Down But Not Out

If you live long enough, you will discover that life is like a rollercoaster. You will spend part of your life climbing mountains, some time with a view from high, and the rest dealing with curves and drops that may take your breath away. You will experience times when you are anxious, happy, fearful, and let down. When alone, you will choose only the rides that bring you joy and avoid those that do not. When you are joined by a partner, you may be encouraged to tackle other challenges and share your experiences.

In my article “Do Not Give Up”, I wrote about getting fired at Gulf States Toyota and how that changed our lives. Technically, I did not get fired but it had the same effect. I had burned the bridge of “trust” between the big boss and myself, and it would never be the same. Barry was a man who never questioned his decisions and never let anyone else either. I knew that before I even considered discussing it with him, but I had allowed my accomplishments and success to inflate my image of my value. I allowed that image in other areas of my life and that restricted my growth in my faith and family.

I had everything I had ever wanted in a job and a great future. With the projects I had planned, the salary, bonus, and all of the benefits provided, I do not believe I would have ever left for another job. Truth is, I put that job first in my life and justified that by what I was able to provide for my family. I had been growing in my faith but was not really willing to accept the idea that my success was due to anything except my efforts. The full impact of losing that job did not sink in until a few weeks later when I realized that several companies would not give me an interview for their top IT position. Even though I had 10 years of management experience, at 35 years old and no degree in Computer Science, they were not interested. Even with my IBM Contacts and recommendations, I could not get an interview for management positions below the top position, because I had more experience than who would be my boss.

I started customizing my resume for each job so I would not be over-qualified to just get an interview. During that time, my pastor, Brother Morgan, would call me and ask me to go with him to some meetings for various reasons. He and his wife, Jo, had become good friends of ours. He knew that my Dad had cancer, and we were dealing with that and my employment problem. With our one-on-one talks, I began to see things differently than ever before. It was like I was a third party looking at my life. I still knew how hard I had worked to accomplish tasks, but I could see times when things could not have turned out well and times when I must have had help to accomplish the tasks. I began my “trust walk” with Jesus when I began trying to learn where He wanted me to go and what He wanted to teach me. Even today, I still struggle with the first step, learning “it is not about me”.

One of my friends at IBM asked me to have lunch with him and he told me he had a client company that needed a Programming Manager. He told me I would not like the job, company, or the guy I would be working for. He said the pay, benefits, and working conditions would not be good either in comparison to what I had before. I asked him why I should even consider taking the job. He said because you can help them more than they know. I told Eva about the possibility of that job that evening and she told me to pray about it. I called the IT Manager the next morning and arranged a meeting that day.

The company was Industrial Towel and Uniform Supply Company, now CINTAS. At that time, the company had plants in Houston and six other cities in Texas. Every red flag was going off about the job. The computer processing had been provided by an out-of-town service bureau before and the salesman for that service bureau had talked the company into bringing the process in-house with an IBM Computer. The company had paid IBM to develop the programs for the daily and monthly processing required. The IT Manager, Jack, knew nothing about computer operations or computer programming. One of the women from the office staff was being trained by an IBM employee on how to run the few jobs they had in production. Jack had hired two computer programmers several months back. One of the programmers was from Pakistan in the country on a student visa. He was hard-headed and hard to understand. The other programmer loved eating cookies all day. The company had paid for both to attend classes at IBM for a year and neither of them had a single program in production at that point. Payroll was still being done manually for all seven locations and was the most complex with pay methods and pay frequencies that I had ever heard of. Jack had missed multiple deadlines for getting the project completed.

There was nothing for me to gain from taking the job except a source of income and that I could spend evenings with my Dad at the hospital regularly. I took the job and that was a stressful period for me and my family. Many problems at work, my Dad’s health condition, the girls involved at school and church, and less money to pay bills. I had to learn to trust God to get me through one day at a time. I had to learn it is not about me. I had to learn to start each day and end each day by giving thanks for the blessings in my life. I grew more as a person, as a husband, and as a father because my focus had changed. Things look different from your knees.

My new job was located on Kress St. near Navigation, on the east side of town. My Dad was in the Heights Hospital receiving chemotherapy treatment for lung cancer. He had radiation treatments several months before at Methodist Hospital in the Medical Center and those treatments appeared to help for a period. The Heights Hospital was just starting its chemotherapy program, but Heights was closer for Mom to drive Dad there rather than to the medical center. Dad’s treatment did not come with any assurance of success, but he agreed to be one of the first patients in the program. Each day after work, I would stop and visit with Dad on my way home. Mom would spend her days with Dad and JoAnn would be there during the day as much as possible.

