Steve Jobs and My Life of Crime
Steve Jobs has taught me many things, directly and indirectly, over the years. But one of the most useful and memorable is the correct method of breaking and entering a locked executive office.
It was sometime in 1978, and Apple had recently moved into a new building on Bandley Drive in Cupertino. The building had four quadrants: northwest was Engineering, southwest was Administration, southeast was Manufacturing, and northeast was empty (for the moment) and housed a ping-pong table. Steve was working in the early evening and I was in a nearby cubicle writing technical documentation.
I dont remember if I heard loud swearing or not, I cant imagine there wasnt. But Steve was late for an evening appointment and had locked his keys in his office. The administrative staff (Sherri Livingston) had gone home and he was stuck. I popped my head over the cubicle wall and he said "Espinosa, c'mover here."
What he wanted me to do was to stand on a chair, push up an acoustic tile into the suspended ceiling, hoist myself up into the ceiling space and balance on the aluminum door framing, pop out the tile on the other side, and drop into his office. Though short, nerdy and allergic to sports I was still wiry and limber, and Apple was a such a free-form place I didnt consider that breaking into the company founders office was out of my job description.
It took moments, I didnt fall and break my fool neck or twist my ankle on the eight foot drop, and after I popped the door open Steve grabbed his keys, thanked me warmly, and left. I went back to my writing with a new job skill under my belt. It came in handy several times over the years when I locked myself out of my own office after hours, and once when an Engineering VP found a large poster of John Sculley Scotch-taped to the inside of his office window. (He had Security investigate for weeks and never figured out how it was done.)
I hope that my readers can appreciate that Breaking Into Other Peoples Offices Is Wrong and that this knowledge should be used only for good, never for evil. (And Ive been chagrined to note that some buildings have pony walls that extend a couple feet into the ceiling space to make this trick harder.) But you should also take to heart that in any job there are always new, useful skills to be learned.
