As we walked into the building, I thanked Gehry for inviting us to his work. Before this, I didn’t even know you could bring outsiders within the Apple base. Gehry Oatey is one of my Uncle’s closest friends and since I came to Oakland we’ve hung out a few times. Then he invited me and Uncle Carl here to Apple.
The inside of Apple headquarters looks exactly as you would think; like the inside of a Mac computer or something. Everything looks clean and high tech. The people inside are moving fast, but they all look like they know exactly where they’re going and what their job is. I can make out the lunch lines and they have all kinds of different food you can order with neat little menus stood up on the counters. As soon as you walk through the doors, you have to sign in on a computer at the desk. Gehry signed in and told Uncle Carl and I to type our names in the two guest boxes. Then this little machine spit out our guest passes and we stuck them to our shirts.
Gehry told us to follow him to the cafeteria. Uncle Carl and he both got salads and I got some pepperoni and sausage pizza. I thanked him for the food and he waved it off like it was nothing. Then we followed him to one of the tables and sat down.
They started talking about the construction going on in the building. “I’m guessing that by 6 months from now, this part of the building will be torn down.” Gehry said.
“So what’s going to happen to y’all’s jobs ?”
“Nah, we’ll still work here, they’re just rebuilding.” Gehry said it was part of a blueprint Steve Jobs himself made before he passed.
“Damn.”
“Yea,” He laughed.
“How’d you get a job here anyway ?”
“Well, I’m here because I got lucky.”“You have two Master’s degrees.”
“This is true, but it’s not that easy.” He said, ”My best advice for you is to start as early as possible. When I used to be a teacher, Berkeley used to come to my 8th grade class to recruit. We mainly do computer programming and mapping.”
“But it’s a good job though ?”
“Yea, yea. It’s hard work, but it’s good.”
“What’s it like inside ?”
He laughed, ”I can’t really talk about it, its kind of secret.”
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