Ken

Ken, Linda, Pam, Sandra, Janet - December, 1997

Writing that last post, about my 26-year career with the large truck manufacturing company, started me thinking back to those days; and I decided to introduce you to Ken. I worked for Ken longer than I worked for any other boss in all my working life.

Ken was my immediate supervisor for the last 14 years of his career with the company. He is pictured here, on the occasion of his retirement, with the four women who had worked for him at some point during those 14 years. I was the only one of the four who worked under his supervision for the entire 14 years, during which we developed a close working relationship and a deep respect for each other.

Ken, as my boss, is what made my job fun for so many years. Through all the changes implemented by the company during that time, Ken was the one constant. He always expressed the highest confidence and trust in me, and that made me want to live up to his expectations. I'm sure I was a better employee because of it.

Ken exemplified respect for people, even before that phrase was formally adopted as one of our company's values. I know there were many people, including me, who had faced a crisis of one sort or another only to find Ken standing by ready to help and encourage in any way he could. And he never seemed to be irritated by the many interruptions that came his way as people popped in and out of his office with questions or complaints or just a friendly greeting. He set an example of patience and consideration that anyone would do well to emulate.

I count myself blessed to have been able to work with Ken all those years, even though I never quite forgave him for retiring before I could.

Update: I had forgotten that Sandra had also done a blog post about Ken, back in June of 2008. For anyone who's interested in her take on him (she's much funnier than I am), click here.

The Retirement Letters

Twelve years ago, after 26 years of employment with the same company, my job was eliminated. "Why am I telling you this now?", you might ask. Well, it's simple. I wasn't blogging twelve years ago.

I was 55 years old at the time, and my job had long since ceased to be fun or rewarding. More and more, the work I had done was being transferred to other company locations. Toward the end of my employment, I dreaded even going in to work. Often, there would be nothing to do on my job, leaving me to make the rounds of my co-workers, asking if they had any jobs I could do for them.

The company had announced that a major layoff was coming. The date of the layoffs, and even the number of jobs to be eliminated, was announced in advance. But the employees who were to be terminated were not given notice.

The tension was thick on the dreaded date. Each employee who was to be terminated would receive a telephone call to come, individually, to the conference room, where the news would be formally delivered by departmental management.

Every ear was tuned to the ringing telephones.

It came as no real surprise to me when my telephone rang. In the conference room, I met for the first time my supervisor's boss, who had come down from the company's Chicago-based headquarters to deliver the news that my services were no longer needed.

After that brief meeting, my supervisor escorted me to the staircase leading to a second-floor office, where each of the terminated employees was to have a mandatory meeting with a representative of an outplacement agency, who would help them find a new position if they so desired. It was a small office where these meetings were taking place, with no privacy if two employees happened to overlap.

Well, when I arrived upstairs, I found the outplacement lady busy with another employee, whose back was to me but who I instantly recognized.  Embarrassed at intruding on what should have been a private interview and not knowing what to do, I stood quietly at the back of the room for several minutes.  Finally, the lady, who had had a clear view of me the whole time, asked if she could help me.  I told her I had been sent up and asked if she'd like for me to step out onto the landing.  She said I could wait in one of the offices up there.  As she got up to show me into another office, I walked over and wordlessly extended my hand to the other employee.  As he took it, his eyes filled with tears; and he gripped my hand as if it were a lifeline.   

My appointment with the outplacement representative didn't take long because I wasn't interested in seeking another full-time job. As I left that second-floor office and descended the stairs, I saw my supervisor waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. It was his assignment to escort me out the door, presumably so that I couldn't steal anything or otherwise cause trouble.

Five weeks after the layoffs, apparently as an afterthought and perhaps in an attempt to make up for the abrupt ending of so many careers, a group retirement luncheon was held at a local eatery for those who had been eligible for retirement at the time of their layoff. My age and company service qualified me for inclusion in that group. Speeches were made and retirement plaques were presented.

As I said earlier, my job had ceased to be fun; and I had begun dreading even going to work. So I welcomed retirement. I confess that I didn't relish the way it was done, but I was glad to be out of that environment.

One of my co-workers was my best friend and fellow blogger, Sandra, from Add Humor and Faith...Mix Well. She survived the layoffs, and we continued to meet regularly for lunch. At some point, about a year and a half after the big layoff, I made a passing comment to Sandra that I hadn't really minded not having my own retirement party. I did, however, regret missing out on the tradition of the retiree's being presented with a book of letters from his fellow employees. Since the circumstances of my rather unorthodox retirement had prevented me from saying goodbye to friends in our local company offices or to contacts from other company locations, those letters would have been an especially nice memento.

A few weeks later, Doug and I had a date to go out for supper with Sandra and her Hubby. We arrived at their home during a heavy rain, so Doug and I sat in the car, waiting for them to come out. Then we saw Sandra waving to us to come into the house. Thinking they weren't quite ready yet and wanted us to wait inside, we grabbed an umbrella and made a run for the house.

As we entered, though, Sandra's Hubby was standing in the kitchen with a video camera pointed at us. Either they were really excited to see us and wanted to record the moment for posterity or something was up.

Well, Sandra had taken my passing remark about the retirement letters and turned it into a personal mission to collect letters from as many of my former co-workers as she could. She led us into the dining room for a little presentation ceremony, seated us in assigned places around the table, and began an on-camera interview with me about my career at the trucking company. Then she followed that up with a reading of excerpts from the letters she had collected.

What a friend, eh? Everyone should be so blessed.

I'm posting that video in its entirety. I couldn't get it to post in one video, so it's in two parts. The total length of the two segments is about 18 minutes. I realize that some of you won't have the time or inclination to watch the entire video. Don't feel badly about that. But there may be some who will find it fun.

