By Ron Slee, LearningWithoutScars.com | November 2024
I have had an interesting and extremely rewarding career in the equipment world. I never dreamt about working in this industry. It just happened.
I was 22 years old, and it was a tough time to get a job in the data processing world. I wanted to work for IBM. I had a mathematics -physics education with minors in statistics and computer science. I made a choice on education that didn’t make a lot of sense, looking back. I was a generalist by nature and a teacher by aptitude.
I was skiing north of Montreal after leaving a job working in a custodial role at a place called “Boys Farm and Training School.” It was started by my maternal great grandfather, and I wanted to see what it was all about. I had a group interview, kind of like a casting call, and got hired as a “control figure.” I had been a serious swimmer and had a physique then. I learned a lot at that work particularly in personality profiling as that is what they trained me to do. It was too much for me, working 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM daily and being on call overnight. I had one day off every two weeks. I needed a rest.
The VP Finance for the Caterpillar dealer in Quebec, John Swift, called my home looking for me. I had taught two of his children at university, so he knew me a bit. He asked me to come for an interview and see if there was mutual interest in an opening they were trying to fill. I got the job and was hired on a one-year contract to find and fix a problem in the business system that they had installed. Before the year was up, I was hired full time.