Daily Comic Journal: February 22, 2022: “The Start Of My Career, The Conclusion.”
It’s probably a good thing that I was so young so I wouldn’t over think things. I had no real immediacy to return to Pittsburgh, no job to get to, neither did my mom. But there’s no way we would presume to stay at my cousin’s house another two weeks (and driving back home only to turn around and return in two weeks sounded like a waste of time and gas) so my immediate reaction was no. I couldn’t come back in two weeks. Maybe he thought I was bluffing. Well, in the end it all worked out and I got my first major job, working as an artist/package designer for Hasbro.
Finding out several decades later, that “For want of a job”*, that if David hadn’t been assigned a monthly book with Marvel just weeks before I arrived, he wouldn’t have quit and there’d be no open position, Gerry wouldn’t have had me in for an interview and I would have returned home with no job. Timing is everything.
*- a play on the old “For want of a Nail” proverb.
Thanks for sharing part of your personal history. It’s a classic “if a butterfly flaps its wings…” story. I had a “butterfly” story for my first job out of college. The company I really wanted to work for had said they couldn’t offer me the job at that time, but hoped to within a couple weeks. I already had an offer with my second choice, the parent company of business that was a major employer in the small town I grew up in. I negotiated an extra 2 weeks to give my response to the 2nd company, hoping the 1st choice would come through in that time. (First company was 2+ hours from my home, while the second was 6 hours.) They didn’t, and I accepted the job at my 2nd choice – I (and my family) was poor, and I needed to get out and start working.
Crux of the story – the father of a former girl friend worked at the subsidiary of my new company; that was a catalyst to us getting back together, and we’ve been married several decades now. If I’d gotten that job with my first choice company, things would be completely different for me now (and for my wife, kids, grandkids).
Thanks for sharing.
My dad used to tell a similar story. As a newly educated teacher back in 1953 he interviewed for a number of jobs and received offers from two places (there was a lack of teachers here in Denmark in the early 50ties – a lot of children had been born during WWII due to people not having a lot of other amusements available, but there hadn’t been a corresponding rise in the number of teachers educated). And he often mused about how he would never have met my mother if he had accepted the other one.