That time Bill Gates went through a McDonalds drive-through with no cash

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Microsoft Developer Blogs.

There was that time in the late 1990's that Bill Gates went down to the Bay Area to join some employees for a sales presentation to some other company.

One of the salespeople was assigned to pick up Bill from the airport. Bill's flight was late, and there was barely enough time to get from the airport to the sales call. Bill got into the car and said he was hungry and wanted to go through a McDonalds drive-through before the meeting. (You may recall that Bill is fond of his hamburgers.)

The salesperson had no cash on him, but he assumed that Bill would have money to pay, seeing as he's the richest man in the world. What he didn't know was that Bill was notorious for never carrying money with him.¹

They get to the drive-through window, and the salesperson admits, "Sorry, Bill, I don't have any cash on me. Can you pay for this?" But Bill didn't have any money either. He explained the situation to the person at the window, pointed out that his passenger was none other than Bill Gates, and requested some leniency.

He didn't get it.

They had to drive away empty-handed, and Bill suffered through the meeting hungry.

This experience taught a valuable lesson: Always be prepared when you are called upon to pick up an executive, for they often will ask for something to be picked up on the way from the airport to the meeting. From that point onward, the person telling the story always prepared for picking up an executive by keeping a variety of beverages in the car, as well as $100 in cash in his wallet for unexpected mid-trip expenses.

¹ The fact that Bill doesn't carry cash pours cold water on some variations of stories about Bill Gates.

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