My Favorite Jobs

Originally Written Between 2016-2017                 

 

I can still picture how excited I was – jumping up and down – as I got ready to go to my first job.  I was ten years’ old and that just happened to be the minimum age that the Taylor Berry Farm hired its berry pickers.  We lived right next door to the Berry Farm and I had watched the pickers in the fields – making what I thought was a lot of money – for a couple of years.  And, now it was my turn!

 

My salary was 5 cents a quart – that sounded good to me.  I was only ten, after all.  The Taylors knew that after the first 2-3 days of eating most of the strawberries we picked, we would soon tire of eating and would settle down to the work of picking as many quarts of strawberries we could.  We would crawl on the ground up and down the many, many rows for four hours a day.  The picking season only lasted about three weeks and believe me, after bending over for that long of time, I really looked forward to moving on to picking from the tall raspberry bushes.  One had to be 14 in order to be promoted to raspberries.  I don’t know the reason for that policy.

 

But, by the time, I was 14, I was 100% involved in roller skating at my parents’ roller rink.  Skating was my first love and except for Adult Night, I skated an average of 12 hours a week.  On Saturday afternoons, my – quote, “job,” unquote -  was to teach the little toddler skaters how to skate.  I loved it.  I was also the “skateguard.”  That job entailed skating backwards so I could watch all the skaters going around and around in the circle and blow the whistle whenever someone fell so others would not skate into them.  A very important job.  I was not paid.  This was just me having fun skating.

 

My parents did hire me when I was 16 to sell tickets for the first hour of skating.  I remember dad paying me $3.50 a night – not bad; especially when two years’ later, I only made $2.10 an hour working full time as a secretary for 3M! 

 

And, now – to my adult jobs! I mentioned that 3M was my first real job out of high school.  I loved that job for a couple of reasons:  One:  During my almost five years at 3M, I was able to use my typing and shorthand skills to move up the ladder in responsibility, learned about the “corporate world,” moved out of my parents’ home to an apartment, and made many friends.  Second:  Judy, my best friend at 3M introduced me to Norm.  And, that’s the best reason.

 

After giving birth to our first child, I stayed home for the next 13 years – raising our four kids.  Our youngest, Rebecca, was in Kindergarten when I returned to full-time work.  Medtronic was only a mile from our home and was a wonderful place to work.  After 13 years, however, the division I was in was sold to a competitor and I found myself without a job since the acquiring company’s president already had an executive assistant.  And so, I became a dislocated worker.  I still needed nine credits to receive my BA in Marketing and Communication from Metro State University.  So, I went back full time for one semester, graduated, and went looking for a new place of employment.

 

My next two jobs had their good points and bad – nice jobs; but, I really didn’t love them.  They were really just paychecks and I only lasted about 3 years at each.  One of the good things that happened to me, however, was the networking opportunity that actually enabled me to get the best job ever!

 

And how did that happen?  Well, because of my position at one of the companies, I was asked to join Executive Women International or EWI for short.  I became involved in EWI and eventually, I was asked to write and publish their monthly newsletter.  I wrote an article about the death of my best friend, Judy Nielsen LaCoursiere.

 

A couple of months after writing that article, I applied to work for the President of Fairview Health Services.  My job was to specifically work with the Board of Directors and manage all of their board and committee meetings. During my interviews, I was told that after reading my resume, the CEO’s executive assistant remembered me because she was also a member of EWI and she was impressed with my writing ability because of the article I wrote about my best friend.  And she told her boss that she knew me and my work and that I would be perfect for the job.

 

I retired after 10 years at Fairview – while I still loved my job.  That’s the best time to retire….. right?  I know it is!