Tag: Jobs

What jobs would you want?

August 30, 2025

Police, fire, teaching, medicine, general business, and manufacturing. Some of these are ones that children think of when they are asked what they want to be. These and many others are the jobs that some of us have spent our lives involved in.

As we approach Labor Day, I would like to give you a short history of my work experience. My first real job was as a fry cook at Dog ‘N Suds in Springfield, MO. I also learned how to take orders, prepare sandwiches, change and fill fountain tanks, pull drinks, and do anything else that needed to be done.

Thanks to that experience, I was allowed to be a closing manager. About a year and a half later, I was offered a job working at Zenith Radio Corporation, working on the final line while building televisions. It was a very interesting job.

I installed five screws and hung the tuner. That’s all. I tried to help the guy before me and the one after me until the supervisor told me to do my job and no one else’s. My Mother had been worried that I might decide to stay and drop out of school. I told her I never wanted to work in a factory again.

When school started, I took a job at the local Denny’s Restaurant. This was after I had tried my hand at selling fire alarms door-to-door. My intention was to leave town next fall when I started Journalism school at the University of Missouri. I thought that I would look for a job when I arrived in Colombia.

I ended up transferring to Southwest Baptist in Bolivar, MO, and did not return to the workforce until February of my senior year. Then I returned to food service by joining the opening staff at the first Wendy’s in my hometown. When I graduated, I was offered a chance to enter their management trainee program, and I accepted it.

Cindy and I got married, and two weeks later, we moved to Joplin. We opened the first store there, and by September, I had left them and gone to work as an assistant manager at a local convenience store. Then Cindy’s boss offered me a job as marketing director.

My job and Cindy’s ended six months later. I learned a new set of skills while marketing new products and helping organize a new division of the business. Opportunities were short on supply in our new town. We packed up after a week and returned to the third-largest city in Missouri.

I applied for unemployment and was approved, and had two weeks to wait for the payments to start. The unemployment office referred me to an interview for a sales job at five dollars a week less than their payments would be. I had to take it. I was selling pet supplies, which were new for me.

I read everything I could on the pets and products, and in three months, I became the store manager for a different store with the same company. A few months later, I was moved to a position at the wholesale warehouse owned by the same man. My next promotion with them was to a purchasing agent. This launched me on a completely new career track.

A few months later, I moved to a new company as a P.A. After changing jobs every few months, I wanted stability. I stayed there twenty-five years and moved to office manager, outside sales, and finally operations manager. After waiting four years for another promotion, I decided to take a buyer’s job at one of my customers.

 A few months later, I was advanced to purchasing supervisor. It was the best job I ever had. It ended in less than five years, and I spent three years drawing unemployment and working temp jobs. I finally found a job as a purchasing manager and ended my career with that manufacturer a few years later.

My careers spanned four decades, and then I began a new one as a writer. You get to witness this firsthand as I write columns and books and see where my talents and interests can take me. I hope you enjoy this ride as much as I have all of mine. I can’t wait to see if this one is a roller coaster or something less intense.

©Copyright 2025 by Charles Kensinger

Liking your job

January 20, 2024

My first job was as a fry cook at Dog ‘N Suds drive-in in Springfield, Missouri. It paid $1.25/hour. I loved it. Mr. and Mrs. Costello were the owners. Two of their three sons worked there also. They were still in school. I was a student at Hillcrest High School. This was the summer between my sophomore and junior years. Most of the other employees were or had been students at Central High School. We had a great time.

Within a few months, I was trained to do everything in the small kitchen. I learned to make root beer and cola syrups and place the containers on the drink fountains. I took orders from the speaker and even helped the carhops take orders out. I chopped tomatoes, lettuce, and onions. I closed some evenings and even came over during the school year and missed a class or two my senior year. New employees came and left. Between my freshman and sophomore year in college, I also left.

My Mom worked at the Zenith Television plant. She helped me get on. I had turned eighteen the previous summer and met the age requirement. I loved the pay. I hated the job. I was working on a final line. My job was to hang the tuner and put in three or four screws depending on the model going down the conveyor. If it had not been for my German vocabulary cards, I would have gone insane. It was dull boring work.

My first week I learned that I was not to help the people next to me on the line. There were two screws the person before me had to tighten. They were already installed. Sometimes the set was in front of me, and these bolts had not been torqued down. I was reprimanded when the supervisor caught me doing this after my job was done.

The screws I installed were the same size as the ones the next guy had to put in. He then hung something on them and tightened them down. When I picked up these screws from my bin, I might have two extra and thought it efficient to put them in when I had time. That was also a no-no. This was a union job. Each employee had their own job to do. You could not help each other. That was stupid to me.

At the end of the summer, I quit before I had to join the union and returned to college. I went to work at a restaurant as a busboy and dishwasher. The work was not hard. It also was not challenging. The pay was not as good as the factory, but I was back in classes.

The next fall I commuted thirty miles to college and the second semester I lived in a dormitory. I did not work my junior year and spent the summer working as a summer missionary in Pennsylvania. The pay was not much. I learned a great deal about Christian ministry. When I returned home, my fiancé and I started planning our spring wedding after graduating.

I took a job at a new fast-food chain that was opening. It was the first in the area. By the time I graduated, I was offered a job in the management trainee program. I took it and they moved us. I left because of problems with the management and worked several jobs before we returned to Springfield. I had worked in management at a convenience store, as a door-to-door salesman, and as a marketing director for a small company. These were added to my resume.

Back at home, I took a sales position at a retail pet store. I moved to another store as the manager and then left there to take a job for the wholesale company the owner had that supplied his stores and others in the area. I was the assistant livestock manager because I had read everything I could about the pets. When the purchasing agent left my two previous bosses recommended me for the job. They both told the owner that I could do anything they asked of me.

I have always enjoyed learning something new and taking on challenges. When I left there, I started as a parts distributor for the manufacturing industry. I was hired as the purchasing agent and became office manager, outside sales, inside sales, and ultimately operations manager. After twenty-five years I was passed over for the branch manager’s position.

My district supervisor described me as the best inside guy in the company. When I was operations manager, I worked both the office and in outside sales putting in eighty or more hours a week for the same money. For the first time in three years, we returned to making a profit for the company. I was rewarded by having a former employee re-hired and made my boss.

My next position was as a buyer for one of the companies that was a customer for the last twenty-five years. I was done with sales. I continued to work for manufacturers until I retired as purchasing manager. Each position had good and bad points and good and bad management and employees. There is no perfect job. Life is as good as you want to make it. That includes your work life. Learn all you can to be able to move to the next level. That may not be at your current company.

If your employer offers training through a local college or trade school, take advantage of it. Give the loyalty and hard work that is required for each new position. Do not stay any longer than you must when situations change from good to bad. Do not change jobs because someone has offered you more money.

There is a reason they want you and it may not be as advantageous a position as you think at first. Many coworkers over the years left the company we worked for only to return when they were terminated. I turned down jobs because God told me not to take them. Once I wanted a position so badly that I prayed for it not to be offered to me if it was not where I should be. They did not and I eventually found a better position.

I’ve been laid off, fired, and quit. I’ve lost jobs I liked and ones I hated. Bosses have liked me, hated me, abused me, and taken advantage of me. The one I have always tried to please is Jesus whom I call Lord. I work for Him and He has always had my back. That is the best advice I can give you about liking what you are doing. “Work as unto the Lord.” Colossians 3:23

©Copyright 2024 by Charles Kensinger