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Career Path Re-Do?


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In quiet moments, have you ever thought about what career path you would choose if you could do it all over again? 

Recently this topic has been discussed between my wife and I and for me, I would have focused on the Arts, Literature and English and become both a

cartoonist-at-work-copy.thumb.jpg.35ceca37b28bdf0deed8a9d8f421a771.jpg

cartoonist

iStock_000004792809XSmall_0.jpg.9b018d65ff358022d7b75b1777325f47.jpg

and a novelist.

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20 minutes ago, Father Kit Cool Gun Garth said:

In quiet moments, have you ever thought about what career path you would choose if you could do it all over again? 

Recently this topic has been discussed between my wife and I and for me, I would have focused on the Arts, Literature and English and become both a

cartoonist-at-work-copy.thumb.jpg.35ceca37b28bdf0deed8a9d8f421a771.jpg

cartoonist

iStock_000004792809XSmall_0.jpg.9b018d65ff358022d7b75b1777325f47.jpg

and a novelist.

Naw, you'ld be a politician....not-listening.giflaughing-tears-pointing-emoticon-wiping-away-something-someone-his-other-hand-85083127.jpg

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First carrier was as a RV Draftsman\Enginner.  Then when gas hit $1 a gallon...

Second carrier was a Deputy Marshal, Marshal then acting Town Manager.

Third career is Plant Manger for a Indenpendent Telephone Company and 8 years as a local politician..

Fourth carreer will be as a part time putteraroundthehouse expert. (Retired).

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I was born in '42 and started working in '52. I took early retirement in 2006, and all that time I had twenty-six tax paying jobs and maybe a dozen more where I was paid under the table.  Shortest period was just under an hour, the longest was eleven years.  My dad once commented that I settled on a career of changing jobs

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In my third year of college, I was ready to quit, and instead to become a race car mechanic.  My father, an eminently practical and persuasive fellow, convinced me that mechanics school would be there after I finished college.  And of course I met my wife-to-be the next year, and decided on law school.  So much for race car mechanics.

 

LL

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If I had it to do over again, I think I would've tried to become a commercial pilot. Second choice would be a park ranger or game warden.

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I'd still love to pursue a career in what my  college degree studies were. How time gets away from us... now I am too old to apply for those jobs. 

 

Oops.

 

Guess I'll do something else.

 

 

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I was trained by the best, British Intelligence. But in retrospect, I’d rather have been a poet, or a farmer. 

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I woulda been a gigello, a poor one but a gigello none the less.:D.

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17 hours ago, Major Crimes said:

I could never see myself having been anything but a soldier.

 

18 hours ago, DocWard said:

If I had it to do over again, I think I would've tried to become a commercial pilot. Second choice would be a park ranger or game warden.

 

I decided I should clarify. I did mean do one of those things as opposed to being an attorney. I loved being a medic in the National Guard, and had it not been for meeting Mrs. Doc when I did, I would have likely pursued an active duty career.

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I went to college to be an English Teacher. I went directly into the Army after graduation, married my college sweetheart when i came home from VietNam(she took a teaching job while i was overseas). When she came home everyday and told me the things she had to put up with I realized i was too attitudinally challenged to teach school. I needed work and wound up in Maintenance in a carpet mill. over the years I taught a lot of technical subjects to new mechanics, so I sort of went around the world in my career. I am now retired and a full time caretaker for my pa, Blue Boy SASS 46773. best job I ever had.

 

Imis

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I spent most of my career melting rocks at an ASARCO lead smelter.

 

Starting over... a commercial pilot, on completely opposite sides of the spectrum. Either a big jet, devoid of passengers (think UPS or Fedex), or flying small groups of clients into remote hunting or fishing areas (think de Havilland Otter)

 

I find politics interesting, and a lot of folks say I would be good at it, but I'd end up punching somebody out before my first week ended. :lol:

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I really enjoyed my first career and would still be doing it now if I could, Firefighrer.  I like my current career but herding cats gets old after a while. 

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There are things I might have done differently, possibly worked on more programs in my chosen career field (aerospace engineering), but life isn't an instant replay. What was it the old witch woman hollered in Thorton Wilder's play, "By the Skin of Our Teeth"?  "Death by regret!" 

