Work Skills

Never copied, never imitated, it’s the one and only

Where have I worked? What do I know how to do? Read on Gentle Reader.

Phalanx Enterprises, LLC

This is a full service rental business. Phalanx rents houses to low and lower middle income families. We buy houses and remodel or upgrade them and then rent them out. In very few cases we buy houses and restore them to sell.

Duckett Truck Center, Inc.

A Freightliner and Western Star dealership located in SE MO and western Kentucky. The store I was headquartered at was in Poplar Bluff. That location had sales, parts, service and a body shop.

Office Depot

Office Depot is a nationwide office supply store. A big part of their business is in what they call technology. This includes everything from computers to telephones. The store in Poplar Bluff is “out on the frontier” as far as most of their other locations.

Union Pacific/Missouri Pacific

Union Pacific Railroad merged with the Missouri Pacific Railroad in 1982 to create the largest railroad in America. The UP had the trackage and connections and the MP had the cash and the cash cow traffic. It was an exciting place & time to work.

I have been gainfully employed since I was 15 years old. My parents taught me if you want something you have to work for it. While in high school junior/senior years I worked 1 full time and 2 part time jobs. What can I say, I wanted a lot. During my 17 years on the railroad I managed to find time to work an additional part time job, go to college full time

for a degree, and still help raise my 2 sons. After leaving the railroad I took about a year away from working to build my house (yes, I actually “worked” on it) then worked for a truck dealership in various roles as well as a 2 year stint in retail at Office Depot. Now I take care of my rental business and plot my next big career.

Sidelines:

No matter where I worked, I usually always did some other work in my spare time. Here are a few of them.

For the last 20 years or so I have worked on PCs for individuals and some small companies. Most of this work has been software troubleshooting with a good dose of hardware upgrading to boot. I have also built custom systems to match customers specific needs.

From around 1995 until 2009 I kept a small side business called Phalanx Phigures. This consisted of the sale of 15mm miniatures used for collecting or wargaming. The figures were sold either painted (by me) or unpainted. Very enjoyable sideline but frankly the old peepers can’t do the detail work anymore.

During my time in Houston I did a little desktop publishing. This was before the days of Microsoft’s dominance so I used Wordperfect and Harvard Graphics. Not a lot of money in it as I could not devote much time to seeking customers, but fun and a good learning experience. Without all the integrated suites of software, you had to learn to make things work together.

I also worked at a tire dealership called NTW as a coop job while going to college. Good customer service experience.