The Job:

Perfect Touch Lawn Care; Otsego, Mn
General labor position, From June 2002 to January 2003

Acquiring The Position:

A friend of mine already worked here and just took me with one day when they were short a worker, I then ended up working everyday and renting a room from the owner of the company (Rick Zobel).

Duties:

Weed whipping, Zero turn mower operation, 1 ton dually and trailer operation, snow removal and maintenance.

Departing from this position:

I decided to leave after a break up with a girl friend and decided to go a different way in life by moving to Rice Lake, Wi where my mother had just secured a new residency. I did however go back and help Rick (the owner) for cash during the summer of 2003. When I left this position I started work at Burger King in Rice Lake, which was conveniently located within walking distance from where I was now living.

Overall:

Experiences at this position were a mixture of business intertwined with personal pleasures, pain and survival. I learned a lot about working on machinery, cars and running equipment I had never run or even rode in before.

Tags: Biography, Employment, Experience, Minnesota, Perfect Touch, Shawn Stark, Work

The Job:

Super Walmart  Maple Grove, Mn; Position: Truck Unloader, from Fall 2001 to Summer 2002;

The Hiring Process:

After placing my application and receiving a call from Walmart, I scheduled for a group interview and was instructed to acquire a drug test from a local facility. I acquired the results from the test and attended the interview, where we took a series of tests and answered questions about our employment conduct, history and selected the positions we were interested in. After attending the interview it was some time before I recieved a call. When I received the call I had already secured a position at Princeton Plastics; I did not tell Walmart personnel this. I jumped at the wonderful opportunity to work for the newly opened Walmart, I thought the team environment was inviting. They asked me to come in for training on specified days, and I proudly agreed to take the position and train at the scheduled times. I was hired as an unloader.

Training:

The training was a series of computer aided lessons with a series of questions at the end of each one of them. A select group of lessons had to be successfully completed based on my position prior to starting work. These lessons included, lifting procedures, chemical spills, MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets), customer interaction, facing and shelf stocking, and others I may not recall.

Duties:

Unload truck, Move product to floor, Stock shelves, Round up late night carts.

The Experience:

This was my first real cultural work experience. I had only had one co-worker in my prior employment who’s native language was not english. This was new and interesting to me. It took me a while to understand those I worked with but I eventually fared alright at it as I am sure the others also learned a little better how to specifically communicate with me.

We would show up, set up pallets numbered and categorized by department, so we could separate the products as we unloaded them by department. I tended to show up early at first and set up prior to the other employees arriving, our lead wouldn’t arrive until a couple hours into our shift some days as he had a second job, this placed a little more responsibility on us as unloaders. I had cleared working overtime with our manager and was coming in early everyday, our lead clearly communicated to me any changes in setup I may need to know because he was aware of the extra effort I was putting in and that I was coming in early. I was also working seven days a week to save up for an apartment, this overtime only lasted over the period when we were bringing in all of the winter holiday seasonal products. Overtime was very good for me, money wise and it also gave me the opportunity to demonstrate my abilities. I became very passionate about work and enjoyed being there. After the holiday products had been received we were specifically made aware there was to be no-more overtime. I was fairly wore out by this time and was ready for a break anyways. I then took a day off for a bad tooth and had the tooth removed the next day as soon as my health benefits came into effect, working with a bad tooth ache was horrible.

Departing From Walmart:

I found outdoor seasonal work with Perfect Touch Lawn Care, and decided to end my position at Walmart as I preferred to work outdoors during the summer season. Other factors were also effecting my work and it was time to end this position, Unload the truck was really becoming a warm job as summer came into full gear anyways.

Tags: Biography, Employment, Experience, Minnesota, Shawn Stark, Walmart, Work

The Job:

Princeton Plastics Corporation, Plastic injection molding and assembly. A manufacturing job that employs a fairly large number of people. I worked here the summer of 2001 doing assembly.

Application Process:

This position was through The Work Connection in Princeton, Mn. The Work Connection required you to do a reading, math and drug test as part of the application process, which I did without problem. The application itself was a standard application, work history, education, identifying information, extra curricular activities, and lifting capabilities. When filling out the application I wrote down that my reason for leaving Minnesota Computers was because of a disagreement about hours, Pam the manager at Work Connection gave me a little point of advice for filling out applications, she suggested that I don’t tell the potential employer anything that might sound bad concerning prior employment. I listened and made sure to pay closer attention how I filled out applications from there on out. Not long after the application process, if not the same day Pam told me she had a position over at PPC (Princeton Plastics Corporation), I was obliged to take the position. I was happy with any job, so long as it payed my bills and fed me.

The Experience:

This was an assembly job, we filled 3m tape dispensers with sand and did a multitude of other assembly duties, including packing (brita water filtration pitchers), Working with the pitchers required plastic gloves and hair nets. This was pretty high paced assembly line work, I mainly boxed and loaded pallets, but I also placed stickers on products and helped prepare the line.

Departing From PPC: (the 1st time)

When I started work at PPC I had also placed applications at a number of other places including the soon to open Super Walmart in Maple Grove, Mn. I had received a call from my mother that Walmart was trying to get a hold of me. I immediately returned the call, as the pay would be better and I preferred to move back down towards the cities anyways, I was just staying up north while I was working over at PPC. I called Pam over at the Work Connection and let her know right away that I was leaving to seek other employment, she told me it was no problem and she would let the management over at PPC know. I did go back to PPC a few years later, so I assume that I worked well there.

