The Day Bill Walked Me Back
2026-04-30
I was wearing my BakeMorePies polo — the black one with the BMP logo on the chest. Standing in a corporate cafeteria in Clearwater, Florida, in front of one of those expensive coffee machines that hotels and corporate offices use to look serious about coffee. The screen behind me was running Monin's brand reel. The chairs were that black-and-stainless-steel cafe-corporate hybrid. Florida light coming in through the windows.
I was waiting for Bill to come back and walk me to a conference room I hadn't been to yet, in the accounting wing.
Bill Lombardo. CEO of Monin Americas. Third-generation French heritage flavor company that's been making syrups since 1912 in Bourges, France. Products in 140-plus countries. Their syrups are in coffee shops and hotel bars and restaurant kitchens around the world.
I took a selfie while I waited. Big grin, BMP polo, coffee machine and brand display in the background. Bill came around the corner mid-photo, saw me holding the phone up, and smiled. I felt comfortable being seen taking it. He didn't make it weird. I didn't make it weird. He walked me to the conference room.
And I want to be honest about this: in the moment, Bill was just Bill. A guy in business casual who needed to escort me to a room I didn't know yet because I didn't have the key card for that part of the building. We probably talked about the weather, or the sugar truck schedule, or whether the conference room had been re-painted. I don't remember the small talk. It was small.
It wasn't until later that afternoon — telling someone the story — that the contextual frame snapped into focus and I went:
"…wait. That was the CEO of a 113-year-old French global heritage brand. Personally walking me to a room. By name."
This is the phenomenon I want to write down, because I think a lot of people experience it and don't have words for it:
The gap between in-moment normalcy and post-moment recognition.
When you're actually in the room, the people in the room are people. They have faces and breath and small-talk and shoes that don't match their suit. They are not their titles. They're operating at human-scale and so are you. You don't experience yourself as "in the presence of the CEO of a global brand." You experience yourself as standing next to a guy named Bill, doing your job.
It's only when you LEAVE the room and try to describe it to someone outside it that the contextual frame loads. The way "you took a selfie at Monin's headquarters while the CEO of Monin Americas was about to walk you to accounting" sounds when you say it out loud. The way it sits differently in your stomach than it sat in the moment.
Here's the part I think is actually the lesson:
The reason Bill walks me back himself is BECAUSE I don't make it weird.
Executives at people-first companies are tired of being treated like a different category of human. They are surrounded all day by people who turn into different versions of themselves the moment a CEO walks in — voices change, posture stiffens, jokes get worse, eye contact gets squirrelly. The contractors and consultants who get escorted personally, who get badge access, who get pulled into rooms they haven't been to before, are the people who just stay themselves. Wear the polo. Take the selfie. Treat Bill like a person named Bill. Do excellent work without performing importance.
I don't automatically register status hierarchy as the most salient feature of a room. I think this is partly the spectrum-coded way my brain works — people are people, the job is the job, the room is the room. I don't read titles as primary.
For a long time I thought of this as a thing I had to compensate for in professional settings — should I be more deferential? Should I be doing the corporate dance better? What I have come to realize, slowly, is that this is not a deficit. It's an asset. People who don't read status as primary read PEOPLE as primary. Executives at heritage family companies feel that difference instantly.
Most consultants would kill for what happened to me in that Clearwater hallway. They'd network, they'd attend conferences, they'd hire executive coaches. I got escorted because I wear a BMP polo, write good code, and don't need to make Bill into anything other than Bill.
When I tell someone outside the moment about it, the size of it lands.
When I'm in it, the size of it doesn't.
Both are correct. The size is real. The smallness in the moment is also real. The art of doing the work is staying inside the smallness while it's happening, and only letting the size land later — when you have a dachshund on your floor and a friend asking "is this real?"
It is. He did. I was. That was Thursday.
Thursday, April 30, 2026 — Clearwater, FL