Remembering Brian
This one is going to be rough. I want to tell you about my friend Brian. I worked with Brian off and on for about 15 years, and we were friends for nearly all of that time. Savvy readers will notice the past tense there. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, I need to give you a little history.
Brian was my first boss at IRI, which was my first job in the consumer packaged goods industry. He was the first boss who was my age, well technically a few months younger than me. Our job was to make the bigwigs at Frito-Lay feel good about paying our company millions of dollars a year for data. There’s a strong camaraderie that is created when your small team is surrounded by hundreds of “not your team” people.
(Side note: Brian drove 140 miles every weekday to commute from his house to our office and back. I couldn’t figure out why he chose that job to begin with, or how he managed to keep up that commute for several years. He didn’t mind too much, even before 121 was completed and it could take him 2 hours to get home after work.)
We became friends once Brian decided that I was A) not an idiot, and B) not a douche. He was not a fan of either, and this policy was known far and wide. Brian sported a van dyke with a curled mustache. I remember thinking that he was the spitting image of what a young Colonel Sanders must have looked like. In fact, I think he told me he wore a Colonel Sanders costume for Halloween one year. It’s also possible I just busted his balls about how he should wear that costume every year. Shut up, we were 25 years old and that was hilarious.
Brian is the only person I’ve met whose love for terrible movies surpassed my own. I don’t recall a single instance where I stumped him with a movie quote. I went for the deep cuts too. How many people do you know who would recognize lines from Krull and Remo Williams:The Adventure Begins? That’s what I thought. We would both watch the worst movies we could find over the weekend, and then describe them in excruciating detail on Mondays, complete with whiteboard diagrams.
After about a year, our crew of contractors decided to restructure, and the group split into one team of Brian and myself, and another team of everyone else. Brian and I were a duo supporting many salespeople. He took the West accounts and I took the East accounts. I remember it being exceptionally busy and demanding, but also one of the best experiences of my working career. We both had to watch each other’s backs, and keep the needy masses at bay. It felt like a constant battle of us vs. them, which wasn’t too far from the truth.
Another year or two later, I was hired to work directly for Frito. Brian and I still hung out at work, but not quite as frequently as when we were on the same team. I remember thinking that it was refreshing to interact with more people, and they weren’t nearly as bad as I had thought once I was on the other side of the fence. I never could get Brian to fully believe me about that though.
Since we weren’t talking multiple times a day, Brian made up for the quantity of time with quality. He was incredibly creative when he enjoyed what he was doing. He spent what must have spent hours building an incredibly complex diagram of the various creatures and their relationships on True Blood in PowerPoint. He even animated it so I would understand how different groups came to be and who was banging who.
He also invented the Cilantro Avengers, whose mission was to rid the world of Dr. Ortnalic before he could destroy all cilantro on the planet. Picture multiple stills from the Avengers comic books with most of their costumes turned to a bright green. I loved it, even though I thought Dr. Ortnalic made some excellent points about his objectives. Brian also used to enjoy singing “Don’t stop Pheeleepin’” when he stopped by my cubicle and I was on the phone with someone (who could definitely hear him).
You’re probably wondering why on Earth someone would spend that much time on a cilantro themed joke. Cilantro was a source of much enjoyment and disgust. The two of us spent many hours debating how good cilantro is (Brian’s opinion), or how much it tasted like a freshly grated bar of Irish Spring (a proven fact). He used to derive great pleasure in hitting up the Frito-Lay salad bar for lunch and topping his salad with a fist of cilantro. Imagine the amount of cilantro you could grab in your fist, and put that in a pile on top of your salad. And then he’d eat a big mouthful of nothing but cilantro and laugh when I winced. Ridiculous bastard.
Brian stayed in the same role for many years, while I moved around to different groups and roles. Eventually I moved on to a completely new company. Our lunches became monthly, and then occasionally, and then they became once in a while dinners after work. Crystal would join us most of the time. It was wonderful to have two of my favorite people talking about absolute horseshit (and cilantro) together. Brian and I would still email each other with movie quotes or descriptions, plus he would keep me up to speed on the IRI and Frito gossip. That man knew how to dish.
Brian was laid off from IRI, and got a new job that he never seemed to love. He did that for a couple of years until another round of layoffs put him back into the open job market. That cycle repeated at least once, until finally a role opened up on my team. I thought it would be a blast to work together again, so I hired him to work for me. It felt good to be part of the same team in the same building again.
He did all right in the job for about a year, but then started missing deadlines and clashing with the Sales team. That went on for a few months, until the head of my department told me that Brian had to go. I stalled as long as I could, but I couldn’t change the decision. Firing him was one of the toughest things I’ve done in my professional life. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t my call, I still needed to be the one to tell him. He took it decently well. I don’t think he was surprised that it was coming, which somehow made it even worse. I called him the day after, and he told me we were still cool, but I knew he was just trying to make me feel better about it.
As expected, our relationship took a big hit. We only spoke once a quarter after that. We avoided talking about my current company, and stuck to what mutually disliked coworkers were up to, or sending GIFs from our favorite movies. Once a quarter became twice a year, and then we didn’t talk at all.
Crystal found out through a Facebook post that Brian had taken his own life. His sister had posted an announcement and a tribute to him. Crystal showed me the post, and we both just sat stunned for a while. We never found out any of the details, and I don’t really think I want to know.
I wish I would have checked in, or just showed up at his house with a trash bag of discount DVDs. I let my guilt over firing him keep me from reaching out, and that’s something I’ll regret for a very long time. If you’re reading this, don’t let awkward situations prevent you from talking with someone you care about. As uncomfortable as it will be at first, I promise things could be significantly worse.
I racked my brain trying to figure out how I was supposed to end this posting, but then it hit me — I don’t have to end it. As long as the post is active, and I keep adding memories from time to time, then Brian isn’t truly gone. And whenever I watch a terrible movie, or hear about an old colleague who somehow managed to get promoted, I’ll think about what he would have said. I mean, he would have started with “What the fuck is this shit?”, but I’ll imagine the conversation that would have followed and feel happy. It helps, but I’ll always miss my friend.
