A Premature Birth (April, 1986)

Even though I still worked the floor at Computerland every day, in early 1986 I was in fact running my business. When the store was empty of customers, I snuck back to my desk to work on QUICK EASY SIMPLE (the killer-not-to-be video store manager) in between taking calls from my custom work clients.

Since most of the salesmen at the store had sidelines (i.e., aging musician, hopeful actor, high school brainiac), they ignored me. But both the sales manager and the store manager had suspicions. The daily delivery of free product unrelated to any upcoming sale was a giveaway that I was up to something. The problem by now was that my sales were declining and the commissions I earned fell below the draw I took as salary. This meant the store was paying me more than I was earning, and I was digging myself deeper in debt with each passing month.

By the spring of 1986, I was nearly $6,000 in the hole. This meant I'd have to sell several times the normal volume of hardware and software each month just to catch up. To make matters worse, I was MIA at the store for hours on end because of "client meetings" and "sales presentations" to "important potential customers" or something like that. This was the days before web surfing, e-mail, and digital telephones that let supervisors eavesdrop. They couldn't really monitor how I was spending my time, so they couldn't prove I was screwing off. But they could prove one thing: my sales were horrible. And they were.

Lisa and I had hatched of plan that Spring to move back to San Diego and start the business. It was to be called "Working Computer", thanks again to our long-time friend Karl. One of his rants was something like "I just want a computer than works!" and the idea stuck. Working Computer represented what I wanted the company to be: efficient, practical, friendly.

The plan was to market several products for the Macintosh, which had a lot of buzz but desperately needed software. All of the products would be sold under the "Working Computer" brand but have their own unique identity. This was an exciting prospect for me, since it meant designing unique brochures and user guides for each product. Having never produced anything of that scale before, it sounded easy and fun. Oh boy was a wrong there.

My hope was to wait out the summer at the store until the custom work wrapped up and QUICK EASY SIMPLE was out the door. We'd then start our new lives as small business owners with the cash from the custom work just as the money from the video store software was rolling in.

I was fired in April.

I can't say it was a surprise. And since I knew I was leaving anyway, I just sat there looking shocked and sad during the exit interview. The store manager was disappointed in me personally, he explained, because I had shown such promise and ambition. He felt I could have had a long career at Computerland if I'd only applied myself and focused on selling IBM PCs to corporations. He'd always thought the Mac was a toy and Apple a joke. And he didn't think much of my kinds of customers, either.

I packed my things and left the store. On the way out, he handed me an bill for $6,000.

One month later, we were in the van on the way to San Diego. A little premature, but Working Computer was born.