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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I once stood next to Bill Goldberg in the Atlanta airport, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share something I learned by taking a wrong turn in Seattle.
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What I Learned Yesterday:
About 10 years or so ago I was working at the bookstore and I had just been promoted and given the responsibility of organizing the e-commerce operations for the company. Our company had its own distribution warehouse and it was designed to send one massive order to each store every week. It was not at all designed to send several small orders to customers all over the country every day.
We knew that it would take a lot of work to scope out the features of the website, build the databases, design the front end, design and connect all of the APIs and hooks into our inventory management system, and many other things that would be necessary before we could start selling online. We decided that while that stuff was being done, we could go ahead and generate some income and learn some operational procedures by selling on third party marketplaces like eBay and Amazon.
Amazon had a third party sellers conference each year and we thought it would be good for us to attend. Since I’d only been at my current position for about 3 months and I was working closely with the president of the company, we decided that both of us would attend the conference.
I had never been to Seattle before, or anywhere in the Pacific Northwest for that matter. I was really looking forward to the trip. I had mixed feelings about traveling with the company president. On one hand, he and I got along really well and had a good rapport, on the other hand, I was apprehensive about it. I didn’t know if he ever took the tie off and relaxed, or if he would be working the entire time we were there. I wanted to see a few things while we were there, but I knew that business duties had to come first.
Among the things I wanted to see was the Pike Place Fish Market, the original Starbucks, and the Space Needle. Since he was also a big coffee fan and I figured it would be a quick stop, I decided to approach the subject by going the Starbucks route. He said that if time allowed, that we might have time to check it out.
The conference mostly took place at a hotel near the airport and one day of the event took place at Amazon’s headquarters. I don’t think Amazon is in the same location now, but neither location was near downtown or the stuff I wanted to see. Fortunately, we had rented a car for our trip, so one evening after the conference portion of the day was over, he decided he wanted to check out a Barnes and Noble downtown. This was before the invention of the smart phone.
Being a geek for as long as I can remember, I had owned a Pocket PC for a few years at that point. I started out with the HP Jornada but had since moved on to the Dell Axim x5. It didn’t have a cell connection, of course, and the wifi card was an add-on option I didn’t have. Being the always thinking ahead type of guy that I am, I downloaded some downtown Seattle maps from my Microsoft Streets & Trips software before I left home.
We parked the car near the fish market and walked up the hill to to Pike Place. We were too late to see the fish tossing, so we walked over to Starbucks and checked it out. Back then, the only place you could get their Pike Place Roast was at the original location. We both got ourselves a cup and I purchased a couple of ceramic mugs to commemorate my visit.
Once we left Starbucks we had business to attend to. The primary reason we had made the trip downtown was so that he could check out a couple of bookstores in the area, one of them being a Barnes & Noble. He liked checking out what other stores did so he could get ideas. I pulled out my trusty Pocket PC and did a map search for Barnes & Noble. We looked at the map, saw that it was pretty close to our location and headed off on foot.
We walked for quite a while and had not yet arrived at Barnes & Noble. I pulled out the map again, referenced our current location, and then steered us off in the right direction. We again walked for quite a while, and then a while longer. Before long we looked up, and realize that we were way off course. I had managed to navigate us about a mile out of the way and we were now standing about 2 blocks away from the Space Needle.
I had mixed feelings again. On one hand, I was embarrassed that I had managed to navigate so far off course. On the other hand, I had accidentally managed to navigate us close to one of the things that I’d hoped to visit. We looked back at the map to see how far it was to Barnes & Noble and then he asked me if I wanted to check out the Space Needle. I think you can guess how I answered that question.
We walked the rest of the way there and walked around the grounds a bit. We then bought tickets and rode the elevator to the top. The view was amazing. The Pacific Northwest is truly beautiful and the view from the top of the tower is hard to beat I’m sure. We had a 360º view of Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountain Range to the west, Mount Rainier and the Seattle skyline to the south, and the Cascade Mountains to the east.
We took our time and really enjoyed the view. The Seahawks were playing the Cowboys in a preseason NFL game that night and we could see inside the stadium a bit. Our timing was perfect. We had arrived with enough daylight to see the landscape in the daytime, but soon the sun was setting and the city lit up for night life. It was a whole other experience getting to enjoy the night view of it all.
After we’d had our fill, we rode the elevator back down and check out a few things around the area before eventually making our way back to the car.
Here’s what I learned.
Sometimes we get turned around. Despite our best efforts and careful planning, we can end up in places we didn’t expect. When that happens, don’t fret. Check your options. Maybe you’ve just stumbled into a happy accident. Make the most of it. Life only happens once and that happy accidents may just provide you with an opportunity you wouldn’t have had otherwise, and may not get again.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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