What, No Trenchcoat?

You don’t run into that guy every day.

I’ve been assigned to a special task force team to evaluate vendors for a multi-million dollar service contract to be awarded by Corporate. I assure you, the inherent coolness that comes with the title “task force” is by no means reached by the duties that this collective of functional experts shall carry out. Most task forces get to do things like recon, espionage, and the occasional elimination of their mark. I get to read maintenance proposals and come up with intuitive questions to gauge their capabilities.

(The questions I’ve written down? Yeah, that’s a blog for another day.)

As enlightening as 80 page performance index proposals are, all the competing bids say essentially the same exact thing – “Hire Me! I’m Awesome!” And while they read like tax code but with the vigor of Ashton Kutcher, they don’t exactly differentiate the all-stars from the scrubs. And since we don’t want no scrubs, we bring in the vendors one-by-one for a formal presentation. We do this for two reasons. First, it allows us to get to know those who will be potentially working hard for the money over the term of the new contract. Second, we want to see if those public speaking courses they took in B-school are really worthwhile.

The first vendor today, we’ll call them Dinder Mufflin, had a very nice presentation, strong enough to warrant further consideration. They arrived as a team of three, but clearly, one of them was more comfortable fielding questions that his team members. In this regard, he was Throckmortonesque. While he may have been wearing a sharp black suit with a slick yellow tie, and spoke with a slight Midwest accent, the thing I will remember most about him will be his name.

“Good afternoon. On behalf of Dinder Mufflin, my name is Derrick McGruff.”

The initial reason for the name recall? You don’t meet many Derricks these days. In history, the 5 most famous Derricks (or other spellings thereof) are Jeter, Jacobi, Lowe, Zoolander, and the frontman of the Dominos. I mean, if this guy leaves the full-service commercial maintenance field, he could have a legit shot to enter that list. He’s nice enough, and could really excel in politics, we think. (With a frontrunner list of St. Christopher, Columbus, Reeve, Marlowe, and Wren, I don’t stand a chance.)

But then I got the guy’s business card.

Handing out business cards at presentations is a formality that most companies abide by. Upon the entering of a conference room where more than one firm is presence, everyone suddenly becomes a veteran blackjack dealer, whisking tiny rectangular rolodex fillers in every direction to the point where nobody knows anyone else, but they at least have proper documentation to study up on later. Derrick and his team provided no exception. In fact, I’m staring at the keynote man’s info right now.

C. Derrick McGruff. Regional Account Manager.

Ah, he’s one of those guys. In every group, there’s someone who prefers to eschew his or her given first name in favor of professionally rocking their middle one. Sometimes it’s to create a separate identity from their father, who bequeathed his name to them in the name of lineage and tradition. Sometimes, the first name is just plain embarassing. If your name was Melvin Jake Connors, you would go by Jake, right? Jake gets invited to come to the movies. Melvin gets tripped in the hallway. Of course, this was a formal setting, so I didn’t have a chance to ask C. Derrick McGruff what the C was for. Hell, he could be a Christopher, and that would create some interesting small talk when their Power Point presentation freezes, no?

Wait a minute.

Let’s look at this a little closer. Let’s disregard that Derrick is a cool name and that’s why he goes by it and truncate the business card a little further.

C.D. McGruff.

“On behalf of Dinder Mufflin, I’d like to thank you all for listening to our pitch and we hope to be in your future plans. Have a good day.”

“Whatever you say, CRIME DOG!!!!”