The work me
Jan. 29th, 2015 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisI had a question/comment on one of my entries that asked what I did in my work life before I retired.
My first job was when I was 16 one summer when I worked as a dress shop assistant in a manufacturers outlet store owned by friends of my parents. I sucked at it. (The beginning of kind of a theme.)
During my last year of college I started working as a newspaper reporter on the Wheeling News Register. I switched over to the morning paper - the Wheeling Intelligencer after graduation. After about a year or so, I got a job at a big paper - the Pittsburgh Post Gazette - which I lost before I started due to a strike.
It was winter and it was cold so I moved to South Carolina and got a job as a reporter/photographer for the Aiken Standard. It was a 5 day a week paper in a wonderful little town and I loved it but the pay sucked pool balls and I wanted money.
So I decided to go into sales and launched a 'hire me' campaign that was really fun. I ended up at IBM where I went through their sales training which was extensive and difficult and I was the first woman in my branch office (following on the heels of the first black). But, I made a lot of money even though, I sucked at it. I was skirting on my 'the only girl' ticket and I knew that wasn't going to last so I quit.
And moved to Southern Pines, N.C. and opened up a business finishing people's needlework, making dresses, and teaching macrame. Really. I picked Southern Pines because they had a weekly paper and advertising would be cheap. It was and I managed to even buy my first house.
Then I got married and moved to Charlotte, NC because my husband worked at the newspaper there. I got a job as a legal secretary because I could operate their word processor (I had learned during the IBM years). But, I totally sucked as a legal secretary. No spellcheck and I couldn't spell worth a damn.
I then found a job as a marketing manager for a perfectly charming non profit performing arts theater in downtown Charlotte. It was really a fun gig but, again, no money. So... one of the board members was the Communications Manager at the local IBM plant and he hired me.
I did internal communications writing and speech writing. I loved it. I moved to NY/Connecticut where I did speech writing and marketing coordination for IBM's real estate division. Another fabulous gig. Then I got a chance to work for a very cool guy I admired greatly and moved to Minnesota where he headed up the development of the AS/400 and I wrote his speeches and helped him 'sell' the lab.
Then he got a big shot promotion to Northern California and took me with him. This time I managed a team of communications people and speech writers.
And then I decided I wanted to live in Arizona and my manager was gracious enough to send me (and fund my job here for the first two years). The job sucked but OH how I loved Seattle. Then they moved my job to Phoenix. They gave the choice of moving to Phoenix or taking an incredibly generous buy out. Gimme the money.
I got a job with a small PR firm that lasted all of 3 months. I sucked at it. By that time, I had discovered the web and web pages. It was 1994 and the internet was still kind of a secret in the business world so my skills were in pretty high demand and the guy at the PR firm who fired me (it was actually pretty darned mutual) suggested I go to work for myself building websites for businesses. Which I did.
And then the web got more complicated and I was losing ground since my only teacher was me and I suck at teaching. So I went to work for Microsoft and building one of their first internal websites.
Then the dot com era bloomed and I got head hunted by a start up who's offices were across the street from my house. Trade in my 40 minute commute??? Heck yeah. Then that dot come blew up and I looked around the neighborhood and found another one kitty cornered from the first and went to work there.
After a couple of years I got laid off and found work doing contract web work for this guy and his contracts were with Microsoft. I did that for a couple o years until I found a better guy and did the same thing for him. (Those two guys later went into business together which always kind of amused me.) I worked out of my home coding pages for Zune and then for Microsoft.com.
And then I got laid off. I had been thinking about retiring anyway so I did.
And that's the whole story.
My first job was when I was 16 one summer when I worked as a dress shop assistant in a manufacturers outlet store owned by friends of my parents. I sucked at it. (The beginning of kind of a theme.)
During my last year of college I started working as a newspaper reporter on the Wheeling News Register. I switched over to the morning paper - the Wheeling Intelligencer after graduation. After about a year or so, I got a job at a big paper - the Pittsburgh Post Gazette - which I lost before I started due to a strike.
