SO FRIEND YOU ASK, "WHY DID YOU NOT MAKE VICE-PRESIDENT?"

SO FRIEND YOU ASK, "WHY DID YOU NOT MAKE VICE PRESIDENT?”

A few years ago, someone close to me asked why I was not a Vice-President at my company. This person said he just could not figure it out, I seemed very knowledgeable, had a couple degrees, and all kinds of experience, and it seemed to him I should be much higher up the corporate ladder. I was taken by surprise by the question and a bit hurt. It seemed like a dirty secret I had asked myself before but did not want to tell someone else! It hit me very wrong. As I enter the sunset of my career that question has haunted me. Frankly, I am nowhere near the place I thought I would be at this point in my life when I graduated from Michigan State in 1976 as a 22-year-old Personnel Administration and Management graduate. Working now in Human Resources to say you have a Personnel Administration degree seems to date me a bit or maybe a lot!

As I contemplate what the future brings when I retire from my company in a few months, I was haunted by the question, “Why did you not make vice-president?” I guess it is second guessing my entire career but if I am brutally honest I guess I might fear my whole career was a failure. I do not fear my life was a failure because I have many things to be proud of. Everything I have in this world I have worked for and with my beautiful wife of 40 years beside of me we have built a lot together. We were not given a silver spoon and earned all we have. We have three beautiful grown adult daughters who are well educated and may support themselves very well as are their partners. They have given us five beautiful grandchildren. Our home is paid for as are most of our physical possessions. We have been all over North America and had seen many places. We have found a community is which to live that we are most proud to live. So why should I fear the answer to the original question?

It might be that I could have given my children more, somehow made my wife’s life easier if I would have risen more in the Corporate ranks. As it was I was not able to pay my children’s way through college or buy them a new automobile each. As it was they paid for their college educations much the same as I. We did help them, but they all did most of it on their own, just like I had to do. No one bought me a vehicle until I bought my own post college graduation. However, I do think they appreciate their educations and possessions as much as I did and do, I sure hope so.

“Why am I not a “Vice President?” Well first it may be because I could never make up my mind if I wanted to be in Manufacturing Operations or Human Resources. I seemed to bounce back and forth between the two. The last fifteen years of my career the choice of Human Resources and Safety were sort of made for me. Maybe because I did not choose one and commit to it may have dragged me down. I loved the excitement and sense of contribution of Manufacturing, but also did not like the working off shifts and frustration of the job. I liked Human Resources because sometimes I could help people, something that pushed me to major in it in college. There is nothing like asking someone if they want a job, and seeing the joy and excitement in their faces! However, the flip side has always been very hard, when you have to tell someone they are losing their job. However, with all that experience I have pretty much seen it all, I know I can handle almost any situation, as I can honestly say I have been there and done that. So, I think there is much more to the question.

Maybe I was just unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time or I was not in the right place at the right time. I became a Plant Manager, at 33, because I volunteered to be one. I was a Personnel Manager when the former Plant Manager had been fired, and Operations Manager quit in protest. We had floundered with no leadership for three weeks. The company had informed the Union (UAW) that it wanted a concessionary labor contract giving major give backs to the company or the plant would be closed in 90 days. Upper management felt it could not hire a Plant Manager if the plant might be closed. Morale at the plant was very low as the employees were looking at the prospect of 40% in benefit and pay cuts. At the same time, we were fighting through major quality problems holding up production of the AXOD transmission which was in the Taurus the saving vehicle of the Ford Motor Company of the late 1980s. We were also holding up production of the Mark IV Lincoln (the upsized luxury version of the Taurus). I was still a leader and new we desperately needed leadership. So, I went to my boss the VP of Human Resources and said, “Unless you tell me otherwise, I am going to turn around and go back to the plant and take over as the Acting Plant Manager we need someone in charge!”

I did not think there was any way he would let this 33-year old kid who had been a Sr. Foreman and Plant Personnel Manager have such a job with the problems we had. However, I was hoping the gesture would show how desperately we needed leadership. So, I turned around and walked slowly to the door, fully expecting him to call me back. I reached the door and did not hear anything. So, I slowly opened the door and still heard nothing. I walked through the door. I remember thinking to myself very much relieved, “Oh my gosh!”. Just then the door behind me opened and I thought, “Good I am saved he did not take me up on it!”

No more than I had that thought I heard my boss say, “Let me know how I can help!” He then shut the door. I stood there with my mouth open thinking, “Oh my what do I do now!” All I could think of was to get back to the plant and call the Staff and all my supervisors together and map out some plans, which I promptly did. At the same time, I was dealing with personal tragedy, my mother was dying of ovarian cancer and my father was experiencing major league mental issues as a result. As the oldest and only son I had to deal with a very sick mom, and a crazy dad! Finally, I still had a wife and three young daughters to take care of as well as being way to immature to handle all that.  

