Back 40 News
Publishing an interview with a toll booth worker involves a fair amount of red tape. After making numerous trips to the Turnpike Authority to arrange the interview, coordinate schedules and conduct the interview, Teddy Burch, managing editor,racked up quite a few toll charges. The final straw was showing up at the westbound booth to take pictures and then being told that Stan was working the east bound route. “Stan was only ten feet away from me, but to shoot photos, I had to go around and it cost me another dollar.”
Potential clients say the darndest things. This month, I have a new, all time favorite. A women called to inquire about our website design services. She asked, “How much to slap a web page up on the Internet?” That was an instant classic. I told her we don’t slap pages up on the Internet. What we do is more of a process of discovery and development where we work with the client to create the project. Click.
This month, we welcome the return of Sarah Bailey, who recently graduated from UCO’s design department. Sarah interned at Back40 earlier this year. We were able to secure her commitment with Back40 through hours of heated negotiations and the promise we wouldn’t make her drive any go carts. “Sarah is a talented designer. The only thing I have seen her struggle with is driving go carts at Pole Position in Oklahoma City. The carts go 40miles-per-hour; she goes like 10 — max.” explains Dave.
We learned some interesting facts about the Back40 staff at one of our recent company get-togethers. While dining on Chinette, we played a game where each staff member told two lies and one truth about themselves. The rest of us had to guess which one was the truth. Here are some of the truth highlights.
In her freshman year at OU, Peyton Hutchison, project manager, flew to Paris for a long weekend without her parents ever knowing. Mecca Seymour, bookkeeper, is a former McLoud, Oklahoma homecoming queen. Upon graduating high school, Josh Hatfield, intern, and a few friends drove to New Jersey, drank a Gatorade and immediately turned his car around and returned to Texas. Sandy Miller, CFO, was a caretaker on Don Henley’s (the Eagles) Malibu ranch. Lathen Kamas, designer, claims to have been able to dunk a basketball since he was fourteen. We may have to run some clinical studies on that one.
Then there were shocking revelations like Jaimi Aycock, designer, cannot swim. Dave Miller, President, once had breakfast with Peanut’s creator, Charles Schultz. Dustin Brewer, web designer, played baseball in the Grand Canyon. We had him explain how that event came about, but we had to stop him because we became even more confused.
Most all the truths were more interesting than the lies, except for Chad Dahlgren, project manager, whose truth was that he was in a band. His lie was that he worked as Mickey Mouse part-time at Disney World while he was in college. Most of us fell for that one. Picturing Chad in a Mickey outfit was to good not to be true.
