Choosing only five is a very hard task. I'm sure this company doesn't have a monopoly on strange moments, but we have had our share. Warning: The closer you get to No. 3 and lower, the more you might want to make sure you're not eating, or about to eat, or have just eaten.
5. Bleeding but unbowed: In the late 80s, off to the train station, heading into Manhattan for our first meeting on a potential opportunity with the NBC television network (on what was to become CNBC), a young female colleague and I see our train arriving at the station as we rush down the long stairway to the platform.
About six stairs from the bottom, she catches a heel, trips, and rolls all the way down. The train doors are open. The conductor yells all aboard. She is laying on the platform.
I say, "Are you okay?"
She gets up slowly and says yes, she thinks so.
I say, "We can't go . . . we won't go."
She says, "No, I'm okay."
Without pause, I say, "Okay, then let's go!"
Her stockings are torn. Her shin is bleeding. She limps onto the train.
The next morning she arrives at the office on crutches with her leg bandaged. She left the company soon after.
4. Desperate times/Desperate measures: In the mid-90s, during the ride back to O'Hare from downtown, the cab breaks down on the Interstate. I desperately want to make the flight back home. The driver calls for backup, but there's no time to waste.
I ask my young female colleague if she's up for hitchhiking the rest of the way. She looks at me as if I'm crazy, but she says sure. We stand together on the shoulder. Cars and trucks flying by. I stick out my thumb.
I didn't ask her to lift her dress, like in that old movie.
I thought about it.
I admit it.
But I didn't ask.
Honest.
3. Rice everywhere: It's around 2003, and I'm moderating two groups with senior-level executives in New York City on very short notice--with very large incentives involved. Back-to-back two-hour groups. Big crowd of clients in the back room, with Chinese food being served.
While the second group of senior executives is getting seated, I go into the back room, grab a plate of rice to wolf down, and listen to client feedback on the first group. The first forkful of rice goes down the wrong way and gets stuck.
I can't quite breathe, but not so much as to make me Heimlich-able. Everybody notices the distress I'm trying desperately to hide; someone rushes over a bottle of water. I take one sip, and the water itself gets stuck in the same place as the rice. The water creates a kind of reverse-pump action as I rush away from the clients just as they are, in fact, rushing away from me. Water-laced rice bits spray everywhere.
I recover physically immediately, apologize profusely, and, with game face on, tell them I am ready for the second group. None will have it, though. The seated senior executive respondents are sent home with big incentive checks in hand for no work at all, and the group is rescheduled.
"I could have done it," I tell the client group.
"Yeah, we know, Scott," they reply. "But frankly, we couldn't bear the thought of spending the next two hours in this room the way you've left it."
The rice itself had already been vacuumed up by the facility staff. But I knew (and I suppose you can imagine) what my clients meant.
2. Black bean soup: It's the late 90s, and I'm at lunch with a client prior to a presentation to 20 or so of his internal clients. I have a sandwich and black bean soup.
I've always been pretty active in presentations -- move around a lot, talk loud, smile a lot, etc. After the presentation I stop over at a colleague's house. He opens the door, takes one look at me, and says, "Jesus, Scott what the f**k happened to your mouth?"
I run into his bathroom, look in the mirror, and I see that my two front teeth are both partially covered with black bean skin. I look like I have some serious tooth and gum disease.
The next day I walk into the office and right upstairs to the desk of a young colleague who had been with me at the presentation and had sat in the front row.
I said to him, "Tom, why the f**k didn't you tell me? How could you let me embarrass myself like that?"
He says, "Honest to God, Scott, I thought you had some kind of real problem with your teeth."
And the No. 1, nothing-could-ever-come-close, most bizarre moment in Taylor Group history . . .
1. Breast request: It's the mid-90s, and I'm moderating a group of small business owners. Big crowd of clients in the back room. We're almost through respondent introductions when I notice that a woman who has already introduced herself is listing a little to the left and has an odd, not exactly fully conscious look on her face.
I walk over behind her chair, put my hand gently on her shoulder, and ask softly, "Are you okay?"
She responds, "Hold my breast?"
I pull my hand away like her shoulder is a hot poker and say, "Excuse me?"
"Please, hold my breast?" she says again.
I admit, for a split second the thought occurred to me, "Maybe for some medical reason I should hold her breast." But I held back.
In a matter of seconds (that felt like an hour), a facility person came in and helped me help the woman out into the waiting area. Back with the respondents, I promised them that what they just experienced was not a psychological experiment of any kind; the group proceeded as if nothing had happened (astonishing in its own right).
I later learned that the woman had had a seizure of some sort, had recovered quickly with no memory of what had happened, and wanted to come back into the group. The facility people politely demurred.
The audiotape capturing the incident remains somewhere in storage. But even if that tape is lost forever, there are many eyewitnesses who will testify.
I didn't dream that a respondent asked me to hold her breast. It happened.
Top that.