At times, I thought I would go crazy myself. The negotiations unlike before were not fun! Prior all the other contract negotiations seemed like a chess game and almost fun. This time it was like we had all the power and they had to take it. It was no fun, never-the-less the negotiations proceeded and we were able to make a new deal with the union in a few weeks. Did not help with the plant morale as it continued to plummet. The problems with our number one customer Ford continued to escalate to the point Ford was playing real hard ball threatening the entire company (all 10 plants) with losing all their business. Meanwhile my mother continued to go downhill, and as she did so did my dad. My sisters were on my case to control my dad which was becoming more and more difficult. There were times when I thought I would go crazy myself. My wife, a saint and kept things together with our family and I was sure not nice sometimes!

Somehow, I was able to hold things together barely. As I said the contract was ratified and we had to work on some serious trust issues with the employees. We also had to work on our quality problems very long and hard, and they were finally resolved with Ford. My mother passed away and my dad was stabilized although he would spend much of his remaining months in the metal unit at the VA Hospital in Ann Arbor. Things begin to stabilize and I was thinking I had worked hard enough and had shown results in impossible situations. However, just as I began to feel good, I was called over to the Corporate Offices, I felt good driving over because I thought I would be given the job on a permanent basis. When I arrived, I was surprised to find out that I was going to be the Operations Manager and my job would be given to a recent Buick Plant Manager who had just retired from GM. I was told he had a lot of ties to the automobile business and that they wanted that information within the company. Admittedly I was very disappointed but hung in there for another year when I was told I was being sent back to the foundry for my old job as Sr. Forman. From a business standpoint if what they were telling me was true it made sense, but I still was very disappointed. I had a chance but somehow it slipped away, or so it seemed.

A few months later my wife and I traveled to Northeastern Wisconsin, where we found a community and an area that we fell in love, it seemed like a beautiful place to finish raising our girls. So, I accepted a position from a piston ring manufacturer as the Manufacturing Manager at a 700-employee facility and we moved our family 400 miles west and across Lake Michigan. We soon discovered we had made a great choice in communities but that I had a made a terrible choice in a new boss. He was a tyrant unlike I had ever seen. He was yelling and screaming at everyone most especially me as his main lieutenant. I stood up to him a few times, but I knew it was only a matter of time until he fired me five years later. It almost seemed at the time as he just put me out of my misery. However, because of pure meanness he fired me with no severance pay and fought my unemployment, although later I won a settlement and my unemployment, after all I was a former Personnel Manager and knew exactly what to do in both cases.

The next two months were hard on my wife and I as for the first and only time in my life I had been fired and had to support a family of 5 with nothing coming in. I had loads of experience and began receiving offers for jobs with pretty large increases all over the country. However, we all had fallen in love with Northeastern Wisconsin, and my two older girls were in or approaching high school age. The girls all asked for a family meeting and they all, including my wife asked that we not move. Even though I was going to turn down some exciting opportunities, I thought for my family I would just have to find something locally. Finally, with savings running low and tired of feeling scared I accepted a job as a supervisor on second shift, the same position I had started with 19 years before. It paid the bills and we got to stay here in WI, but mentally it was very tough and even harder to accept than I first thought. I was afraid my career up the ladder was probably gone, as I was starting all over again, so it seemed. I guess my fears were realized.

At the time, I wondered about luck. It seemed like I just had been unlucky in my career so far. It is ironic to think about the legendary football coach of the University of Michigan, Bo Schembechler, from a Michigan State Alumnus but I heard him once say on the radio, “Winning in football is much about luck, however, you can work hard and make a lot of your own luck!” In my experience, I think the same is true. Although I also believe there is some of God’s will, fate, and chance that plays roles in all that too. I think now it is a combination of all those things.

From that point, onward my career was relatively stagnant, and I would have to admit more of that bitterness showed more than I thought or wanted. I would always find myself questioning those decisions of my superiors because I figured I also was qualified to make the same sort of decisions and often mine would have been different. I also started to find that my superiors began to be younger than I, at first old enough to be my little brothers and then old enough to be my sons or daughters. My company was bought by a much larger company and I was sent to our Human Resources Department, not by choice. Again, I was stuck, as everyone seemed to forget I had a whole other career before I had come to work there. It seemed to me as I had lost 20 years of my career. Three times I was passed over for promotion as a HR Manager, because I was told I had never been a HR Manager at a plant our size. Although I had been a “Personnel Manager” and a Plant Manager at a plant much larger than ours that did not seem to count. Each of the three times the person that was hired was a lousy choice and I had to do my job and theirs, and all three were fired. The fourth time I had given up. On looking back, I felt very betrayed and I am sure my bitterness shown through. Maybe I should have left, but as disappointed as I was I was comfortable, and made pretty good money. In a sense, I was indeed trapped. Never-the-less it is a burr that will always be under my saddle. I hope it gets better when I retire because I really do love the people and company I have spent 22 years with!

