Friday, June 8, 2007

A Tribute to Agnes Imregh

I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts lately. If you looked at my budget, you’d feel out of sorts as well. I hate the word budget. It’s all good and well if you’re a company and have a cubicle-world of finance people to create, monitor, and refine budgets. But personally, when I typed the name of my Excel file, “Budget 2007”, I knew I was in trouble. Add the word “Limited” before Budget and you’ll find you start to hyperventilate. You mean no Pete’s coffee in the morning and change from the San Francisco hairdresser to a $20 Quick Cut by some woman in the local mall named Doris?

And why is it that the only people who say “money isn’t everything” are the people WITH money? I know it’s not everything…but try being on a Limited Budget! Yeah, yeah, boo hoo.

So there I was thinking about my column under “Clothing” in my budget, which now has $0 allotted budget attached to it, when I got a call from a man I worked with at a couple of previous companies. He gave me a piece of news about Agnes Imregh, the Vice President of Marketing, whom we both had worked for.

To say this woman was “interesting” would be far too mild a word. She had flaming red hair, occasionally painted her fingernails green, and owned a Mooney airplane, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and a SUV. Lest you think she was a tomboy sort of woman, she also purchased a $10,000 black sequined Armani evening gown, owned leather jackets that you would have licked her stylish leather boots to own, and sunglasses to match each and every outfit. She was outspoken, had definite opinions about most everything, and was the only person I have ever known who ran meetings on time. No one was ever late for her meetings. If you know anything about high tech and meetings, this in and of itself would make you respect her. If you were late once for her meetings, you would never be late again. She held the meeting until you showed up. Tapping her foot. Not a good sign when a woman, especially one in authority, taps her well-shod foot. She sent people to hunt the offender down. All the while that foot was tapping. Her arms were crossed. No one said a word. I saw this happen. Excuses were not tolerated. Promptness was expected. Tap, tap, tap went the foot. But you know, that person was never late to any of her meetings again. Agnes made her point.

Agnes Imregh flew her airplane to New York this past weekend to celebrate her 57th birthday with her family. She flew back to Boston on Monday and something went wrong with the plane. She crashed in the forest and died.

I was thinking about Agnes this morning on my way to work. Traffic was piling up on the street and police cars were lined up with their lights whirling around. Another fender bender, I thought, annoyed with the delay. As I drove by the accident, paramedics were on their knees, their rubber gloved fists rhythmically punching on a man’s chest. I hope they saved him.

Limited Budget. It doesn’t seem such a hardship any more.

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