Andy's back!

The upcoming week is our annual mid-year sales conference. It's one of two times a year that all of our sales folks (who live all over the world) are in Rochester. It's a great chance for me to catch up with the sales people I work with on a daily basis but don't get a lot of face to face time with. The headline this year is that our direct account manager (Andrzej "Andy" Mazur) for Poland was able to make the trip. Andy's a retired Lt. Colonel from the Polish Air Force. He and I have developed a great relationship over the last few years and has really taught me a lot about the Polish culture and has given me insight into how to build solid business relationships in Central and Eastern Europe.

19 months ago I was in Warsaw for work. Andy picked me up on a Monday morning to go to a meeting and (as I understood later) Andy was suffering the beginning stages of a stroke throughout the morning. Andy's English has always been a little rough around the edges, but this particular day, he wasn't speaking at all and as we were driving from the meeting back to the Warsaw office he kept pointing at his throat. Being naive and unaware of what the warning signs of a stroke were (a mistake I will never make again), I figured he had laryngitis or had simply drank too much vodka over the weekend, I was wrong. When we got back to the office, I asked our engineer in Poland (Sylwek) to speak with him in Polish, and Sylwek immediately realized that Andy wasn't processing anything and something was wrong. To make matters worse, Andy (being a proud and stubborn dude) would get frustrated and go out an smoke cigarettes during this whole ordeal. Sylwek and I finally convinced Andy to go to the doctor and it turned out he suffered a stroke. After some really tough therapy he is almost 100% recovered. After 12 months he was back working and he was just recently cleared to travel, so he's in Rochester for the meeting.

I could care less if he ever sells a radio in Poland again, it's great to have my friend rocking and rolling! One of the blessings in disguise was that throughout the recovery process, Andy had to re-learn almost everything - one of the things he didn't relearn was how to smoke. Even though he couldn't partake, we did a "crazy dog" (shot of vodka with raspberry syrup and Tabasco, which layers like the Polish Flag) to celebrate his recovery this afternoon!

Andy's the one on the right below (Sylwek's on the left).