I don’t know if you’re joking or not. I do know that sort of thing does happen in reverse, and likely happened in this case.

When I was just a wee podling, my father got a job offer from CalComp when I was but a few days old. He was going to be one of their Software Engineer Consultants. They hired a couple of Business Consultants in the first few months of his contract. Those consultants came back to the company with the following report after only two months of looking into the problem.

[Sic]“Your issue is that you have one major competitor in your field that actually produces an inferior product, but charges 3 times what you are charging. If you increase your price by at least 3.25 times, you will sell these digitizers and tablets faster than you can currently make them. The issue is that corporate consumers are looking at your price point and thinking it is a sub-par cheap product, when you are actually creating a superior product and not padding your profit margins the way Wacom is.” [Sic]

Obviously I’m far oversimplifying, but that was the bare bones of their report. CalComp went from looking at bankruptcy to being an industry leader for the rest of the '80s and early '90s.

I cannot prove it, but I suspect this is the sort of result that business consultants not only dream of, but expect is possible in every case they look at.

My father stayed there for almost the entire 24 month contract that he signed, solving the issues they hired him for after 18 months, at which point he somehow got hired to do the computer graphics on Wargames, and then Tron. I still don’t know why he gave up on the movie industry after that, other than the fact that they didn’t give him another contract immediately.

Him working on Wargames allowed 2 year old me to visit the set and play hide and seek using the W.O.P.R. with Matt Broderick, Ally Sheedy, and John Wood. Fun fact: the W.O.P.R. is actually a refrigerator box with Christmas lights that a toddler sized person can easily hide in. Though it doesn’t provide sound dampening. Visiting that set also caused me to lose bladder control when MB pulled me out of the box and put me on his lap. I technically peed (my pants, and his) on Matthew Broderick.

Him working on Tron allowed 3 year old me to go play games with Jeff Bridges, Peter Jurasik, and Bruce Boxlightner. As a Bab 5 fan, I so wish I could remember any of that.