I can't confirm the dogs story, but I met Oscar once without knowing who he was. I was a geologist about 3 years out of college doing some environmental brownfields investigation work on a property in Texas City and got a call from my boss that our client on that job wanted us to meet him that afternoon at the Coastal Tower in Houston so we could meet with the client's partner in their business. I told my boss I was in field clothes and smelled like sweat and chemical plants. He said just come on up and it would be fine. So we met our client in the lobby of the coastal building, and he proceeded to take us up in the elevator using his own key card and routed us through several office spaces until we ended up in a really nicely appointed board room.
As we were sitting down, an older guy came in through a door attached to the board room and sat at the head of the table as we were introducing ourselves. He didn't introduce himself and didn't offer to shake hands (which is probably just as well if that was his bathroom). He immediately launched into a diatribe with our client about how you couldn't trust environmental consultants and so on and so on. I could tell it was mostly for show and to see how we would react. About that time I noticed his aggie ring and interrupted him to say "No sir, we couldn't do any of that, we are both aggies and can't lie, cheat, or steal." He stopped immediately and asked what year we graduated. I told him 93 for me and 88 for my boss. He laughed and said something like "yall are just babies" and we got on with the meeting. Afterwards, my boss told me I could handle all future meetings if he was going to be involved since he was puckering up when he started the rant about consultants.
He never did give a hint who he was, but during the meeting I noticed what I thought was an MSO monogram on his shirt cuffs. So when we got back to the office, I walked in and asked our BD guy who would be high up at Coastal with MSO on his cuffs. He said "are you sure it wasn't OSW?" I said "why? Who would that be?" He walked over to the table in his office and picked up a copy of Texas Monthly with the headline "Meanest oilman in Texas" over a picture of Oscar. That was the first time we realized we had just been meeting with Chairman of Coastal Oscar Wyatt and I had sat there in dirty jeans smelling like Texas City and interrupted him in the middle of a meeting. Our client turned out to be the former chief counsel for Coastal when I looked into him a little more. That just cemented my boss's position that he wanted me to do all the talking with them in future meetings.
