A Very Long Career

I have been an electronics buyer since 1969. That's a very long time. It's been a great career for me. When I started there were only a handful of women doing purchasing, and I loved hanging out with the guys including co-buyers and salesmen. Now that I am about 2 years away from retirement, I have been reflecting upon my life as a buyer. Most of the time was spent buying electronic components for the assorted companies I have worked for but every once in a while I've had the chance to buy something different. I have issued purchase orders for cars, banquet halls (too many to count), assorted electronics including transistor radios (as I said I have been a buyer for a very long time), microwave ovens for the lunchrooms, and by the name of this blog, you might have guessed that I also had the opportunity to buy a moose head. I will elaborate on in a future blog.

I have been given the chance to spend 3 months in Atlanta buying for a subsidiary and over the years have spent too many days in too many cities to remember.

Now, with only a couple of years before I retire you may wonder what the most unusual and best opportunity in 38 purchasing years was. Well it was the chance to hold an Academy Award. One of the companies I worked for manufactured lighting equipment for television studios, concert locations like Universal Amplitheatre, and movie set lighting. We won a special Academy Award for making the movie set of "The Mollie McGuires" (a true story about the striking coal miner's union in the 1800's) look exactly like inside of a very deep coal mine. Just holding the award, even if it wasn't mine to keep was truly an awsome experience to cherish a lifetime.

Yes, it has been a great career.