A good long while ago I worked for a company called AudioNet. They then changed their name to Broadcast.com and went public and made a lot of people money. A little while later they got bought by a search engine company that was named after something you might exclaim if you found gold. No, not, "Holy Shit! I'm Rich!", though that would be a great name for a company. Let me rephrase. It was named after something that you might exclaim if you found gold...in the 1800s. It is my goal not to say their name throughout this column, we'll see if I can do it. I worked there only when they were AudioNet but knew many people who worked all the way through the 1800s gold prospector exclamation days and there's a lot of fun storys to tell. So here is the amalgm of all of those company names together:


Cubans Not Like Fidel Castro

The owner of the company before being bought was a man that I always refer to as Cuban. Cuban was a very interesting individual and his passion for what he did is still unmatched by anyone that I have ever known. When I worked at AudioNet I worked on the online jukebox team. Basically I called record labels to get them to let us put their artists on our online jukebox.

Cuban was pretty excited that he had people in contact with the music industry regularly. When AudioNet decided to move buildings, he asked me to try and get The Gap Band to play for the opening of the new building. If you're wondering who The Gap Band is, then think "You Dropped a Bomb on Me". If you're still wondering after that, then just give up. Every day Cuban would come by my cubicle and see if I had gotten them to play at the opening of the new office. It never came through, but he still came by once a week to check if I had them on the jukebox. He'd walk up and say, "Hey John! You got The Gap Band yet?" Many years later he tried to get my now wife, then friend, to get Genesis to play at his birthday party. This also did not pan out.

It came time for me to leave AudioNet because I was in school and the hour plus drive to work and full time job didn't lend itself well towards me graduating. My last day there, Cuban came up to me and shook my hand and said, "John, if you ever want to get back into the real world, give me a call!" Now, Cuban at that point had been a millionaire for many years and after he sold AudioNet he was a multi-millionaire. I'm not really sure that he knows what the real world is anymore.


Julie

When I first worked at AudioNet, Julie was my boss. Julie was a very aggressive, in your face, mannish, lesbian and a New Yorker. After I left I heard many stories of her telling people how fucking stupid they were during a meeting or something like that. That's not the point of this story. I could probably write an entire column on Julie if I dug enough, but I'm not that motivated so I will just skim the surface.

After the gold prospecting search engine company bought broadcast.com, Julie stood to make a lot of money through stock options and the like. She had already done so under the broadcast name, but now she stood to make even more. She did decently well at the gold prospecting search engine company for awhile but then the bubble burst. Instead of getting rid of the coffee bar or the free sodas or the completely free insurance with domestic partner coverage, goldy (which is what I will call the gold prospecting search engine company from now on) decided to lay some people off. I don't actually recall if Julie was laid off or fired by Goldy, but she didn't take it well. She went to a lawyer and that lawyer gave her this wonderful advice: Just keep going in to work. If you're still working there they still have to pay you.

So that's exactly what Julie did. She went to work while not being on the payroll for a couple of days until someone at Goldy finally realized that, "Hey, she's not supposed to be there" and she was escorted out of the building by security. I think that she should get an award for making such a ballsy move and doing that. I mean, this is the only time I have heard of someone continuing to go to work after they were fired. If more people did this, I would be worried that companies would just start firing people to see if they could get a free workforce.


Off-Brand Sprite

Stephanie was always a very interesting person. She worked there, I think shortly before Goldy bought Broadcast. Stephanie had a hat making company on the side called "Hatmonger". That's right, hate monger, without the e. She would often come to birthday parties and bring a hat for a birthday present. Everyone would always ooh and ahh and then ask if she made it. The answer was alwaysm "no". The hat business is not really the core of this story, so I will continue on.

Shortly after Goldy bought Broadcast, they had everyone come out to California to see if they would be acceptable to integrate into the mothership. Kristen went out there for the meeting and Stephanie was leaving just a couple days after Kristen got there. The night before she left, Stephanie stopped by Kristen's hotel room and was really excited. She told Kristen, "Hey! I got all of this off-brand sprite the other day but I haven't used it all yet. Why don't you take it with you tomorrow and you'll be really popular with all the people at Goldy because you have off-brand sprite! Kristen wasn't sure what to say, since soft drinks were free at Goldy. But I think she took the off-brand sprite anyway.


Yahoo, I'm done! Those are the stories of the three companies that were one. I hope you enjoyed them.