30 Years Employed

Today, was my 30th Anniversary at my place of employment.  I never thought this day would come.

Since September of 1985, I joined my place of employment  as a temp, doing third shift key entry processing Pell Grant Apps.  The hours sucked but at least I could listen to music and I did quite a bit of that.  Back then my place of employment was a pretty good place to work, perhaps a career job.  It took me two and a half years to finally get on as a permanent on second shift.  I wasn't playing music at the time and for some reason sold my Zickos set dirt cheap,  I basically just threw them out on the front yard waiting for the garbageman to pick them up.

I look at my tenure at my place of employment in a bittersweet mode.  I'm amazed that I have stuck around for 30 years, even five years ago I didn't think I'd survive after job cuts and watching printing go up north due to incompetent and overzealous ops manager that lived in Minnesota and thought we'd make the migration north.

In the five years, I was destined to go to packaging, but Ellen from scanning lobbied hard for me to join her team and thankfully I did, and managed to have a decent year in Iowa City once again.  And then they moved everything and everybody back up to C.R.  Ellen also suggested that I should play in jams as well, so I took her advice as well.  She also thought she could change management and have them adapt to her style of managing.  That didn't work.

In 2016 the ax fell and we lost Ellen, plus Kate, Brad and a few others.  It hasn't been the same.  When the old company was in operation, they rewarded employees with milestones every five years.  It used to be we would get a nice gift for being a dedicated employee.  That too has gone by the wayside.  There was no acknowledgement of my hire date, no certificate of recognition, no good job comments, no pizza, nothing, it was just another day of trying to slit and scan wet and warped Puerto Rico documents and getting nowhere.  But at least I didn't get called into the office and getting bitched out over something that I have no control over.

I miss the days of Pell, the days of company parties and Jay Clark giving kudos to the workers in the old company meetings.  I miss the days of Data Input and my old boss Greg Nutter and me getting together to jam.  I miss trading music with Mike Davenport and bullshitting with Dennis Pusateri and I miss Ellen and her peptalks and caring about us co workers. I miss talking baseball with Denny Ballard. It really was a great place to work.

I have good memories of the old days.  But I also remember the not so great. Wynna Witmer and her antics. Watching Mark Messier having a seizure in front of us one day that freaked out our senior in Pell,  The night Chris Street died in a horrific accident in front of the driveway to our place of employment.  The day my appendix almost ruptured and leaving me on the couch at home for three weeks in 1996.  The weird fall of 1991 when Jayne Doyle worked up there and me and her had to drive Doreen home after Doreen got thrown out of the old Gas Company bar and she was too drunk to get home.   The night in 1985 when it was 10 below zero and the hood of the old 1968 Olds Cutless flew in the air going to Hardees for supper.  And the blizzard of late 1985 to which I ended up getting stranded out on a country road after a Bubba in a pickup truck cut me off and I ended up in a ditch.   Despite it all, I had some good times.

There's not a big list of people to thank, but I do thank Sonya and Louie and especially Rod Albaugh for helping me through the past year, and of course Dan Moyer for being supportive of my music efforts.  We never connected till he found out I played hard rock drums, now we get along quite well. Also to the memories of Sue Halverson,  Danny Bowman, Dennis Pusateri, IBM Mark Vlasic, Lavern Garner, Jim Rogers and Boone Novy.

But most of all, thanks to Bev Bowman who took a chance and hired me as a perm on May 16, 1988 along with Paula Bakey and a couple others, Denny Ballard who welcomed me into Printing/Scanning  and Ellen Cary-Grimm for being the last resort and at least saving me from going to the 10th tier of Dante's Inferno for at least a couple of years.  And to all of the good folks that did come and gone during the busy season and past permanent people.   I never thought I would last this long.