For many of us in the United States we are close to our one-year Anniversary of “change.” For me, March 13th is the marker, that is the day my children were sent home from school. Many of us have stories from this year; about working from home, working with our kids around, or our pets, or other family members. So in hopes of adding a light hearted moment and making people smile, I wanted to share one of my favorite stories from this year. This is Squish. 

Squish’s “dad” is Jeff and Jeff’s official title at DataXstream is “Sales Engineer” and I am happy to say that I work with Jeff frequently. We talk about the website, about changes, about organization, about tracking, about how to learn how users navigate. We talk about images and Jeff helps with videos and demos too. We frequently joke that he needs to be cloned. Jeff’s fiancé is a Veterinary Technician, and they have a nice collection of critters at their house. But Squish is the one in all the stories. 

This is Jeff and another family member “Philly Cheesesteak.”

About a month ago Jeff told me a story that cracked me up and I told our CEO and he quipped “The Hazards of Working at Home” and so in recognition of our anniversary and with Jeff’s permission, here is a story about Squish.

Squish is turning one this month, so she’s a baby. And like many babies Squish likes to be right in the thick of things. Jeff was working on something from home and heard that repetitive and annoying noise the keyboard makes when a key is continuously pressed. He turned to see Squish sitting on the keyboard. And that his screen was open to “Teams” and laughed and asked Squish if she was sending a message “TRERRRRRRRRRRRRRR$%REERTEERTERT” style. And then he says his heart stopped. Because it wasn’t open to a message to someone within DataXstream. It was open to Gloria, who works at a DataXstream customer company and Jeff has never personally interacted with Gloria.  

“I have been terrified to say anything about it… the level of panic when I saw it was not to an employee but to a customer, and then I remembered the Gloria quote on our website and I realized who she was… it’s a very good thing I took my blood pressure medicine that day” 

So here is to a year of zoom meetings interrupted by barking dogs and teams messages sent by kittens and coworkers whose children upstage them in meetings and signs on the door to tweens “I am in a meeting, do not open this door unless the house is on fire or you are bleeding.” 

It has been a tough year. We do not make light of the losses this year has brought so many but we hope we can all keep finding things to smile about and keep moving forward. Stay Safe. All the Best, the DataXstream Team & Squish