One day, Mom was still at the hospital when I got there. She had taken their car in for some repairs and JoAnn had dropped her off at the hospital and I would drive her home that night. We left the hospital earlier than normal so I could take her home. As we were waiting for the light to change to walk to the parking lot, I saw my truck driving out of the parking lot with another car speeding after it. My truck had just been stolen and I was in shock. I started running like I thought I could catch the truck and stop the thieves. I ran back to Mom and told her what had just happened and told her to come back to the hospital. I had to use a payphone to call the police and report the thief. In 1978, there were no cell phones of any kind. I called Eva and had her bring the girls with her to pick us up at the hospital so we could take Mom home and then drive back home.

In my pickup, I had programs I had been writing for a couple of weeks at night and on weekends. The programs were coded on paper coding sheets and then would keypunch for computer processing. Two weeks of long hours had just been lost with my truck and I still had the same deadlines. My world was crashing around me. I had never felt so helpless. If I had known more about the Bible, I would have been convinced that I was the current version of Job who had lost everything. A few months before, life was great and now my life was full of problems and uncertainty. I had a wife and two daughters who loved me, but I could not discuss with them what I was feeling. The only person I could share my feelings with was our Pastor. He would listen and then tell me examples in the Bible of people faced with difficult periods and how God used those experiences in positive ways. I had a tough time believing that all my problems were leading to anything positive, and I felt that I was being punished. I felt like a loser and woke up each day expecting more problems.

During the last week before my Dad passed away, He and I had discussions like we had never had before. We were able to talk about our faith and his condition in an open way. He did not know about some of the problems in my life, but he knew his time was near and he wanted me to know he was proud of me. We discussed the side effects of his treatments and how he was ready to stop them and move on to the next phase. He told me that he knew I would have much success in my future, but to allow God to influence my decisions. That was on Wednesday night. Thursday night, Joyce spent the night at the hospital and Maurice spent Friday night with him and I planned to stay Saturday night. Saturday morning when Mom got to the hospital, Dad told Maurice to take Mom to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, he would be ok. He passed away while they were gone, as he wanted.

When I got the call from my brother about my Dad, for some reason I felt God was using my problems to let me feel His presence in my life. I do not believe God caused any of my problems, but He was there with me during my darkest hour. My Dad’s funeral was very difficult for me. He was the closest family member I had lost, and our relationship had changed so much during those last weeks. I was feeling peace in knowing Dad was no longer feeling pain and was in a better place.

The conditions at work only got worse in the following weeks. I was spending most of my hours teaching and correcting the two programmers and the operator trainee and had little time to develop the programs for the Payroll System. Everything that had been designed and worked on was poorly done and management was very concerned about the completion date and whether it would be even workable. I told Jack and management that I could get the project back on track if I did not have to spend all my time with staff that were poorly skilled. I became a consultant with a contract to focus only on the development of the Payroll System and not involved with staff supervision or training. I agreed to a fixed amount per month with deliverables with no set hours. Most of my hours were working at home or evenings and weekends at the office when I would not be slowed by the daily processing or staff. At the end of the first month, management was very satisfied with my progress.

I was asked to present a proposal to complete the Payroll System and design and develop a Retirement System that would provide systems that new personnel could learn to use. I developed the system’s design documentation for the functions and reports that would be included and provided a fixed price to be paid upon completion of both systems. The contract was signed by both parties. To get the project completed sooner, I hired one of my ex-employees at GST to develop some of the CICS online programs and I worked days, nights, and weekends to complete the programming and testing. Both systems were completed and ready for production one month later. Company management was very happy; however, Jack was not as happy. He expected the project to take at least three to four months or longer. He even tried to delay payment, so I submitted the invoice directly to Senior Management who had signed the contract. I got paid the next day.

I was then asked to review their existing production systems and submit proposals for developing new systems that would include online processing for the route accounting and accounts receivable systems. I did my analysis of their existing systems and developed a proposal that included timelines and details of the functions included in each system with cost estimates based on a set of assumptions. I gave those proposals to Jack for his review and to discuss with Senior Management. A few days later, we met to discuss the proposal, and he wanted to take me to lunch to discuss it in more detail. He told me that he could get more money approved than my proposal because management was pleased with my other projects. He then told me that he was underpaid by the company, but he could be an advisor to me for the new projects. He was thinking if I could pay him directly a thousand a month then everyone would benefit from the company getting good systems promptly and I could have several contracts in the future.

