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My personal blog about the upcoming presidential election, voicing my opinions on the candidate I am supporting for the upcoming election in 2008. It may also include personal posts I may choose to add.

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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Learning From Mistakes (Sometimes Learning From Others' Mistakes)





This post reflects back to something I was told by a department manager when I employed by a grocery store back in the late 1990's. The grocery store was my job from my senior year in high school until two years after I graduated high school.
You always hear the stories of "getting a good education" in your school years. This is such a story, but has been lived in real life.
I was employed by a grocery store and for a short time a manager had been transferred to the store I was working at.
He was not my "reporting supervisor," but I did speak with the man quite a bit on many occasions. He had been employed by the company for nearly forty years. He had raised a family while working for the company.
Mike will be the name I will use to refer to him beyond this point, instead of calling him "the manager."
Mike had started his career with the company about forty years prior to from the point where I had met him. Mike was a very articulate, very outgoing, and somewhat eccentric. He was such a wonderful personality, I am unsure if I ever heard him raise his voice to anyone.
Mike had started with the company while he was in college. I am unsure what he majored in, but he had a great education, and could have excelled in his selected field. I know for sure he did not go to college to become a manager of a grocery store.
He was a man in his early twenties at the time and he started with the company with in intention of leaving once he graduated college. Mike had told me throughout his short tenure at the store I worked at that I needed to do something with my life. He stressed the need of a college education, but was very strong in his opinion not to make the same mistakes that he had made.
He had kept saying to himself over the years, that he was going to leave the company and find a job in the field in which he had studied. He never did.
When Mike first started with the company he was a "stock boy", where he stocked shelves, eventually going to the dairy department, before settling as a produce manager.
Mike had drifted from store to store, and on a few occasions, uprooting his family and relocating to other areas.
By the time I was hired by the company, Mike was not working at the store where I was working. He came along about a year after I was hired. The first day I seen Mike, I basically thought he was just an old man who may have possibly dropped out of high school and was basically stuck for he rest of his life at the grocery company.
I had later learned Mike had a four-year degree from a very highly respected and very famous school. I had the opportunity to start a conversation with Mike one day and I never realized how much the first conversation with him would change dramatically how my outlook on life would be.
He had told me how long he was with the company and his stories of when he was earning his college degree. Now after nearly forty years he was in the process of retiring from the company.
Mike always had a good story to tell about the company, whether it was busting a customer for shoplifting or hearing the latest scandals from department managers and employees.

Mike had said to me one day while passing by me "You know something, Levi?"
I replied "What's that?"
"Please don't make the same mistake I did. I worked for this company for many years and although I was promoted several times, this was only suppost to be a job until I got out of college."
Mike had sent his children to college as well and hoped that they did not make a huge mistake, like he did.
"I stayed with this company for too many years." Mike said. "I was here for nearly forty years and now that I am approaching retirement I have a huge regret."
"What's that?" I replied.
"I never pursued what I had went to college for, because it was a huge passion for me, but I failed myself by not pursuing it."

I will never forget that conversation. It was a very short one, however it had forver changed on how I perceive things. It has effected every aspect of my life and how I think about everything.
Before I started with the company that I worked for now, that same conversation popped into my mind again. "Is this somewhere I want to retire from?"
I actually ask myself that question everyday I go to work.
I haven't seen Mike for several years now. About three months after the conversation above, he had transferred to another store.
I had learned he since retired from the company, but his whereabouts or what he is doing in retirement are unknown to me. I can honestly say I never met anyone like him since.
By posting this I am not trying to inspire anyone. If I thought the same thing, it probably would have depressed me. Mike never seemed depressed, but rather disappointed. I believe he had accepted the fact he could not change what he did when he was a younger man.
If that were me, I know the disappointment would turn to depression. That is what made him stronger than me.

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