with complete sincerity.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I only go there because they have great chicken breast.”
I laughed so hard I could barely answer him.
It was the perfect deadpan delivery.
He honestly expected me to believe that the attraction of Hooters had absolutely nothing to do with the young women in orange shorts and white tank tops, and everything to do with the menu.
To this day, whenever someone tells me they go to Hooters “for the food,” I think of Xxxla and his legendary claim about the “great chicken breast.”
After all these years, I’ve forgotten hundreds of meetings, thousands of hours of travel, and countless software implementations.
But I’ll never forget the man who insisted—with a perfectly straight face—that he only went to Hooters for the chicken breast.
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