#WeAreArity Wednesday: Lucas Antony

What was your first job?

The first way I made money – outside of parents giving me money for chores and such – was rock picking.

Every spring, they start to till the land and rocks get exposed to the surface. They need to be removed for better plant growth and to avoid damaging farm equipment. So, they go out and just kind of pick rocks out of the fields. And it’s a really easy job for a younger kid. This was a middle school job, and I did it for a friend of mine, and we would rock pick for a couple hours and then go ride four wheelers and such.

It was always exciting if there’s a bigger boulder that they had to use a tractor to get up.

What do you do in your free time to help you relax?

Anyone who really knows me knows I’m really into biking. So, a big thing I do with my free time to just relax is just go out for a bike ride through Chicago – along the lake or in the forest preserves to get away from things a little bit.

What is the best superpower?

Teleportation would be great if you could just travel to wherever in the world. Of course, you need to make sure you know where you’re going. You don’t want to end up in the middle of the ocean or locked in some house or whatever. But it’d be great to be able to travel instantly anywhere and visit friends. I’ll just pop over to Hawaii for a couple hours and then go home.

If you could teleport anywhere right now, where would you go?

Actually, I’ve always wanted to go to New Zealand. It’s on my bucket list. I’m a big “Lord of The Rings” fan, but I also want to see all the nature out there.

I almost booked a trip in March, but the tour I wanted to do didn’t have room for me, so now I’m looking at doing it in November.

What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

Ever since I was a kid, I just like having a cereal in the morning, and I cut up a banana in it. I eat that every morning. When I travel, I always get a banana at least. It’s just very consistent.

What is your favorite season? Why?

My favorite season by far is fall. Partially because my birthday is in fall. Minnesota actually has this teacher’s retreat thing, and we got a four-day weekend the third weekend in October. Usually, it was around my birthday, so we’d go out and do something like go to a state park that’s nearby.

I also just love the leaves and everything.

What is the worst job you ever had?

I have a response for a worst job, but it’s not the job itself. I’ve had some odd jobs – one of them was a night janitorial job at the YMCA. The main manager worked during the day, and then there was me and two other guys who had it as a side job for some extra cash.

The worst task that we were asked to do was there was this bad smell that was coming from behind the vending machines, and we were supposed to clean it up. First, it was just really hard to figure out. We didn’t have a dolly to move the vending machines, so that was a whole discussion of how we were going to do that and not get killed. And we ended up using the little scooters – like a little plastic board with wheels that are used in grade school when you had PE class.

Once we got it up on those, we were able to wheel it. And we found that smell was a mouse got inside and got chopped up by the fan. So, cleaning that up was probably one of the worst things that I’ve had to do.

Otherwise, that job wasn’t that bad, but that was definitely a memorable night.

What is your earliest memory of this job?

On my first day, I came in and was put on the insurance team. I’m a data scientist, and on the insurance team they have the Drivesight® models which are under NDA.

So, I was brought into this meeting, and I don’t know what’s going on. All of a sudden, one of my colleagues was like, “You have to sign this piece of paper.” And I’m like, “I don’t understand.” But I just remember her saying “This is under NDA, you need to sign this paper before you join the meeting.” So, one of my earliest memories was just being all confused as to what I was signing.