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I joke about the gigello thing but as I look back on all of the jobs that I’ve had almost all of them are not around anymore. I wanted to be an airframe mechanic after going to a senior career day at a local college. There was quite an aeronautics program up at Rangely, Colorado and I spent quite a bit of time talking to them about their airframe mechanics program. Well I got all of the paperwork together and I needed my folks to co sign the note for the tuition and room and board and because I had been such a screw up all through high school they (wisely) refused. So the day after I graduated I moved out at the behest of my stepfather, who was tired of my antics and behavior. I was working for a company that installed pivot irrigation sprinklers and they had pretty much ran out of work in the San Luis valley of Colorado and gave me two options, Saudi Arabia or Kansas. I did a little checking on the Saudi’s Arabia thing and my propensity to consume large amounts of alcohol and fool around with the opposite sex weren’t really tolerated over there and could end up in a beheading so I lost interest in that local very rapidly. I visited the Kansas operation and it was hot, humid and pretty much void of those of the opposite sex in the local where they wanted me to live.

 

I landed in Sheridan, Wyoming and went to work delivering dry cleaning and cleaning the solvent tanks once a month (not fun). I found the love of my life up there (The Practice Wife) and thought I’d live happily ever after building fiberglass stock tanks that would not freeze in the winter until a whole bunch of them froze in the winter and the company went belly up. I then went to work for a company repairing office machines and went to school on IBM Selectric typewriters and man I thought my ticket was punched but the guy that owned the company and I hated each other and once or twice a week we’d have to be restrained from killing each other so I made like the Beverly Hillbillies with my 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner, U-Haul trailer, one year old son (who like to throw toy car parts out the window with a Colorado State Patrol car right behind us) and a very pregnant practice wife and headed to sunny Arizona. Went to work the day after I got there fixing office machines for an office supply company. I went out and sold maintenance contracts to many of the high schools around the area and the company I worked for moved my nice repair shop out of the main store where it was heated and air conditioned to a slump block building with a sheet metal roof and no heat or air conditioning. After a month in the shop in temperatures above 110 degrees outside and a lot hotter than that inside I went into the owner of the company one night after I’d cashed my paycheck and told him I knew how I could save him $600.00 a month and he excitedly asked me what it was and I told him “I Quit.”

 

Then went to work at Champion products, they manufactured golf and leisure clothing and I learned the textile trade and about a year later I went to work for a new company from New York that was building a plant out in Arizona City  to manufacture thermal underwear for J.C Penny and the U.S. Military. I started out as a cutter and fabric layup man and after a couple of years became plant manager. Things were going well until the fire (another story another time) and the fire caused the New York owners to reassess their Arizona venture and shut the plant down. They gave me 90 days severance pay and I had a job about two days later installing two-way radios for a two-way radio dealer.

 

I’d been experimenting with ham radio so installing two -way radios was pretty easy. We also had direct dial and operator assist mobile phones which were really cool (cellular was still someone’s dream). The guy I worked for insisted that in my spare time I learn how to work on radios and I did and I loved it. I then moved into sales when 800mhz SMR came into being and sold a ton of radios to agriculture, Ag related, Ag services, plumbers, electricians, etc.. and had found my home. I packed up the family, four kids now and headed to Dallas, Texas to work for the largest two-way radio dealer in the area as his service manager, I loved it, the practice wife (soon to be ex wife) hated everything about Dallas and Texas and after about 8 months of loving work but coming home to a very unhappy and distraught wife I gave in and put in my two weeks notice, made like the Beverly Hillbillies again,  four kids, Chevy Goodtimes Van and a really big U-Haul truck and headed back to Arizona. 

 

I went to to work for a radio dealer in Phoenix as a salesman and sold lots of radios but un beknown  to me the manufacturer had cut him off because he was in arrears to the tune of $500k to the manufacturer who had supplied him radios but was never paid. I was at a watering hole with one of my old customers and he recommended that I start my own two-way radio sales and service company and he bank rolled part of it and I did. I quit the other guy and went out on my own and eventually ended up buying the company that I started out in the two-way radio business with. Ended up selling all of my interest in the business to settle my divorce and headed out to San Diego. Went to work for a dealer out here as GM and bought a couple of old PacBell mountain top sites at auction and built them out as repeater and cellular sites.

