Zak: The Business Man

Zak wrote this post on Facebook, and I thought I'd just cut & paste it here for everyone who hasn't read it yet. Although I was sad to be apart from him, I'm glad he had this opportunity to go. I'm really confident he'll get this promotion, it's pretty much a perfect fit for him. I'm so proud of him! :) Here's his trip, in his own words.

I left Tuesday evening out of our little regional airport. I felt like a pretty cool businessman until I saw the horde of Beta Theta Whatevers getting on the plane for their spring break trip. I flew on a Bombardier Q400, which is a turboprop plane. Pretty cool. I had a brief layover in Seattle. The airport there is very cool, very interesting architecture. I had a brief jump from there to Portland, where I sat next to a man who'd had so much to drink, it was coming through his skin. My favorite! Fortunately, he was passed out for all but 3 minutes of the flight. I got into Portland around 10pm, where I was directed to get on the wrong shuttle and got sent to the wrong hotel. I eventually sorted it out and got to my room at approximately 11pm. I startled my roommate pretty badly, haha.

Wednesday was my first real day of training. We talked about colored stones, tweezers, and the minutiae of diamonds. We also spent time learning how to estimate diamond prices based on their attributes, an important skill for the custom design work.

Thursday was the first day we actually got to play around with the CounterSketch program. It lets you customize and tweak lots of aspects of a library of 3000+ ring designs. I picked it up pretty quickly, because it is a pretty straightforward program. Today was also the first day we worked with the CEO of the company, Sean Ritchie. He is the third generation of the family to run the company. He is a very nice, laid back guy. I tried to make a good impression, but you never know...

Friday was for me, the hardest part: the sales presentation. I would write more details, but it was pretty straightforward. We also worked on some of the more advanced aspects of the program. Or at least I did. Friday was also everyone's last day, so everyone went home. Except me. I got to stay in the hotel alone with only a warm pizza for companionship. It wasn't that bad. I flew home Saturday morning, and got home around 11am. It was very nice to be home.

The training was also kind of a selection process. They brought in 8 guys for the training, but they only have 3 computers. So I tried my best to apply my wealth of diamond and gem trivia, and my considerable aptitude for moving scroll bars and sliders on computers to the task. My boss, Mat, said he heard from both his boss and some of the people in the corporate office that I really impressed everyone there. So I am hoping that translates to me being selected. Cross your fingers for me, I will hear on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

TL;DR: I went to Portland on a business trip to get trained on using a custom jewelry design program.

Oh, and here is a ring I designed.