about a month ago, in late July, which was the last CITES management secretary, Lola Cantueso, and therefore, my secretary since taking the Directorate General of CITES successor company, first Atlinks Spain between 2001 and 2002 and later Thomson Telecom from 2003 until I left the company in 2006, was "restructured", or dismissed in Castilian. Just look at the euphemisms we use in the workplace, (Restructuring, recycling), to silence our conscience and not to call things by their name in Castilian.
Well, Lola, has left the company after twenty years of service and had to send details of settlements leaves my travel expenses of the thirty-odd years I've been in CITES Standard Atlinks Thomson. There were two wide back folders that were cast aside in the address file cabinets. File that as all paper files of the departments, file had become "slow moving" since the advent of computers and exclusive practice of electronic media for documents. Apart
the attack of nostalgia within me and you can imagine, and suddenly rediscover sites that had been and had forgotten completely and pieces to reconstruct the history of the Company through these trips, I took my less than professional dedication current with the spirit of making statements that we come from a certain age, spending an afternoon to review those files containing a substantial part of my professional life, ie my life and take some statistics.
I have been amazed. It turns out that I have made 652 trips in 33 years. I count as one every time I go to Manchester, even though in many cases, these trips have had two to four destinations, before returning to Malaga.
The city that I visited was Paris, in 152 cases, followed by Strasbourg, 33 times. I've been in China, telling the two Chinas, the People and the Nationalist, or Taiwan, more than thirty times. Finally, in the year that most business trips I made was in 2003, I left Manchester on 53 occasions.
Since the beginning, CITES was a company very "traveler." Then belonged to the ITT Group, initial International Telephone and Telegraph, but precisely because of the frequent travel of its executives for meetings, said that meant International Talking and Travelling, and when speaking of its European arm, IITE, E for Europe, was added to the "Talking and Travelling" the "Eating." In my early years in CITES, the people making international trips with some recurrence were reduced almost exclusively to technical / product (Marketing then that did not exist) and in the early years of the Company was about one person: Lorenzo Martinez , the directors who regularly had to present results and plans in Brussels and Quality staff in connection with any shipment to foreign countries (many of the sometimes problematic shipments.) The frequency international travel of people from the Development Engineering was due to the dependence of that department had the technical divisions of ITT space in Brussels and New York, among other meetings, had established a Head of Engineering of the various subsidiaries group at different locations in a more or less rotating. Undoubtedly Lorenzo Martinez, who was the main "beneficiaries" of these trips could elaborate much more on this point, and to correct me, with that prodigious memory for things "useless" (in appreciation of José María Reyes) you have.
staff took industrial areas to travel abroad frequently, perhaps because the industrial international coordination was carried out from Ramirez de Prado. Then, as we all also have "jartao."
The truth is that in the aspect of travel, we are not deceived me. I remember at the entrance interview one of the few things I was interested Lorenzo Martinez was if he was willing to travel. I asked if he spoke English (ask for it in 73 was a waste of time.) He also had previous experience of Maestre and Lopez Garcia who had gone to London with one hand in front and behind, and survived linguistically and success. They had spent eight weeks when he left for Stuttugart for several months as an expert (?) In the design of handsets, with a week of immersion in English at inlingua.
In more than thirty years since, the form of travel has been changing dramatically. In those early years, always arriving in Barcelona the previous day, with time to stroll through the city in question and dine quietly in a typical restaurant, with careful what you eat to avoid problems later with the controller on duty which, although just "passing" the voucher, it seemed that enjoyed by the guest experience with the "excesses outside the norm "that he had done, especially if it was youngster. Later, as travel became more frequent, were taking a utilitarian character at the same accelerated pace as the professional activity, so that is sought to seize the day in Malaga and travel from the afternoon. It also facilitated by the increased number of air routes and flight frequency.
also used to extend the stay a day of sightseeing, especially if the visited city was attractive or new to the traveler. Instead, lately, I mean for more than ten years now, if the purpose of the trip ended in advance inevitably trying to manage a ticket on the other hand earlier.
I have to remember a trip to Sao Paulo in 2003 with Rafael Chute already Atlinks season, in which Telefónica visited trying to sell phones. We put a lot of interest in the visit, forcing the phone to receive us. When we finished the meeting and told them we were returning to Spain this afternoon, did not believe it. And is that Carnival began the next day. The "entry" thought that our interest in meeting was an excuse to spend some time dancing samba.
to three times I have had my place in Malaga simultaneous with management responsibilities at the corporate level. Every time I have proposed that leave Manchester and joined the corporate position exclusively, of course in Paris. I never accepted because I did not see stability in organizations that would receive me and I always say that I was right: every time, those organizations with Thomson Telecom Profit Center, Product Communications Atlinks and Residential Development with Alcatel Phones Division, failed to complete the twelve months and the chances of getting in off-side (street) to a reorganization in Paris not being French, believe me, are high.
But the simultaneity of posts, was not free but it cost me months of sacrifice and stress, with almost weekly trips to Paris or Strasbourg mainly to deficiencies in my work on both sides and, worst led, with guidance from my bosses, local and international, are not always consistent, if not collision free.
I will close with a story not mine but Miguel Ruiz who have asked permission to go public on the network. The year was 1991. Alcatel had started the inexorable process of centralization of the business decision in Paris, and naturally began to absorb the responsibility of marketing subsidiaries, including CITES, who had taken a leadership role for cordless phones. The fact is that Miguel Ruiz for Marketing and I as a coach, we had to spend a week every other in France. I still organized on Monday in Malaga until the afternoon he took a direct flight to Paris, where he landed, hopefully, at ten o'clock at night. The routine of the week was always the same: work from Tuesday to Friday at the office in Suresnes, and early Friday after the French food, we called a taxi to Orly Sud airport terminal where he was then flying out Spain (and all Arab countries, by the way). One of those weeks Michael had taken his wife, Toni, and brother went to Paris on her way to the airport taxi Miguel asked, "Toni awaits us at the airport?". Miguel turned white, was a paddle on the forehead as the announcement of the Donuts and exclaimed: "Damn, my wife!". Following the routine every week he had forgotten that I had to pass her at the hotel.
The next problem came with the driver that there was no way to convince him to deviate, as saying that he ended his day at Orly (about the "kindness" of Paris taxi drivers give for another article.) The utmost that was agreed to let Michael in a taxi. In the end, the intended flight could take me and the thing did not happen there. Well, maybe. Miguel, the lack of malice that gives youth, he told his wife that "thanks to Jose Luis I have not left lying on the hotel." Openness to all unnecessary lights and I'm afraid Michael would cost a season "on bread and water."
