Career path to oblivion

Of late I've created more space for my collection of books, which is good considering how many I have stored in the damp, musty shed behind our house. For the record, damp and musty storage sheds are not the ideal places to house ones collection of books. I'm hoping that the damp and musty smell will go away once they've completely dried out. While going through the boxes where the less essential parts of my life have been housed for the past several years, I happened across a bunch of old paperwork from a company I used to work for, including old company newsletters, insurance papers, printed email messages and faxes containing jokes and stories.

The company's name was Rhone Merieux, an animal health company. I recall that I was offered a job with them after a three month hiatus from the work force, their offer being quite timely as I was down to my last few dollars. The position was as an assistant in the company's Marketing Services department, which numbered a total of four persons, myself included. My job was to maintain the warehouse where the literature detailing the company's various products were housed--basically keeping the sales force fed and watered with product detailers and making sure they received their weekly sales reports. Not an overly difficult job or one with many responsibilities, but having left a job a few months before that was difficult and with many responsibilities, it was a welcome respite.

Those of us in Marketing Services had renamed our little cubicle area, "Surly World." I don't know if we were surly as much as we were thumbing our noses at the rest of the marketing department who didn't seem to appreciate what it took to coordinate with sales reps on multiple veterinary conferences or ship two tons of material a day prior to national sales meetings. It's one thing to work in a supporting role when what you're doing may eventually move you up the company ladder. Problem was that we started at the top of the ladder, we weren't going to be moving up. I had worked similar jobs prior to that, but at least this one didn't require that I wear a polyester uniform while flipping burgers.

Despite feeling less than appreciated, the job wasn't that bad. In fact, there were times when it was downright fun. One day the gentleman who was in charge of the facilities, after hearing our complaints about our cubicle area, commented that chickens should be housed on the other side of the cubicle wall. Naturally, the next day we had a few dozen pictures of chickens that I had printed out hanging from the ceiling. Riding the pallet jack around the warehouse was good exercise and a good way to stay warm during the winter in a warehouse with no climate control whatsoever. From time to time the VCR/TV combo that was shipped to trade shows needed to be tested with episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to make sure it worked properly. Ah, and then there were those occasional watergun shootouts with the telemarketers. When one of our regional managers had a slide projector malfunction during a dinner meeting, a parody "Surly World Production" was sent via voicemail for a handful of sales reps reenacting the event, crumpling paper used to simulate the slide projector bursting into flames. Unfortunately for that particular regional manager, he had a good sense of humor, which we took complete advantage of. In hindsight, we were a little too merciless on him (sorry Steve!).

Naturally, all good things come to an end. In 1997 the company merged with another and was undergoing some fundamental structural changes. In the ultimate corporate kick to the groin, on the day after Thanksgiving I received my letter that my services would no longer be needed. I had already been accepted to college a month before so I wasn't that concerned. My "fair" severance pay was less than what I make per month now, and I had to stretch that to last three months--ironically the same amount of time I had been out of work when I was hired by them. It was with no small amount of satisfaction that I heard that they had outsourced my job to an outside company for $2 million per year which was not doing as good a job keeping the sales reps fed and watered.

But that was eight years ago. I can't begrudge a company for making a business decision, and besides, it's not my job that I miss--it's the people I worked with. Many of the people I worked with were good people and fun to work with. Though I occasionally look at the open positions on the company's web site, I know going back wouldn't be the same. Reflecting back, the job is like a black hole on my resume, with no skills that I can think of that I've taken and transferred to the jobs I've had since. But I'm okay with that; it was fun while it lasted.