Transistor Museum Oral History Ralph Greenburg "Seminar Shenanigans" Page 2

EARLY TRANSISTOR HISTORY AT MOTOROLA

“SEMINAR SHENANIGANS” By Ralph Greenburg

New Jersey Nightmare

Seminars were held all across the country, wherever there was a concentration of Electronic Businesses. I was on one trip through the Eastern Sales Region with visits to customers and general Seminars. On Thursday it was all day on Long Island then back that night to Newark, NJ for a final Seminar on Friday.

I got my first hint that this was going to be the “Seminar from Hell” when we approached our hotel, the Essex House. The fist two letters of the Neon sign were out, thusly we were going to stay at the Sex House. Everyone got a good chuckle over that quirk. The second hint was when I arrived at my room, top floor, and farthest room on the left. No window, the bed barely fit and there was a four foot square metal plate attached to one wall with large bolts. I could hear clinking and clanking behind the plate as if the Hunchback of Newark was dragging his chains through the attic. Probably just the air conditioning equipment banging away. I decided against asking for another room since it was now 11:00 PM and I was a bit tired.

The next morning we met for breakfast at 7:30 and then went to examine the banquet room were the seminar was to be held. The room was supposed to be set up auditorium style with 50 seats facing a screen and a table for the projector. And that’s when I got my third hint. What we saw was a room with chairs tipped over, tables askew and a strong smell of beer and wine. The salesman who had arranged for the seminar almost had a fit and went running down the hall to corner the Banquet Director. The Director arrived and assured us all would be in shape by 9:30 but he claimed no screen had been requested and it was too late to rent one. One more fit by the salesman until someone had the inspiration to suggest that we find the cleanest, dirty table cloth and have the work crew hang it on the wall. Fortunately we carried our own projector.

The room did get arranged, the projector and screen worked well and all that remained was for the invitees to show up and we hoped they liked the odor of stale beer.

I got my final hint that this was ‘The Seminar from Hell” when only ten engineers arrived. The salesman swore he had fifty confirmations. We did the seminar and the ten were all quite attentive. Later I decided the scenario for the forty no-shows went something like the following. It’s 9 a.m. and an engineer dressed in his suit is at home, sipping coffee and reading the paper. His wife says ”Why aren’t you at work?” The reply, “ I’m not going to work today, instead I’m going to a seminar at the Sex House”. Well you can imagine what happened next, the wife marches hubby out to the car, drives him to work and says “I’ll pick you up at 5 and you better be here”. But then again maybe RCA had a better seminar at some other hotel.

Go To Greenburg “Seminar Shenanigans”, Page 3

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