Things were hectic and crazy for the first couple of weeks. It turns out that it was required for each employee to spend two weeks on the line, building buses, bucking rivets, and learning the business. I had a ball and when it was over, I kind of regretted having to leave it for my duties as a programmer.
The first couple of days were the same as anywhere, trying to fit in, reading boring information, and meeting everyone without making a comple fool of yourself or pissing anyone off.
About the second week or two, one of my co-workers caught me eating my typical breakfast of coffee and a Moon Pie. I can't seem to remember who it was, but once it started it really didn't matter who started it since almost everyone participated. You see, he started calling me "Moon Pie". I really didn't like it since they were all just making fun of the new guy. Each day I came to work I hoped that they would stop, but alas no, it just kept going.
In fact, it was still going a few months later when the end of the year rolled around and they asked for volunteers to work with the branch plants on their physical inventory. I was very excited about this because it would get me out of the office for a couple of weeks and just maybe, they would forget about my new name. So I volunteered, hoping of course to go to Ontario, Canada or Mt. Pleasant Iowa. Instead, they sent me across the street to the WanderLodge plant. In case you haven't heard these are very much premier motor homes. In 1982, they started at $100,000 and were totally customizable. In fact, after a deposit, you actually sat down with an architect to design your personal motor home. At that time, the most expensive coach they had built was for an arab shiek for a cool 1 million dollars.
Anyway to continue the story, my boss took me over to the plant and introduced me to the plant manager "Here's moon, he'll be helping out during the physical inventory..." Wow! What a couple of weeks! I hardly left the building except to clean up and get a bite to eat. I had never been involved in a physical inventory, it was quite an undertaking. We were very busy counting each item in the plant: bumpers, buckets of bolts, seats, etc. My job was to assist as needed with reports and search programs to find certain items misplaced in the warehouse or added to a coach somewhere.
I believe I met everyone (about 200 people) at the plant at one time or another during that two to three week period. About a week or so after I returned to my regular duties, I received a memo, (copied to my boss, my boss's boss, the owners of the company, and other plant managers), from the WanderLodge plant manager detailing his thanks and addressed to "Moon Pie".
Now it was official. Whenever my friends would come down from Atlanta or South Carolina, and we would go out to the movie or dinner, we would inevitably meet someone that would call me "Moon". When my friends asked about this and I told them the story, they would laugh their guts out. So it has continued to propagate and now more people refer to me by Moon than my other name and I am a different person for it.