Accidentally smoking PCP is probably not on your bingo card.

But that’s exactly what happened to Smarterer employee Dan Pratt and me. Four months later, he quit the company.

As best I can tell, these two events were not connected.

[read: part I, Part II, Part III]

Dan Pratt joined Smarterer the hard way. Or, well, the easy way depending on how you looked at it. Hundreds applied to JFS’s growth-hacking squad. Dan didn’t stand out for pedigree or polish. He stood out because he said yes. To everything.

Including working for free.

With enough research you'll note Massachusetts law states an intern must be paid. But, heeeeeyyyy, Smarterer was growth hacking here. What's employment law got to do with it?

(probably a lot, but so does the statue of limitations?)

Pratt carried effusive energy with a dab of curiosity, making him as easy to talk to as a dishpan is to taking soap in the kitchen sink. I once asked Pratt about his superpower: Appearing comfortable in any situation.

"I just copy what everyone else in the room is doing. Doesn't everyone do that?" he offered casually, as if letting me in on a secret handshake.

Smarterer was rarely a stable entity and Pratt's first boss, the head of marketing, was let go just two weeks into his employment. And so Pratt self-taught himself most things - mostly by copying what the other interns were doing.

Six months later, Sarah Hodges took him under her wing, at the grand rate of $30K a year. Not long after, I sought his chameleon-like charisma in sales, and so stole him for my squad. In essence, the Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote.

I feared Pratt leaving, so deployed the oldest trick in the book: A whack of options and a handshake agreement that he would stay at the company for two years.

All seemed victorious until nine months down the line, in April 2014, when Pratt said he was leaving for a job in ad sales at Google.

And so the second oldest trick in the book: A dozen senior executives called Pratt on a Monday, extolling Smarterer's virtues. On Tuesday we brought in the closer, Tony Conrad (Smarterer Board Member and True Ventures Partner), who shined him up real, real good.

Pratt cried uncle and acquiesced. He would turn down Google. Done and done.

That is until Friday, at about 10 PM, when Pratt showed up unannounced at my condo.

It was raining or he was crying...or both.

Pratt sat in our living room and quit, this for the second time in the same week.

But can you blame him? Only four months earlier, I'd taken him to a Phish show at MSG in NYC. This some sort of corporate bonding schtick. The venue was packed and our row crowded, but my college roommate Mike felt sorry for the two unseemly guys trying to hide from the aisle ushers; he let them squeeze in with us in exchange for their offer of, "smoking up this nice fat joint."

Dan's father, respecting Phish's reputation, had advised him beforehand to not do any drugs - but what's a little weed to take the edge off things?

A few minutes later, a shirtless heavyset older gent steamed across our row like a choo choo train arriving at a station. He was covered in curled white body hair so thick it seemed like fur. He didn't speak, but rather he bleated like a goat, while offering me lengthwise-sliced pickles off the mustard-encased concession tray he was cradling.

And this is where I'd have to admit that PCP was deliriously fun. I mean, accident or not, I wouldn't intentionally do it ever again, not on your life, no goddamn way, holy hell you can say that again. But the goat-man was just the beginning of new dimensions that would unfurl that evening.

Mike, Dan and I, now in a blur of a haze of a lack of coherence, stumbled out of the show as high as bats. Like baby lambs we followed our crew into a bar, where we stood for hours, arm in arm, nose to nose, the three of us murmuring in tongues at each other, or maybe saying nothing at all, none of us can quite remember.

Eventually, about four months down the line, Dan Pratt quit Smarterer. Seemingly the PCP mishap had nothing to do with it.

Nearly a year to the day after he left, we hosted Dan Pratt Day: a roast wrapped in celebration. A scavenger hunt and pub crawl to acknowledge the awesomeness that is Pratt - but mostly to haze him for leaving just six months before we exited.

Pratt arrived in Boston,"with a chip on my shoulder, fueled with rage at having to show up at a party where I was the butt-end of the joke."

Dan Pratt Day actually started without Pratt, as he arrived nearly two hours late. It turns out on his very first day at Google, the very first person he met was Todd Saunders and, almost a year later, the two had decided to leave to start a business together.

Pratt wasn't just in town to join in on our little hazing; nope, he took the free flight to pitch Tech Stars Boston on his new business.

Dan Pratt Day kicked off with just one question hanging in the air, like the stink of a PCP-laced joint:

Was Dan Pratt quitting Smarterer the right move?