SNGF -- Describe One of Your Own, or an Ancestor's, Life Turning Point

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

It's Saturday Night again - 

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):

1)  Every historical person has major events, milestones and "turning points" in their life, from birth through death and even beyond.  These events, milestones and turning points can be the basis for family stories of the historical person.

2)  Please share one of those events in your own life, or the life of one of your ancestors. 

Here's mine:
One turning point in my life was figuring out what I was going to do with my life after graduating from college with a degree in Biological Sciences. I really didn’t want to go out in the working world. I liked college, taking classes, and learning new stuff. My job at the college library was fun. In fact, I was enrolled to work on a second major of Geography. Besides, there were no jobs to be had. We were in a recession in 1977. The national and regional parks weren’t yet hiring many women. I didn’t want to work in a lab.

That summer, I took a bus trip on Greyhound, traveling around the country with a month pass. I went with my friend, Beth, who wanted to visit her aunt and uncle in Milwaukee. We also traveled across Canada partway, visited Chicago, Niagara Falls, Washington, DC., Williamsburg, and then headed home.

When I got back, I was offered a job through one of my train club members who worked for IBM, where I’d be working with an IBM computer that the Alameda Sporting Goods store leased but had no one in their office willing to work on it. It was supposed to handle the store’s inventory. They handled a lot of school sales besides the regular sporting goods to walk-in customers.

So, I left school and started working there. It was a mistake. The pay wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I had heard the number 525 and thought $5.25 an hour but they meant $525 a month, which was a big difference. Next, the office manager was super strict and hard to work with. She probably thought I was immature. Whatever!

The computer they leased didn’t really work out. Working with the office manager was difficult. I started looking for something else. I had several options. One friend recommended I put in an application to Pacific Gas & Electric as a mapper. Another suggested applying for his job at Standard Oil Refinery as a chemical cleaning coordinator. Lastly, the Coast Guard recruiter that I met at a job fair in my last quarter at Cal State Hayward contacted me.

I did all three. I had an interview with a supervisor in Oakland with P.G.&E. and the only job he had open at that moment was a gas meter reader. I was not interested. I interviewed with my friend’s supervisor at the refinery but I never heard back, so they likely found someone else with experience. I did go through the physical and had an interview with the Coast Guard for Officer Candidate School but the interview did not go as I had hoped. I think I was too honest about how I didn’t like office work. I was not accepted.

I kept working. The computer was to go back to IBM and I was going to be working half time in the office and half time in the school sales office. But then, I had a chance to apply for train operator at the Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART). One of the train club guys had an application and I went to the post office to copy it, filled it out, and sent it in. He ribbed me for years that I stole the job from him. I got an interview and was offered a spot in the next train operator class.

That was the real turning point. I worked 15 years as a train operator and then 17 years as an Employee Development Specialist, Train Operator, which is a fancy term for train operator trainer. Thirty-two years at BART flew by, gave me a good retirement, and I met some great people.

Thinking back, any of those jobs I had applied for could have been a turning point. After passing the train operator class, PG&E did call about that mapper job. I would have ended up with a good retirement from there. I probably would have had one from the refinery, too, but I am glad I didn’t spend 30 years breathing in the chemicals there. I do wonder sometimes what my life would have been like in the Coast Guard. I probably would have ended up living somewhere else and never meeting my husband and having my two daughters. 

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