That night I told Eva what Jack had proposed. Her response was, “Well, what are you going to do?” I told her I had already told Jack I could not accept that arrangement, but if he worked out his arrangement with his company and all parties agreed with a straightforward contract, then call me. I did not view that as God testing me, but more as an opportunity for me to know God was guiding me with that decision. At that point, I had no other job or contract lined up for next week or in the future. I simply had to trust God that it would be ok.

About a week later, I was hired as a consultant at Drillco Tools to work on the development of some new systems in the Oil Field Industry. I completed a couple of smaller projects and then IT Management learned more about my background and wanted me to manage the project to install the Master Scheduling System that the corporate company, Smith International was installing. I soon realized that the oil industry or at least the manufacturing industry was behind with their approach to computer systems involving online file updating and other processing. I documented the issues involved with installing an OS version of the Master Scheduling System in their computer environment that was operating in a DOS-based operating system. That led to a DOS to OS Conversion project and hardware upgrades. No other person on their staff had been through that conversion but me. I had successfully completed that at GST and that project was used as an example by IBM of how a conversion could be done smoothly and quickly.

I was assigned to the OS Conversion project to manage, including training the programming staff assigned to the project on program modifications and JCL training. The original plan was to convert to OS-VS1 and train the DOS Systems Programmers to support VS1. As more people got involved from IBM and other consultants, the project moved to conversion to OS-MVS, and in 1979 that was a bigger project requiring a much larger mainframe computer involving chilled water and much more to consider with their existing systems. About three or four days out of every week were spent in meetings with little real progress. They did not understand how out of control they had allowed the project to become.

I got a call from a consulting company with a contract to do development work for Coastal Corporation at an hourly rate that was attractive and paid by the hour. The interview went well, and I left Drillco and the conversion project in other hands. I had stopped looking for management positions due to projects I was involved with and just taking consultant projects. I had more free time and less stress. At Coastal, I had the opportunity to work with several younger employees and work with them as a mentor. I had completed several projects at Coastal when I got a call from another consulting company about a six-month project at Diamond Shamrock in Pasadena. It was a long drive, but the money was good. To get me to stay, Coastal offered me a job as an employee. Their offer was worth considering; however, the normal work hours I would be expected to work and the traffic to and from the Greenway Plaza to Jersey Village were a nightmare at that point, so I declined the offer.

At Diamond, I had one primary project assignment; however, the implementation schedule was dependent on some other projects not under my control. I was given other several projects to work on while I was waiting on other systems that were behind schedule. That was the first company where women were in lower-level programming supervisor positions. It was interesting to see multiple young women interview an applicant for a programming position and then only hire female employees. I had a chance to help some of the staff learn some fairly basic things, but I had to be careful how I shared that knowledge without them resenting my help. Six to eight consultants were working there during the eight months I worked there, and we all shared a large room that changed to different rooms as they kept remodeling the building. One of the systems I developed involved “Windfall Profit Taxes”.

I usually carried my lunch with me because I did not like many of the places to eat in that area and I typically took only a thirty-minute lunch break. I carried my Bible with me and read it while eating lunch. One of the other consultants would also bring his lunch and he started asking me questions about the Bible and my beliefs. He told me his wife was a Catholic, but he was not sure what he believed. We had a lot of discussions about many questions. One day as I was in traffic trying to get home, I realized that God was using me to share His word like I had never been able to do before. One of the other consultants was a young woman who worked on different projects than me, but she was very loud and angry at times and her language was very crude. One day during lunch, she was cussing and shouting at someone on the phone loud enough to interrupt the conversation my friend and I were having.

I walked across the room to her desk and stood there until she stopped and noticed me standing there. I asked her if she knew how offensive her words were and the impression she gave others of her when she talked that way. She asked me what business it was of mine? And I asked her if it mattered to her how others would judge her on the words she used? I cannot say that she made any changes in her life, but during the remaining weeks we worked in the same room she did a much better job at controlling her words in my presence.

There is much more to the story of my work experience that I will cover in other articles. Many years later I was working for American General Life and a friend of mine was working at VALIC, a sister company. Johnny and I had lunch together often when our schedules allowed. Johhny mentioned my name to one of his coworkers at VALIC. Johnny then brought his coworker to have lunch with us one day. It was the guy I had worked with at Diamond twenty years before. He told me that our discussions had helped him more than could have known. I told him that he did not know how much those conversations had helped me grow in my faith. It was at that point that I began being less silent and more open about my faith with others. God works in ways we do not always understand when we are in that Moment.

Philippians 4:7 ESV And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.