Can you pinpoint a phone call that literally changed your life? Are you able to trace significant events in your life back to the a time and place when a certain number showed up on your cell phone's screen?
It was almost a year ago to the date; January 18, 2010. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I was at the CVS/Pharmacy at 87th and Lexington on my lunch break, pickup up something I had a coupon for (I think they were Life Saver mints, but I can't quite remember). What I do remember, while standing by the greeting card section, is my cell phone ringing. I picked up the phone to screen the call, and noticed a 508 area code on the screen; it was a number I had not saved in my phone. "Hello?" "Hi, is this Joe DeGrandis?" "Yes it is" "Hi, this is Kathleen from Genzyme Genetics." Kathleen went on to tell me a little about their genetics laboratory, about the clients they work with and the sorts of genetic and diagnostic testing they offered. One thing that I remember crystal clear is her telling me that "if offered the job, the company will give you a car to use." At that time, this was so foreign, since I'd lived in New York City for close to seven years and had gotten by sans automobile, usually on foot and via mass transit.
Flash forward to the present. Since that phone call last January 18, I have learned a great deal more about the business of American healthcare as a representative for a laboratory company than I ever thought possible. It's been exhausting, exciting, intriguing, frustrating, and enriching, to say the least. There were crash courses in genetics and reproduction, and there were awkward encounters with doctors and medical personnel. There were new routes explored, new towns navigated, and the feeling of a "smaller" city now that I had a car to get from point A to B. Orange parking ticket enveloped piled up, which culminated into the most inconvenient (but cheapest!) garage across town. Later, I went back to street parking and found that my life revolved around moving the car when it was time for the street cleaner to come by. There were new colleagues, new bosses, and even new companies; Genzyme Genetics broke away from its parent company and found "new parents" in LabCorp. Then there was an even newer boss in the end, and a sales training course unlike anything I'd experienced before. There was some satisfaction and confidence when it started to come together; less and less awkward encounters and more positive interactions and much more autonomy.
Had I missed Kathleen's call, would all of this never have happened? Subsequently, I arranged for an interview that Thursday, January 21. No one showed up. We rescheduled for Monday, February 15, and I met my future boss, and the boss's boss (the latter became my boss when the former left the company). The follow-up interview was on a slushy day the following week, Thursday, February 25, and the call to offer me the job came wile I was in Florida on Friday, March 5.
Had I missed the initial call, I probably would have called right back, and set up the interview. But in the interim, might they have scheduled an interview with someone who would have trumped me? I shall never know. None of us will ever know if we missed "that call" how life may have changed-or not-but either way, here we are. All we can do is look back, reflect, and draw inspiration from those moments we can successfully peg as "live changing."
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