 

Y’all are probably wondering what all this has to do with career path redo aren’t you? Well had I stayed with the IBM Selectric service business I’d be out of work, there aren’t any anymore. About 99% of the garment industry is now overseas. Radio technicians don’t diagnose and repair down to the component level anymore they change out boards or modules. I used to sell cellular phones for $4,000.00 each all day long and U.S. West Cellular would pay me $500.00 for every phone that I put on their system, nowadays I think the resellers get about $15.00 per unit out here. So had I stayed with any of those careers I’d be broke, living on the street. The mountaintop sites that I used to own and sold are mostly vacant now because technology has changed so much that high elevation sites aren’t needed anymore for the most part, certainly not cellular.

 

 

 

 

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Hermit, with unlimited access to libraries and distilleries.

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I have enjoyed my 34 years as a cop, but reflecting back, I wish I hadn't had an argument with my mother that gave me reason to stay out of college.  My intentions were to study and become a veterinarian.  Mom and Dad were having marital trouble (they divorced three years later), and Mom couldn't bear for me to just up and leave home, as I was her support.  She wanted me to commute to a local college that (at that time) offered nothing towards my chosen career other than the most basic of courses.  

 

41 years later...I'm now working for that college as a Police Officer.  

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I went to NC State as a forestry mechanization student and worked in the field for four years.  Low pay, no advancements, slow-growing trees and working too far from management for the to know how hard I worked.

I have worked in precision metal since 1989, making all kinds of things from cell tower components to fuel pumps to nuclear fuel tanks.  Wish that I started sooner and saved more, but it has been a good ride.

 

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20 hours ago, Yul Lose said:

I joke about the gigello thing but as I look back on all of the jobs that I’ve had almost all of them are not around anymore. I wanted to be an airframe mechanic after going to a senior career day at a local college. There was quite an aeronautics program up at Rangely, Colorado and I spent quite a bit of time talking to them about their airframe mechanics program. Well I got all of the paperwork together and I needed my folks to co sign the note for the tuition and room and board and because I had been such a screw up all through high school they (wisely) refused. So the day after I graduated I moved out at the behest of my stepfather, who was tired of my antics and behavior. I was working for a company that installed pivot irrigation sprinklers and they had pretty much ran out of work in the San Luis valley of Colorado and gave me two options, Saudi Arabia or Kansas. I did a little checking on the Saudi’s Arabia thing and my propensity to consume large amounts of alcohol and fool around with the opposite sex weren’t really tolerated over there and could end up in a beheading so I lost interest in that local very rapidly. I visited the Kansas operation and it was hot, humid and pretty much void of those of the opposite sex in the local where they wanted me to live.

 

I landed in Sheridan, Wyoming and went to work delivering dry cleaning and cleaning the solvent tanks once a month (not fun). I found the love of my life up there (The Practice Wife) and thought I’d live happily ever after building fiberglass stock tanks that would not freeze in the winter until a whole bunch of them froze in the winter and the company went belly up. I then went to work for a company repairing office machines and went to school on IBM Selectric typewriters and man I thought my ticket was punched but the guy that owned the company and I hated each other and once or twice a week we’d have to be restrained from killing each other so I made like the Beverly Hillbillies with my 1968 Plymouth Roadrunner, U-Haul trailer, one year old son (who like to throw toy car parts out the window with a Colorado State Patrol car right behind us) and a very pregnant practice wife and headed to sunny Arizona. Went to work the day after I got there fixing office machines for an office supply company. I went out and sold maintenance contracts to many of the high schools around the area and the company I worked for moved my nice repair shop out of the main store where it was heated and air conditioned to a slump block building with a sheet metal roof and no heat or air conditioning. After a month in the shop in temperatures above 110 degrees outside and a lot hotter than that inside I went into the owner of the company one night after I’d cashed my paycheck and told him I knew how I could save him $600.00 a month and he excitedly asked me what it was and I told him “I Quit.”

 

Then went to work at Champion products, they manufactured golf and leisure clothing and I learned the textile trade and about a year later I went to work for a new company from New York that was building a plant out in Arizona City  to manufacture thermal underwear for J.C Penny and the U.S. Military. I started out as a cutter and fabric layup man and after a couple of years became plant manager. Things were going well until the fire (another story another time) and the fire caused the New York owners to reassess their Arizona venture and shut the plant down. They gave me 90 days severance pay and I had a job about two days later installing two-way radios for a two-way radio dealer.