Overall:

This was a fun job. I met some interesting people while I was there and was subjected to more policies and procedures I hadn’t been prior, like lockouts, MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) and lifting procedures. Though I wasn’t there long I definitely felt like part of the team.

Tags: Biography, Employment, Experience, Minnesota, Princeton Plastics, Shawn Stark, Work

The Job:

Minnesota Computers, main frame peripherals and parts.
At this company I was a Warehouse Tech / Shipping and Receiving Personnel.
From Fall 1999 to Summer 2001;

Acquiring the position:

Family friends with the owner, offered position in recognition
of hard work I was putting in elsewhere

The Duties:

UPS manual shipping;
Fedex shipping terminal;
Fedex International and Airborn
RPS ground (Before they became Fedex Ground)
Evening UPS drop offs;
Part number research telephoning IBM;
Purchase orders for shipping materials;
Product referb and testing, Inventory, Warehouse cleanup and organization, Loading and unloading trucks, Filling orders which required pulling items from shelves or parts machines, testing, refurbishing, packing and shipping, Also audited and tested receivables. Working here required learning a language of part numbers, models, manufacturers and more.

Experiences:

The atmosphere here was a large change from Dennys, I was now working with majorly men between the ages of 25 and 40, the radio played 93X, there was less social interaction, majority of the work was done independently. It was different but I liked the independent atmosphere and personal responsibility that came with the position. The sales staff were the guys that counted on us to do our jobs with perfection, they didn’t like faulty or dirty product being shipped, and they really didn’t like other sales people selling there stuff out from under them, but I couldn’t do anything about that.

One of the major experiences at Minnesota Computers was inventorying everything in stock, there were electric motors, ink plotters printers and very old terminals we called r2d2’s of which I cant remember the model or part number but they did sell every once in a while along with other types of mainframe peripherals. Inventorying everything required strategically taking every product down shelf by shelf testing it, inspecting it ensuring it was tagged and placing it back on the shelf in an organized manner after noting in the computer system in a very strict way when it was verified on shelf, who verified it and the condition it was in. This procedure took almost a full winter season, The sales staff were happy to see items in inventory that were miss-entered or not entered at all prior.

We often got large shipments of stuff in to sift through for good parts, much of it product we weren’t going to purchase or was just going to the scrap guy but there were lots of good products also, the procedure for this was test audit and make sure the items were entered on the correct purchase order with all the same comments and entry procedure as when we did inventory. So everything was pretty similar, we sometimes had to do a little research to figure out what different products were, who the manufacturers were, the model numbers and build up; we wanted all pertinent info in the system to help sell the product and track it. We took serial numbers down on everything.

The experience at Minnesota Computers was educational, and a great starting place to work up from, I would love to have a job like this now. The independence and small company atmosphere is something I long for today. I’d rather work for an SMB (Small to medium sized company) than for a large corporate company any day.

The hours:

There was controversy over the hours we were supposed to work, The GM wanted us there right away in the morning while the owner wanted us to stay until all orders were complete and he often entered late orders. We went over this a couple of times and were told that if we stayed late we could come in a little later the next day. This wasn’t always true, if we had a large shipment come in we naturaly had to be there early to work on breaking it down and receiving it into inventory prior to the days outgoing orders coming in or we would never get the product audited and inventoried during our busy times.

Departing from this postion:

One day I showed up a half hour or so after the time they would have liked me into work, even though I had stayed late the night before, I was terminated. It was established with me and the only other employee in the warehouse that if we stayed late we could come in late the next day unless we had a scheduled morning shipment or it was specifically specified that we had to be there for a meeting or something.  I don’t know if this had anything to do with our upcoming bonus, or if there were other reasons, the loss of this job happened at a fairly week point in my life as we were having a number of family and some financial problems.

My Regrets:

This position treated me wel and was there in a time of need, the only problem was I had completely given up my high-school education, school wasn’t for me at the time, I was likely to get in trouble and I was so far behind in my education when I started work, that I just said to myself “Why go back your doing just fine” and I was just fine, had everything I needed and was having a good time. I was eventually talked into realizing the importance of an education by some coworkers and friends, but I was now in a position where I financially had to work and didn’t understand that there were probably different programs I could enroll in to take my classes in the evening or something and if I did realize my options, I didn’t pay them much attention. It would have been awesome if they had online high-school like they do now, I definitely would have opted to do that. When we talked as a family about me taking my ged/hsed and going to college I was insecure and afraid, as people around me still mistook me for being 12-15 years old. I just wish I would have had the guts, I had everything else. I became overly socially involved with friends and didn’t consider what I was missing, if at any point I decided to start focusing on my education and career while I worked at Minnesota Computers, I would be a lot further ahead than what I am today.

Overall:

At Minnesota Computers there was always something to do, the warehouse became a second home. This was another job that I spent a lot of time at, working overtime fairly often. The benefits were ok and the owner of the company was nice to us treating us to holiday dinners and more. Other sales people also bought lunch for everyone once in a while, which was cool. This job was also like a small family, I had fun and learned a lot about computer parts, It would have been nice to become a systems engineer while I was still working at Mn Computers though I didn’t I am still pursuing similar interests and am glad to have had the experience working with such interesting people here and learning so much about the different products, testing procedures, and parts manuals. It was at mn computers with a co-worker that I was first introduced to programming, during “dll hell” just around the time ME, windows 2000 and just before server 2003 came out.  Though I wasn’t going to school at the time I was receiving another important form of education in my life.

Tags: Biography, Employment, Experience, Minnesota, Mn Computers, Shawn Stark, Work