Humana
1996–2001
The screens were green. That’s what I remember first about Humana — the glow of green-screen dumb terminals in a room full of people filling in the details that computers couldn’t catch. Medical claims. Codes and dates and dollar amounts, keyed in by hand, eight hours a day.
Jessica convinced me to apply. She was my girlfriend by then — we’d met at Toy Works — and she said Humana paid six-something an hour with benefits. More than the toy store. It felt like my first real job. I’d dropped out of UWGB, my engineering degree wasn’t going anywhere — I was too lazy and unfocused to finish it — and I needed something that looked like a life instead of a holding pattern.
In my first training class I recognized a guy. Mike Wentz. He’d been in my intro to philosophy class at UWGB, with Dr. Orville Clark — the mad genius, we’d call him later. I’d remember that class, and Mike, for the rest of my life. But that’s a story from the university years. What mattered at Humana was the nod of recognition: you’re here too. Another smart kid who’d ended up pushing keys in a claims office. Mike would become a friend for life.
The work was brainless, and I mean that almost fondly. My hands did the data entry while my mind went elsewhere. I listened to everything the Brown County Library had — audiobooks, self-help books, music, anything on tape or CD. It was its own education, even if no one would have called it that. I was absorbing without a plan, filling myself up the way I’d later fill basements and hard drives — compulsively, broadly, not sure what I was building toward.
I moved up the chain. Claims, then benefit analyst. I met Ross LaHaye in the claims department — another friend for life. Joel had joined Humana too, and Ben Schultz worked there. We had a crew. The social life was half the reason anyone stayed. There were other good friends I’ve lost touch with, but Ross and Mike and Joel are the ones who lasted.
I was a slacker. I’ll own that. I spent half my day in the system messenger on the green screen — the internal chat we all used to gossip and plan lunch and avoid work. I took walks in their arboretum. I spent time in the weight room. I would wander past the mainframe room and stare through the glass with a curiosity I didn’t know what to do with yet — those big humming machines felt important in a way I couldn’t articulate.
At some point I negotiated a switch to three ten-hour days. It paid the same as full-time, but the four free days were glorious. With that time I worked on my studio, and I started watching films — seriously, systematically, the way I did everything once I decided I was behind. The AFI Top 100 list was my curriculum. I got them from the library on interlibrary loan, one or two at a time. German Expressionism. The Jazz Singer. Godfather. Hitchcock. All the stuff that educated people referenced casually and I had to look up. I remember during some Humana training, Peter and Jules were talking about Victor/Victoria, and other movies, and I had no idea what they were talking about. That stung. So I caught up. Ross became my cinema companion — we’d watch and discuss, and slowly I built the literacy to hold my own.
Joel and I took karate classes together during this period. I attended about six lessons before I realized it wasn’t for me. Too much Cobra Kai culture and not enough Mr. Miyagi.
But someone was watching. Leadership saw something in me I didn’t see in myself and fast-tracked me to a product development role. Humana was going paperless — desktop PCs replacing the dumb terminals, a whole new system. I was already a PC expert from my obsessive home use, so I could actually help. I wrote workflows. I documented best practices. I helped people who’d spent twenty years on green screens learn to use a mouse. It was the first time a job had asked me to think instead of just type.
My salary crept up to thirteen dollars an hour by 1999. That was a lot for me, even though I could never quite keep up on bills. I stuck as much as I could into mutual funds — fast-forward, I spent all that and don’t have it now. And I was still spending on toys. My collecting days were going strong and I’d found a couple of people at Humana who were into it too.
I lasted five years. In the fifth year I couldn’t take it anymore. The walls closed in the way they do when you’ve sat in the same chair long enough to know exactly how many ceiling tiles are above you. I had a second job by then — web design at NetFX Studios, a little webshop in Green Bay. Scott Eastman, the creative director, was a friend of my sister’s, and he let me join. Seven dollars an hour, part-time, and I liked it more than the thirteen-dollar job. That told me something. I gave my two weeks and walked out.
Five years of green screens and system messages and walks in the arboretum. It wasn’t nothing. I learned how enterprises work. I learned how systems change. I learned that someone in a corner office might see potential in you before you see it in yourself. But mostly I learned that I couldn’t sit still forever. The maker in me was getting restless, and the next thing — whatever it was — had to involve making something.