Shared Experiences

Tonight I was stuck on a train that was not moving… for an hour and a half… very full and squished together with the heating full blast on the first warm day in ages.

The driver did not know what was going on and could give no expected time when we would get moving again. He also mumbled and spoke very silently so you could only catch every second word.

Slowly you could feel everyone in the carriage getting more and more annoyed, at the situation mostly but also at each other. Small annoyances become “big issues”. One woman started complaining loudly that she could not hear what the driver had said as “people didn’t stop talking on the phone”. The guy sitting next to here being the only one on the phone. Another one started complaining about the smell and several heavily sweating guys felt singled out.

When we get the news the train will not continue on but go back to London, the fever reaches is pitch.

Then all of a sudden the train starts moving in the right direction. The mood shifts completely. Everyone is elated. The horror of having to return to London and finding another train is gone. We will all reach the station in 10-15 minutes.

People start joking and sharing stories. And unlike any of the other fellow commuters I see every day, I honestly think I am more likely to start a conversation with the people sitting around me today than any others.

It is the power of shared experiences.

I know this phenomenon all too well from people you work with in tough software releases or fellow alumni of companies you worked for. You may not have that much in common… heck, you may not even have liked them that much and / or gotten annoyed by little things they did when you worked together… but once it is all over…

They are your bros. Your fellow veterans of release wars. Your fellow survivors of C-level madness.

Strange how it works that way.

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