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The layoff from FAST was quite abrupt and shocking. I remember needing at least two weeks before the anxiety faded from the pit of my stomach. However, I started my job search that Friday afternoon. In 2002, the job market, especially for engineers was not good. On top of that, many had tried the 'consultant' route so that the average hourly charge for services dipped 25 to 30%. That put the hourly on par with having a decent job, but without all the benefits.
As in all difficult times, I turned to the Lord. In case you haven't noticed, God has a delicious sense of humor. For example, during this job search I did not just pray for a job, I prayed for a good job, more money and close to home. If you pray, why not go for all of it? Usually when I pray, I ask, praise God for the answer, then leave it up to Him with such an intensity, I forget what I asked for. In this job search after 2 1/2 months, I was near the top or tied for 1st choice for a job with Otis Elevator. This was only going to be a consulting job, but it was going to last at least a year to 15 months. This was through an agency and I kept calling the agency to find out when I was going to start. After two weeks of muddling, they chose somebody else. I was almost crushed. The interview had been really good, they were impressed. From what I heard, the guy who made the choice had a very difficult decision between me and another guy. So I was back hunting for a job again. My wife was less than thrilled.
This is where the sense of humor comes in. Not two weeks later, I was hired permanently at Kaman Instrumentation. In brief, the job was better (design and production rather than service), the pay was better (a raise over FAST) and it was only 8 miles from home. Otis elevator was 33 miles from home. So I was so distraught over the failure at Otis to realize that God had something better for me. Something way better.
Here's how it went. When unemployed, I was urged to join a 'networking' group. Networking was the art of getting to know the right people because, supposedly the best job openingss, in fact, most of the job openings are not posted in the newspaper, not put online or even go to headhunters, they keep them secret. If you read that like I wrote it, then you know this is a load of monkey excretement. It's just another of those fables that they give to the unemployed to keep them working at something and claiming that it works. Networking is doing the research to find a company you'd like to work for, find someone who knows someone who knows someone who....well, you get the idea. Then you eventually get to a manager that might have an opening you'd fit into. You take him to lunch and smooze him and voila, you get a job. What are the problems with this? Number one, any company is foolish to hide their openings so that they have no chance to fill them. Second, if the job is hidden, it's probably because they have to offer it internally for a set amount of time, then interview everyone, then they can go outside. Third Problem, if a manager is short a person, he's probably too damn busy to waste time going out with some loser, and you'd probably lose consideration because of the way you've approached him, you sound DESPERATE. If you're desperate, of course, that means that you're unemployable. Fourth, what kind of cooperation do you thing you'd get from the HR department after you did this nifty little end run?
The networking group met in an agency in Shelton and was supposedly a network for engineers. At the first meeting, everyone had to introduce themselves and state who they were. This was one of those social services uplifting ceremonies where we were admonished to state who we were by the job we wanted, by our skills. Very quickly I found out that out of the 12 members, half were 'technical managers', e.g. managers who 'managed' some kind of engineer at some time in their life. One pompous ass described himself as a 'skunk-works technical manager'. I remember sitting there and thinking, this guy is going to be waiting for a job for a looong time. It was there that I ran into Paul Grammer who had been the manager of the National Service Technical Training Center at Philips in Shelton. Unfortunately he had been out of work for almost a year. I hope that he found something quickly.
At this meeting, they went through all the opportunities available, no matter what the source. At the second meeting, one of the managers mentioned that the State of Connecticut was holding a job fair in Southington, adding that NOBODY ever got a job from a job fair. Me, I'm not so picky, so I glanced at the companies that were going to be there and decided that I could at least talk to a couple.
I got to the job fair (I think it was at Aquaturf) and waiting in line to get in. I was surprised at how many people (mostly guys) were there. The place was mobbed inside and I stopped at company after company dropping off resumes. I noticed the Kaman booth because they had this really nice blonde working the both. As I found out later, she worked in HR and her name was Melanie Agruso. Needless to say, everyone wanted to talk to her and not to her booth-mate, a black lady with dreadlocks. She was Kathy Robinson and, since I wanted to blow out of the job fair as there wasn't anything left to do. Kaman is a large company with their headquarters and helicopter operations in Bloomfield (I didn't know that then, in fact, I knew very little about the company except that they had something to do with electronics and had a plant in Middletown, close to home). I talked to Kathy a bit, told her I was interested in Middletown and left a resume. This was the beginning of June. Mid-July, after I had gotten the bad news from Otis, I got a call from Dave Middleton from Kaman Middletown. After a good telephone interview, I journeyed to Kaman in Middletown of the first of two interviews. I remember thinking, as I entered the parking lot, was I walking to Dave Middleton or Dave from Middletown?
I went through two fairly sweaty interviews (well, it was summer and I did wear a suit) before being hired. I remember Dave spending a lot of time discussing with me how to structure the folders on the Engineering hard drive. I couldn't figure out why, as it did very little to show him how capable I was. The Kaman HR department, true to form, took almost a month from the moment I accepted the offer until I could finally start working.
The guy who hired me was Dave Middleton, and not surprisingly, he was also a Born-Again Christian.
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Next comes an incident which I'd file under 'Stupid Management Ideas'. Richard & Larry had been doing exercise walking during lunch since they practically hired on to Kaman. Needing exercise I thought it was a great idea. We made a point of getting in early, so that our longer lunch period didn't detract from working time, in fact, both Richard & I put in extra time on top of that. Not that anybody asked. After I had been walking for about 1 1/2 years, the marketing manager, who usually resided up on the second floor with the rest of the useless crap, warned us that he had heard someone, who he didn't name, say "Look at them walking when they could be working." I knew things were not going to continue long. After that, no matter what time we went out and came back, the production manager was constantly on our butts about long lunch times. Finally he said that the complaints from the 2nd floor were getting too loud and we'd have to do something about that. It was really stupid, apparently they were noticing what we did on our lunch hour, watching us and noticing that we left on time. Which to their tiny minds was that we weren't making up the time. We realized that if we continued to walk at all, it would still be the same complaint. Scott Adams is right, you can't teach a manager anything. And the realization came that if those anal orifices on the second floor had so much time on their hands to watch what we did for lunch, they must not have much work to do.
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