How a tech guinea pig helped save the day

Once in a great while, a team will volunteer one of their own to test something that they’re not willing to take a risk on themselves. Usually, it’s the new team member — the guinea pig, if you will — who who tests the limits of a substance, a situation or both.

In the early ’90s, that person was me. I got involved with what many thought unnecessary, even extravagant, in the world of technology: the mobile, cellular telephone.

I thought about this recently after seeing an early sales ad from just a few decades ago come for something we take for granted today. It was a mobile telephone unit — a briefcase-sized metal box that was installed in the trunk of the car with the handset mounted near the driver’s console. All for a mere $6,000. (Not counting airtime, tax, etc. Yikes.)

When the price finally came down a few years later, all the marketing specialists in our company were dead set against a mobile phone. “I get along fine with checking messages during my store visits. A phone in my car? That’s the only peace and quiet I get all day!” Those were some of the reasons given for not wanting to stick their neck out and try mobile communication.

Except for yours truly, that is. I love gadgets and saw nothing but potential with cell phones. Besides, as a kid I watched tough guy Broderick Crawford talking on his car phone on TV’s “Highway Patrol,” and he always got his man.

As a roving produce supervisor, we morphed from calling into the home office for our messages to using voice mail to carrying beepers. This kid was the first in the specialist group to have the ultimate gadget: a phone installed in my car.

I received a tentative test approval. No one was terribly thrilled with the idea. Not our president, the veeps or even my produce director. This guinea pig was all alone.

Of course, the phone came in handy, and I was compelled to deduct the 36 cents per hour for all personal calls, highlighted on my expense report. Where every charge was scrutinized in our ultra-conservative grocery chain.

A few months later, I switched from the static car phone to “the brick.” Remember those?

This is the cell phone that resembled a World War II walkie-talkie. I had it stashed in my pack while setting up a new store. Any new store (or remodel) project requires dozens of vendors and hundreds of employees working around the clock in the week leading up to grand opening day. An operation like this requires — what else? — lots of communications, lots of necessary phone calls.

The store itself? Like every store we had, it had only two standard phone lines. That’s a problem. However, once the department directors learned I was packing a cellular phone, that brick got passed around a lot.

And it was a godsend, as everyone needed a line for warehouse calls, for orders, for employee contacts, for logistics, for advertising — for everything. It proved to be an indispensable tool that helped to get the store opened smoothly and on time.

Weeks later, my cellular phone bill came due. It was around $350, if I remember correctly, which was several times my usual amount. I got called on the carpet, as the saying goes.

“Outrageous,” I heard. All my bosses and all the bean counters blew a gasket, and I had some ‘splainin’ to do, as Ricky Ricardo used to say.

I emphasized how much the technology saved our bacon, and why. Just talk to any of the directors, the store managers, the district managers and all those who used my brick in the trenches. In the heat of battle and got things done when there were no other options.

Of course, the veeps weren’t buying my explanation. I didn’t expect them to. After that, this guinea pig was placed on the equivalent of “double secret probation,” and all further cell phone requests were, well, put on hold.

The cost was a shock to our section of the grocery world, all right. But little by little, one phone after another made its way into our lives.

On every level — retail to warehouse communication, to truck drivers, to produce field operations — today a phone call from a distant field makes a difference in time, money spent and much more.

This guinea pig survived, even thrived, as did the cell phone, despite all the naysayers. Or, as Broderick Crawford would say, “Over and out.”
Armand Lobato works for the Idaho Potato Commission. His 40 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions.