Here's what didn't make it into my going away speech…
I am not going to retire. I am just leaving my job at Ryerson. It's just gotten to be too much of a hassle trying to navigate SAP. Instead I will move on and fill my days with other productive money earning opportunities.
Thanks for putting up with me all these years. And now, the speech. My last chance to bore you guys with a speech. Man have I been looking forward to this. Like I said, thanks for putting up with me all these years. I guess they thought I was doing a good job because they kept giving me more work. That seems to be the way things go around here. Not sure how smart I am. Don't know if I made my job harder than it needed to be. I wanted to be thorough. I'd see others in similar positions try to take shortcuts and it would get them in trouble. I'm sure whatever young buck takes my place will have an easier time of it than me. Not sure who will have the last laugh.
At my funeral I don't want people talking about what a good job that I did at work.
I always tried to add that exclamation point to the thanks at the end of my emails, to let you know how much I really appreciated what you did.
I will not miss getting 400 emails every day. Now that I'm retired I plan on weeding out junk emails. Wish me luck. Am I showing my age? I do plan on sending more texts messages. Wish me luck.
I will miss hearing all the office banter. Hearing Alex and Steve and Ben and Buck go at it every day. I am honored that Steve says that he will miss me. Steve is a machine. Steve Garrett: we both used to run the Peachtree Road Race a whole lot faster, but we're still showing up every year, since when Steve, the 1990's?
Buck is like Steve's Ed McMahon, if you're old enough to know who he was. Mike likes to egg Steve on. Thanks for acting interested with the arcane bits of trivia and breaking sports news that you already heard about hours before. So much fun to listen to Ben mess with Steve and Buck.
Gotta love Alex Brennan. You have to. I think it's a rule. Like Shane and Steve and Jonathan and so many others, Alex is a machine. A big machine, but a machine none the less. Me and Alex don't work side by side much, but to this day Alex will remember my color code system – right Alex?
I may not be much help now on SAP. Believe it or not, I was a superstar back on that old computer system. David Beard was scared of how I could magically make things happen. I always considered it a compliment when he would come to get me to figure something out that no one else could.
For just about my entire career, I have coordinated orders for the slitter. When I first started in 1987 the gold building had three slitters. All the material tags had to handwritten. Now I'm starting to sound like Steve Garrett. I though when we got this new high tech slitter, they should name it after me. But with all the problems they've had getting it up and running, I am glad they didn't.
Technically I started working out in the plant. I was hired for inside sales, but right when I started the receiving lady went out for a month for surgery. So my first month was out in the plant, handwriting those old material tags and paper receivers. One old guy called me "college boy". Over the years I did earn his trust, and when he'd spot a problem he'd call me to help solve it.
I worked here a long time, and had some good managers, and some bad managers. The names of the bad managers are… uh, let me skip on to the good managers. Eric and Shane are tops. The hardest working, for sure. Set a great example for all the rest of us. On their first day in Norcross, they came barging in to the program office upstairs. Eric screamed "Line up for your ass-whooping!" I was the only one who stood.
When I first met Eric he was a hotshot young outside salesman in Birmingham. He was one of the few outside guys selling a new product down here in the Southeast: fabrication. Let that be a lesson to you young guys. Eric called on one purchasing manager, pointed out the window, and said "See that lake out there? Give me the order and I'll jump in that lake!". He did, and Eric did. True story.
Reminds me: I am so old that when I was in college, I swallowed a goldfish. That was a thing back in like the 1950's. Ask your grandparents. I am so old that my football helmet had a single bar facemask. True story. I used to wear those stirrup things when I played baseball. Pickleball hadn't been invented yet. Or the internet. We had to look in the newspaper on Monday to manually figure out who won fantasy football. True story.
Until 1999 all office employees had to wear shirts and ties. If you wore a blue shirt they looked at you funny. Women had to wear hose, and no open toed shoes. The mean old human resources lady (I can call her that because she liked me – after I'd proved I wasn't a slacker). She would go around and enforce the dress code. True story. We hired one guy for inside sales who had worked at a bank. He'd sit at his desk all day with his suit coat on. Flipping through that huge pricing book. The people that didn't know him called him "the guy in the suit coat".
I am honored that Textron traveled all this way to say goodbye. They'll do anything to get out of the office. What's not to like about Textron? One of our largest customers. Their forecasts may not always be right (that's a joke). But its our job to read their mind, to figure out what they want before they do. I used to be halfway good at it. But as you should know, men don't make good mind readers. The Textron folk have hard jobs, and I hope I've made it easier for them. Can't believe that I've worked on the Textron account for 18 years. Right now Ryerson has the best team of people working on the Textron account that we've ever had. Tyler, thanks for putting up with me out there on the golf course. Maybe in retirement I can get better.
Eric Jones has been a great. He does things no supervisor should have to do. Eric has given me the most thoughtful, insightful reviews as I ever received here at Ryerson. You guys should really consider joining the Textron team. Well Eric, you can't say that I didn't try. I knew that when Brad asked if he should join the Textron team, that he would make me look like a poor performer in comparison. I just didn't know he'd keep rubbing it in!
Jonathan is a beast
I helped train Angie and Rachel. Haven't they developed into good, productive employees? Well, Rachel anyway. On their first day I shared one of my secrets: I make it up as I go along. Ask me a question on Monday and I may have one answer. Might have a different answer on Friday. How my mind works. Of course Angie and Rachel always remembered the things that I should NOT have said. Rachel won't know what to do without me around. She won't have to act happy when I give her all the junk that I don't want any more. I'm sure her garbageman will appreciate the lighter loads each week. I think she's been selling the stuff so she can buy new big ticket items, and live her best life - and fund her Starbucks and Jimmy Johns habits.
I've tried to remain true to my own unique personality, as opposed to trying to be something I'm not. GT head coach Brent Key is like me: when asked a question he doesn't have a ready made answer. He listens to the question and then thinks before answering. Doesn't make for good TV, but I think he's sincere. Quite different from Saban, Kirby, and Dabo.
Perhaps the best contribution I ever made here was to put Patsy into the tube mill scheduler position, over 25 years ago. She may hate me for it. Patsy and Sherryl don't get enough credit for the tube mill's success. They resolve so many issues that others have no idea need to be resolved. Every little change, or push in, or down time has a domino effect, that means ten other changes have to be made. But those ladies are pro's at what they do.
More well wishes…
It's hard to say goodbye to you Mr. Murphy! I've truly enjoyed working with you and all our conversations !Wishing you all the best on your retirement! Welcome to king Burger where you can have it your way but don't get too crazy 浪 Stay in touch - Jamie Mitchell, Fanello.
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