Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Skankware

When I worked for Cisco, the company had layoffs almost every six months. During one of those periodic purges, my friend, Chin, our resident user interface expert, was laid off. He had been volunteering in Santa Clara county schools for many years and used those connections to get a teaching job in one of the Cupertino high schools.

Chin taught remedial math to students who had previously failed the course. In one of his early classes, many of the girls came to class wearing what he called "Skankware." He came up with a creative solution to this outbreak of inappropriate classroom attire.

He made himself a pot of hot tea, put on his wool sweater, and turned the classroom thermostat down to 55 degrees. After 3 days , the "Skankware" problem was solved.