Gregor’s Summer Vacation

As told by Gregor, edited by Kathy

you guys know that I moved out to the East Coast in 2004 and it started with just a summer. After school got out, I was going to come out for the summer and had first started by talking to Nick and then to Kyle and then talking to Russ. And they were all, you know, “Yeah, come on out.” And “We’ll get you a job.” Well, you know: “It will be fun. We’ve got room in the house and everybody’s here.”

So, I was pretty hyped up when I got there, and it was pretty much non-stop action with Russ and all of you and all the sports events. Russ took us to games and all sorts of other activities. As it settled down, Russ told me, “I’ve got a job for you. I need a personal assistant.” I thought, OK, this sounds good. So, he starts describing the job. “I just need help with some things, odd jobs and tasks, and things.” Alright, no problem, Russ. So, I wrote down some of the assignments Russ gave me that I think you’ll find humorous. I certainly did. And this is by no means an exhaustive list.

One of the assignments was to procure a foosball table and an air hockey table and to make sure they were arcade quality. “I don’t want a piece of junk,” he said. “I want the real air hockey table that you get at the arcade. I want the real one.”

So, I found this place in Natick or somewhere that had this showroom of pool tables and arcade games. I went there and found a couple of different machines for sale. These things weren’t cheap. I called Russ and asked, “Which one do you want to get, Russ?” And he says, “I don’t know. Just get the best one that they have!” So, I got the best one that they had. There was almost an identical story with a stereo system.

Russ just wanted to beef up the stereo system they had in the front room. So, I went to one of these stereo shops. You can spend $1000 or you can spend $50,000. So, I found some system and asked Russ how much he wanted to spend. He said, “Get something good, really good.” So, I got it and had it installed.

You might have heard about Russ going to Foxwoods (Casino). He went to Foxwoods a lot and he had this VIP status and sort of hotline that he could call and make reservations. So, instead of calling the hotline, he would call me and tell me what he wanted, and I would call the hotline. So, I was Russ’s ‘concierge Foxwoods’. He would call me up and say, “Can you get me a reservation for Thursday night, and then we might want to stay Friday night. I’m not sure. See what they have. I want a corner suite…” etc. I would write this all down and make all the reservations for him.

There was another time when he told me that his car needed an oil change – the BMW Z8. He said to drive down to Framingham or Natick where there is a BMW dealership. I was really surprised that he wanted me to take, you know, the Z, because it’s a very expensive car. So, I get in and drive it down there. I didn’t have a reservation or an appointment or anything. He said, “You don’t need an appointment. As soon as you get there, they will just roll out the red carpet for you.”

So, I take it down there and the guy says, “It doesn’t need an oil change. It only has 1,000 miles since the last oil change.” So, I call Russ to tell him it doesn’t need an oil change and he says, “Yeah, I know. I just wanted you to take it for a drive.” So that was the kind of guy that he was. He barely knew me, really, at this point and let me to take the car.

Some of the other assignments – and by the way, I was getting paid for this. He had a standing order on a couple of things. One was to make sure we were stocked up on Grey Goose. Another one was cigars. At the time, there was a place that if you talked to the right guy, they had Cuban cigars. That was an adventure and a story in and of itself, but they did have Cuban Cigars if you talked to the right guy. The other was to make sure that the hot tub was in tip-top shape at all times.

[Kyle: So, Gregor and I would kind of destroy things and then Russ would pay Gregor to fix them.]

Well, in fact, on my list here is one of the examples of that. We had broken a window and then one of my assignments was to fix the window that Kyle and I had broken. So that was something I was paid to do.

At one point I was going grocery shopping getting stuff for all of us and Russ said, “Get a whole bunch of paper towels. I don’t ever want to run out of paper towels ever again.” And then he added that he thought paper towels were one of the best inventions of the twentieth century. So, I got a whole lot of paper towels, as many that could fit in the car.

So, I’m 22 and Cameron was 12 and Russ decided that all of this work was maybe a little burdensome for me, so he informed me that he had hired Cameron as my assistant. I was Russ’s assistant and Cameron was my assistant. I thought this was great because this was overwhelming, you know, the paper towels, the Z8 oil change, this was really becoming overwhelming. So, Cam was tagging along with me. We’d drive around and buy chemicals for the hot tub and cigars…

[Cam: not to mention he would let you drive the M5 as the company car.]

Yeah, that was the working vehicle, the BMW M5. So, Russ wanted to get the driveway repaved and I was thinking this was a good task to outsource to Cameron. So, I told Cam, We need to get the driveway repaved. Can you take care of this?”

[Cam: I was 12. I was 12.]

At 12 years old he found a place, called the people, and got the driveway repaved. We had been out of town and when we pulled up we saw that driveway was repaved. Russ was more excited than anyone about a repaved driveway! It was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. I wondered, who are these people that would talk to a 12-year-old on the phone and do a $5,000 driveway repaving? But he did it.

{Cam: Shoutout to Bev Laqua Paving, by the way, for paving my dad’s driveway.]

So, these are just a few funny stories. But the moral of the story is, here was Russ and like the stories that Deder and Conor told, he was just finding a way to help me out. He was just creating these jobs and finding a way to give me money and make it fun along the way. There are many, many stories like that, but I’m just eternally grateful for not just these fun times but for the good advice he gave me. He encouraged me to get my MBA. I don’t know if I would have done that. I was kind of on the fence. And you look back and you’re just so glad that you took the plunge on these things and did them because Russ would always say, “When it comes to education, you’ve got it forever. No one can ever take that away from you. That’s something you can never lose.” He was really big on that. So those are a few of the stories I wanted to share.