The 4th place story in our Random Pairing Story Contest belongs to Adam Taylor with “The Great Brake Quake.” Adam shows us how the combination of alcohol, a corporate outing, and squealing brakes of a golf cart still aren’t enough to defy Sir Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion. Thank you for this, Adam! I’m still not sure how you didn’t lose your job.
Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion states that every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.
Several years ago, I was in a sales support role at my previous job, and one of our larger customer outings was approaching. The sales director asked if I could go represent our company in the outing since he couldn’t attend, and I gladly jumped at the chance knowing that at this specific outing, they gave every participant a raffle ticket to be drawn for great prizes – everything from golf swag, gift cards, putters, wedges, woods, and drivers cool tech gifts like headphones, iPads, smart watches, and GPSs. Everyone walked away with something awesome.
When I got to the outing, I learned that I was paired with the guy who was in charge of purchasing all of the products that my company sold to them. This was a pretty important guy in our corporate relationship. We’ll call him James for anonymity’s sake. Now James was in fact a large dude. I would say he was 6’1” and about 350 lbs. James let me drive that afternoon and we had a great time. In a foursome of mid to high handicappers, we were just happy to be on the golf course and not be in our respective offices. Drinks were flowing and as they flowed, both my golfing abilities and golf cart driving abilities became slightly impaired. It was about that time in the day where you hear loud brake squeaks from around the course, and I came to the revelation that “Hey, that sounds like fun. We should definitely try that.”
So I tried it.
I gathered up some speed in the golf cart and slammed on the emergency brake. Apparently James was not adequately prepared for my shenanigans, and at that exact moment I was reminded of Sir Isaac Newton. My procurement counterpart and golfing partner James flew forward and knocked out the entire plastic windshield of the golf cart. The force of 350 lb James was so strong that he kept going and hit the pavement in front of where the golf cart had stopped. His lower legs were still dangling inside the cart, but most of James was outside of the cart. The external force of the ground had stopped James, and I was worried that it would also stop our business relationship. But luckily for me we had a good laugh after he dusted himself off. And that of course was directly after I had nearly soiled myself out of terror. By the end of the round, we’d all moved past “The Great Brake Quake of 2014” incident, but when I got back to my company the next day, my sales director laughed his head off.