It was winter and it was cold so I moved to South Carolina and got a job as a reporter/photographer for the Aiken Standard. It was a 5 day a week paper in a wonderful little town and I loved it but the pay sucked pool balls and I wanted money.
So I decided to go into sales and launched a 'hire me' campaign that was really fun. I ended up at IBM where I went through their sales training which was extensive and difficult and I was the first woman in my branch office (following on the heels of the first black). But, I made a lot of money even though, I sucked at it. I was skirting on my 'the only girl' ticket and I knew that wasn't going to last so I quit.
And moved to Southern Pines, N.C. and opened up a business finishing people's needlework, making dresses, and teaching macrame. Really. I picked Southern Pines because they had a weekly paper and advertising would be cheap. It was and I managed to even buy my first house.
Then I got married and moved to Charlotte, NC because my husband worked at the newspaper there. I got a job as a legal secretary because I could operate their word processor (I had learned during the IBM years). But, I totally sucked as a legal secretary. No spellcheck and I couldn't spell worth a damn.
I then found a job as a marketing manager for a perfectly charming non profit performing arts theater in downtown Charlotte. It was really a fun gig but, again, no money. So... one of the board members was the Communications Manager at the local IBM plant and he hired me.
I did internal communications writing and speech writing. I loved it. I moved to NY/Connecticut where I did speech writing and marketing coordination for IBM's real estate division. Another fabulous gig. Then I got a chance to work for a very cool guy I admired greatly and moved to Minnesota where he headed up the development of the AS/400 and I wrote his speeches and helped him 'sell' the lab.
Then he got a big shot promotion to Northern California and took me with him. This time I managed a team of communications people and speech writers.
And then I decided I wanted to live in Arizona and my manager was gracious enough to send me (and fund my job here for the first two years). The job sucked but OH how I loved Seattle. Then they moved my job to Phoenix. They gave the choice of moving to Phoenix or taking an incredibly generous buy out. Gimme the money.
I got a job with a small PR firm that lasted all of 3 months. I sucked at it. By that time, I had discovered the web and web pages. It was 1994 and the internet was still kind of a secret in the business world so my skills were in pretty high demand and the guy at the PR firm who fired me (it was actually pretty darned mutual) suggested I go to work for myself building websites for businesses. Which I did.
And then the web got more complicated and I was losing ground since my only teacher was me and I suck at teaching. So I went to work for Microsoft and building one of their first internal websites.
Then the dot com era bloomed and I got head hunted by a start up who's offices were across the street from my house. Trade in my 40 minute commute??? Heck yeah. Then that dot come blew up and I looked around the neighborhood and found another one kitty cornered from the first and went to work there.
After a couple of years I got laid off and found work doing contract web work for this guy and his contracts were with Microsoft. I did that for a couple o years until I found a better guy and did the same thing for him. (Those two guys later went into business together which always kind of amused me.) I worked out of my home coding pages for Zune and then for Microsoft.com.
And then I got laid off. I had been thinking about retiring anyway so I did.
And that's the whole story.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 04:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 04:56 am (UTC)So... it was IBM - about 1987ish. My boss and I were in Toronto (we lived/worked in Northern California). He was there to make a speech and I was there to help. While we were there something big blew up (organizationally, not physically) and my boss had to move a bunch of meetings and inconvenience a lot of people and, most importantly, a major major customer. Who was our host. Who was a BIG golfer.
My boss decided about midnight that he had to make major amends at the breakfast meeting. Let's get him a new set of xxxxx (some fancy schmancy golf clubs - I was clueless)! Susan, can we get those here by 8? WTF??? NFW! Sure, we can. Here's the number of my second cousin on my father's side twice removed (or some equivalent), she be happy to help. She wasn't. At all.
But the hotel concierge was a saint. Really. A friggin' saint. Who's boyfriend worked at a sporting goods shop and got his boss out of bed. All were handsomely compensated. And the golf clubs made it to breakfast.
And... that's the story. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for those fabulous Toronto-ians.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 04:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 04:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 05:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-30 04:22 pm (UTC)Toronto
Date: 2015-01-30 06:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-01-31 02:10 am (UTC)