Past jobs

In 1991 I lived with my older sister Donna, the father of her kids David, my nephew Patrick (5 years old) and Sheryll (3 years old). I worked a plating plant in Escondido, CA and David was my immediate supervisor. I was working as a maintenance worker fixing lights, PVC pipes, helping fill tanks of acids, soaps (bases), and plating tanks. It was a good paying job in a place you couldn't help but think "I am getting cancer, right now". David used to dip his hands in the tanks with no gloves to test if they felt right and joke "I am going to get cancer." Sadly, years later he died of throat cancer, but the cigarettes probably did not help. I miss him deeply, but that is for another blog post. The chemist would come by and then test the tank with his Ph strip and most times say it was correct or pour a little bit of acid or base in to make it "perfect". Then a recession hit and the first thing we noticed was the office said "you can't buy any new parts to fix anything." I was learning the trade on the job, but this made things very difficult. We had to get creative in our approach in "fixing" things. The new boiler we had just installed never got a roof put over it, so it got older real quick. There were things that needed looking after but without being able to put the money back into the place there were times we just sat around waiting for something to break. I hated getting paid to just wait around, it was boring and I felt guilty for doing it. Luckily, I was laid off a short while after. David told me to force them to lay me off because now I could collect unemployment. This taught me a valuable lesson. If you don't have skills you will be the first to go.

I collected unemployment for a while as I looked for a new job. Next job was ToysRUs where I started as a sales associate, straightening the store and cashiering. I was a fast at cash register but it was not my favorite thing. I wanted to move to the video game department but instead found myself in RGD department which turned out great. RGD stood for Return Goods Damaged and it was easy. At the start of my shift I would go to the customer service dept at the front of the store and collect all the returned merchandise. I would take it to the back of the store where extra merch. was stored to my little work area. I would asses what was truly broken and what could be re-wrapped and "re-shopped." A lot of people would make up stories about how something was broken but it would be fine. Anything I thought could be sold again, I would put back out on the floor. Things that were damaged I would scan in, box up and ship it back to some warehouse. When the store got really busy I would get called up to help cashier to clear out the customers, then collect more "damaged" goods from customer service. If I was on a closing shift I would have to help clean up the store and get it ready for the next day. Most times I was left alone to do my job and it was easy. Then David convinced me to quit my job at ToysRUs because we were going to move to his piece of land in the desert.
I waited a while for us to move but it kept getting pushed back. I was tired of not having a job so I started looking. It took me a long while to find another job. That taught me the lesson of don't quit your job unless you are packing the truck to move. It was an awful feeling not being able to find a job. It also reinforced the other lesson about only having limited skills.
They did end up moving years later, but I had already moved out and had no desire to move back into that situation.

I finally found a job as a bus boy at a fancy restaurant called "The Quail's Inn" in San Marcos CA. I worked there from 1993-2000. (Image above is from their postcard.) Nine months as a bus boy and the rest of the time as a waiter after I convinced them to give me a chance. They had the oldest restaurant computer system were you had to memorize a bunch of numbers like 93 was orange juice. It was a great place to work that lost it's footing after Mr Frolander died. I meet and worked with a lot of great people that I have lost touch with. They helped me find a new place to live so I could go back to school. I was able to go from not graduating high school and feeling trapped to having an AA degree in Computer Science.

Next I went to Cal State San Marcos and got my BS in Computer Science. While there I took a pay cut to start working in my field as a student assistant doing web programming. I was able to thrive there and ended up making more money then I had ever made at the time. It was a great job with an excellent boss named Jay. I recently had lunch with him and it was great to see him and catch-up. I ended up leaving that job and moved back to my hometown of Santa Rosa CA. Sad I had to go, but one factor was all the student assistants were told because of budget cuts we would only get 20 hrs a week during the summer instead of 40 hrs a week as we were able to get before and were hoping for again. The other major factors were family, which I will save for another blog post...