Since our careers go back a ways, you will hear references to such things as shorthand tests, mag card typewriters, and keypunch operators.

You'll also get a glimpse of what a thoughtful, fun, and creative friend I have been blessed with in Sandra.

Terry and Mike and the Gym Shoes

Sandra and I have both posted about when we worked in the Commissary at the county Jail. Here is another story from that interesting and fun job.

There were two Judys on the Commissary team. The need to distinguish between them resulted in their being known in the group as Good Judy and Bad Judy. Actually, Good Judy was always called "Good Judy," while Bad Judy's name was often shortened simply to "Bad."

Bad was the shortest member of the team, which often resulted in "short" jokes at her expense.

The two men who delivered the majority of the products sold from the Commissary, Terry and Mike, were very funny guys in their own right; but their humor seemed to take on a life of its own whenever they made a delivery to us in the Commissary.

None of us were immune to Mike's and Terry's practical jokes and verbal humor. They would rearrange things at our work stations, maybe tape a stapler to a desk or adjust the height of someone's office chair. But it did seem as if Bad might have been on the receiving end of more of their attention than some of the rest of us.

They always made a big deal of asking her if they were stacking the chips that we sold to inmates too high for her to reach. Once they took a pair of gym shoes and nailed them to blocks of wood and presented them to her, to give her another few inches of height.

Another time, they each took a pair of gym shoes and placed them side by side on the floor, then knelt on them so that it looked as if they were a couple of very short guys wearing gym shoes...then waited for Bad Judy to notice that she was no longer the shortest person in the Commissary.

The days that Mike and Terry made their deliveries to the Commissary were always a bright spot for those of us who worked there. We were a fun group and never lacked for laughter, but Mike and Terry just brought their own special brand of humor to add to ours.

The Commissary

Sandra, of Add Humor and Faith...Mix Well, and I have been friends for more years than either of us like to think about. We worked for the same large manufacturing company for most of our working lives, and were almost daily lunch partners during the last 15 or more of those years.

When Sandra retired from that company, a couple of years after my retirement, she became the Matron at our County Jail and invited me to take a part-time job working for her in the Jail's Commissary. After over a year of enjoying doing nothing, I was ready to try something on a part-time basis, so I said "yes."

Sandra was officially in charge of the Commissary, but Marie, who had been there many years before we new kids arrived on the block, was the one who had to break us in. And she was good at it...calm, patient, and an excellent trainer.

The Commissary stocked products like snacks and hygiene items that the inmates could order. The Confinement Officers collected the order forms from the inmates and brought them to us in the Commissary. The Commissary "Auditors" audited the forms to make sure that the inmates had followed all the rules of ordering...not too many items and not more than the maximum dollar amount. The Auditors then deducted the the order totals from the inmates' accounts before passing the order forms on to the "Fillers."

The Fillers went through the shelves of products, filling a paper bag with the items the inmate had ordered; stapled the order form to the outside of the bag; and placed it into a cart for that inmate's cell block. The Confinement Officers distributed the bags to the inmates that evening.

The Auditors usually started auditing at 6:00 a.m., with the Fillers arriving an hour later. By then, the Auditors (hopefully) had enough of a head start that the Fillers wouldn't have to stand around waiting for orders to fill. It was a pretty fast-paced and well-synchronized operation. Most days.

I started out as a Filler, but I never was very good at it. It's not as easy as it sounds, and we had a couple of women who had been doing it for years and who were very fast and efficient at it. I felt almost in the way when I worked with them. I eventually worked my way into an auditing job, only filling on an as-needed basis. And they almost never needed MY help.

Normally, we had three Auditors and four Fillers. On occasion, when we anticipated an extra heavy day of orders or when we knew we were going to be short handed, the Auditors would go in early to get as much done as possible before the Fillers arrived.

On one April morning, Sandra was scheduled to be off; and Beckie, our backup Auditor, had to have emergency gall bladder surgery. That just left Marie and me to get enough orders audited so that the Fillers would have work to do when they arrived. So we agreed to go in extra early that morning.

As I was headed out the door at 4:00 a.m., the phone rang. I picked it up and heard Marie's sweet, unexcited voice saying, "Do you think you could handle things by yourself today?"

I said, with a confidence I didn't feel, "Probably. What's going on?"

Well, Marie had stopped at the bank's night drop on her way in to work. When she got out of the car to drop her mortgage payment into the slot, the car began to roll. Afraid that it would roll into traffic and cause an accident, she had chased it down and tried to reach in and grab the steering wheel or the gear shift lever. But, in the process, she had fallen; and the car had run over her legs. She had managed to get up and get into the vehicle, which had stopped when it came to an incline, and was then driving herself back home. She had called her husband, and he was going to take her to the hospital to get checked out.

So I assured Marie that we would manage without her, wished her well, and hurried off to the Jail to do my best. I knew that, if I had called Sandra, she would have delayed her planned trip to visit her son and family in North Carolina; and I didn't want her to do that. When she called in, as she usually did when she knew we were limping along without her, I made sure she was far enough out of town that coming back wasn't an option before I told her what had happened.

Every member of the Commissary team pulled together that day and managed to get all the orders filled. None of the others knew how to take the inmates' money off their accounts, but one of them sat down at Marie's desk and audited the order forms, which took a huge load off me. All I had to do was the computer side of it, taking the money off the inmates' accounts. We weren't able to stay ahead of the fillers, but they busied themselves with restocking and other jobs whenever they got ahead of us. It was truly a team effort.

It was a privilege to work with that group of women who made up the Commissary team. They were hard workers, every one; and they had fun while they were at it.

Marie's poor legs were badly bruised, but nothing was broken. That was a miracle for which we were all grateful. We managed without her, but we surely were happy to see her when she returned to work.