 

I’d been experimenting with ham radio so installing two -way radios was pretty easy. We also had direct dial and operator assist mobile phones which were really cool (cellular was still someone’s dream). The guy I worked for insisted that in my spare time I learn how to work on radios and I did and I loved it. I then moved into sales when 800mhz SMR came into being and sold a ton of radios to agriculture, Ag related, Ag services, plumbers, electricians, etc.. and had found my home. I packed up the family, four kids now and headed to Dallas, Texas to work for the largest two-way radio dealer in the area as his service manager, I loved it, the practice wife (soon to be ex wife) hated everything about Dallas and Texas and after about 8 months of loving work but coming home to a very unhappy and distraught wife I gave in and put in my two weeks notice, made like the Beverly Hillbillies again,  four kids, Chevy Goodtimes Van and a really big U-Haul truck and headed back to Arizona. 

 

I went to to work for a radio dealer in Phoenix as a salesman and sold lots of radios but un beknown  to me the manufacturer had cut him off because he was in arrears to the tune of $500k to the manufacturer who had supplied him radios but was never paid. I was at a watering hole with one of my old customers and he recommended that I start my own two-way radio sales and service company and he bank rolled part of it and I did. I quit the other guy and went out on my own and eventually ended up buying the company that I started out in the two-way radio business with. Ended up selling all of my interest in the business to settle my divorce and headed out to San Diego. Went to work for a dealer out here as GM and bought a couple of old PacBell mountain top sites at auction and built them out as repeater and cellular sites.

 

Y’all are probably wondering what all this has to do with career path redo aren’t you? Well had I stayed with the IBM Selectric service business I’d be out of work, there aren’t any anymore. About 99% of the garment industry is now overseas. Radio technicians don’t diagnose and repair down to the component level anymore they change out boards or modules. I used to sell cellular phones for $4,000.00 each all day long and U.S. West Cellular would pay me $500.00 for every phone that I put on their system, nowadays I think the resellers get about $15.00 per unit out here. So had I stayed with any of those careers I’d be broke, living on the street. The mountaintop sites that I used to own and sold are mostly vacant now because technology has changed so much that high elevation sites aren’t needed anymore for the most part, certainly not cellular.

 

 

 

 

In my case a lot of the jobs are still around but the outfits I worked for are gone. The Army and Marines are still in business, the public schools where I taught are mostly there, but he restaurants, toy stores, gun shops, private college, gear making aerospace company, car dealerships, root beer stand, and others are all gone.  A lot have been bought out by someone else or merged, like McDonnell Douglas, a couple of gas stations, Thiokol Trackmaster, and others.

 

Been a long a rocky road, but looking back I wouldn't do anything different, because it all combined to make me what I am today: fairly happy, financially secure, content with my home, respected and beloved by all, and positively gorgeous..... and in spite of it all I am still a very humble person.  :P  :D

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I don't know what I would have done different.  As time went on,  I did acquire some engineering related skills as I was routinely dealing with maps, surveys and land descriptions.  That might be in the genes, as my dad, brother and sister became engineers.  I probably didn't rise as far professionally as some of my colleagues, but now that I'm retired I look back and realize that in the grand scheme of things I did all right.  When I go to my lunch meetings with my colleagues some of them are very envious that I'm there in a flannel shirt because I'm retired and they have to be all dressed up because they have to go back to work.

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22 hours ago, Noz said:

Hermit, with unlimited access to libraries and distilleries.

 

I often say that, but for my love of a really good hamburger, I could be a hermit.

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Electrical Draftsman/Designer, about half of my life was working contract. Some contracts lasted six weeks, some six months, some limitless, until the next one down the street offered more money. My dad went to his grave thinking I'd never hold down a real job. Since '75 I've only been out of work for more than a month, 3 times. Once I sold Stereos and appliances, once I was a chimney sweep, and once I was one of them guys behind a gun counter that no one likes... I stayed there working part time for several years.

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On 1/12/2019 at 9:21 AM, Charlie T Waite said:

Naw, you'ld be a politician....not-listening.giflaughing-tears-pointing-emoticon-wiping-away-something-someone-his-other-hand-85083127.jpg

 

FKCGG couldn't be a politician as he's got a sense of humor.

 

My biggest regret was going straight into retail after school... and ending up stuck in it for 20+ years. Few careers are as mentally exhausting while being financially unrewarding. A lot of people bemoan the loss of retail jobs nationwide, but not me as I feel it's doing people a favor by forcing them to find something else that actually has a future.

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