The story of the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team Chicken
"Has anyone reading this ever given a rubber chicken to a CEO before? " Read On...

By Justin's Sports Chicken Master Mind (as dubbed by Justin) Hans Bernhardt

San Francisco, January 2008. I had just spent an entire month feverishly and passionately working twelve hour days on a project for work, VMware Inc. , whereby the results would be used as a training session for our technical community at our world wide sales kickoff, which was held in a hotel conference center. The reason why I mention all the work is that, as a result, I had to get to the hotel a few days early to set up our class. This turned out to be a huge reward when one of the instructors in my class walked in and said, "Hey the entire US Olympic Team is upstairs."

Whipping a rubber chicken out of my book bag, and prior photos of Justin and his sports chickens (including one of Winter Olympic Bobsled Silver Medalist Valerie Fleming), I quickly ditched my co-workers and ran upstairs to find long lines of kids waiting to get signatures. Yes I have the mentality of a 9 year old. But this 38 year old guy was gonna listen to his mother's voice in his head and NOT barge in line. In other words, the kids get the priority, no questions asked.

(Side note: Yes I always carry a rubber chicken.  And I always carry the photos of Justin and his sports chickens for the chance that I might run into a sports hero. My coworkers at VMware, a world wide company that I joined eight years earlier when it was less than 100 people, have grown quite accustomed to, well, “The Chicken Man, “ who just so happens to also be an engineer, in their midst. )

Despite not being able to meet the athletes directly, I noticed that among them there were "suits" standing around. Some of them were guards. Some of them looked like they were "official in capacity." There were no little kids waiting in line to get the “suits’ ” signatures. So I walked up to the "suits" and before long I was talking to Jim Millman, CEO of United States Amateur Boxing, Inc. I showed him photos of Justin, and he was more than happy to help us out. However the athletes had to leave for their next destination. So I was going to have to send him a rubber chicken in the mail.

Has anyone reading this ever given a rubber chicken to a CEO before? Well this would be the first of two in 2008!

I sent that chicken to the United States Olympic Committee in April, and had an official,  signed by the 2008 US Olympic Boxing Team, sports chicken for Justin's collection by August. Incidentally August is when I met the next CEO to give a chicken to.