I would admit early in my career, I was shy and introverted. On a personal point, I inherited some of my father’s mental illness, although thankfully it was nowhere near that severe. Maybe some of that depression showed through at work as hard as I tried to mask it. However, as years went by I found it much easier to get to know people and just relax. I am now praised because of all the outside contacts I has made, and the ability to call others and get assistance from outside the organization when we needed it. I guess you could say I became comfortable with my own skin as the saying goes. Those contacts may pay off for me once I do retire as I would like to consult some.

Maybe I made some wrong decisions about my career. Maybe I should have realized I had to be happy first to make others happy and chose to leave Wisconsin to continue my dreams. However, Wisconsin has been a wonderful place to raise a family, and if my career suffered I was and am proud to say I am good father and that is more important to me than being any vice-president anywhere! So at least on that decision I have no one to blame or thank but myself.

I have a big mouth and I know that has gotten me into lots of trouble. What can I say, but I am a very passionate Irishman? I do not make decisions half assed. I am all in when I make a decision. I am not afraid to jump in and make things happen. Maybe I should have been more calculating, more deliberate, and/or more strategic. I do not really know, the only thing I can say is at the time it seemed the thing to do in every case. Most were right but a few have been wrong. To my memory all my decisions were not based on what I wanted or needed but what I thought was best for the organization, my team, and my people! I was very protective of my people and always tried to fight for them.

Several years ago, one of my former supervisors had become the Plant Manager. In 40 years of management he is tied, with another former college football player, for my favorite boss of all times. Both guys have charisma, and will defend you to the max if you work for them, but on the same token you make the same mistake twice and you are going to get the mother of all but chewing outs! But in both cases I would follow them both to Hell and back! In any case I was the acting HR Manager, I was doing paperwork in my office when the door suddenly flies open. My former boss storms in and from working with and for him for 7 years I know he was really mad. I braced myself as he slams himself down in the chair in front of my desk, he starts hollering and his face is a red as a beat. He slams his fist down in my desk and screams, “Fitz, what kind of fouled up department you running around here? I hold a luncheon meeting with Division guests including my boss and you Fu__ it all up! I ordered pizza as you know I LOVE PIZZA! When lunch starts, I open the first box of pizza and it has broccoli on it, I open the second box and it has onions and tomatoes on it, the third with all that plus mushrooms. I open all six boxes and none have any meat! Who in the HE__ serves pizza with broccoli on it! It is not PIZZA without MEAT!!! What the He__ is wrong with you? Do not ever screw up my pizza again I love you but I will fire you in a hard beat if it happens again! Matter of fact, I want someone’s heads to roll! You can Fu__ up my plant but not my PIZZA!” He jumps up and slams the door and leaves.

Well I had no idea of the luncheon and certainly knew better than to screw around with his pizza so I left my office to go see my HR Assistants. When I ask them about the situation the oldest says she thought it was time to make healthy choices. Well I bite my lip and call her in my office. As we sit down I bite my tongue as the urge is to yell at her just like I had gotten yelled at was almost unbearable. I was able to keep myself under control and I said, “From now on please bring all decisions to me about ordering lunch before you do, you got that?” She starts to protest and I hold my hand up and say, “I am sorry but that is the way it is, there is no debate or discussion.” I hate to make arbitrary decisions when I cannot involve my subordinates but stupid is stupid, and drastic times demand drastic actions. Later, after the guests leave, I go up to the Plant Manager’s Office and I tell him I investigated the problem and it will never happen again, but no one was getting fired, unless he wanted to fire me. We both just started laughing uncontrollably. Today he is a General Manager of entire division of our company in an entirely different group in Missouri. We still are great friends. I will get the last laugh. For now, we are going to leave it at that as I do not want to give away the surprise he is going to get on my last day. Anyone know any good pizza shops in Washington, Missouri?

So back to the mouth thing again, in the final analysis my mouth and my passion have been a blessing and a curse. It has gotten me in trouble but it has also given me spirit and drive. In retrospect, maybe I should have channeled it all better, but that would have taken some of the fun away, and I am who I am! I never ran, and when faced with flight or flee chose fight every time, I am not a diplomat. In my early foundry days as a young 22-year old supervisor it often seemed like 50 men against me. My knees would be knocking but I never ran from anything, I would dig in and fight. My first boss said, “Here son, you better get respect, you either win it, fight for it, or take it but you better have it or you will not survive!” I saw a lot of my peers, lessor or smarter guys, I am not sure which, throw their hard hat in the trash, walk out, and never come back. I thought about it once or twice but would dismiss the thought and get to work! Maybe I have too much foundryman in me! I do have to admit of the 4 plants I have spent my career in, the foundry was the most exciting, dangerous, and fun! No offense ladies, but I use to think you had to be a real man to stand up there, the physical and mental work demanded it. However, in the vernacular of 2017 you better be all grown up, quick on your feet, have the courage of lion, and be as tenacious as Spartan (ok to some of you maybe a wolverine, yuck).

Maybe it was fate. In July 2013 I learned a huge lesson, maybe the hard way maybe not. I had a cardiac ablation to correct a condition called atrial fibrillation. Three weeks later I felt great except for a little nagging pain in my chest that the doctor said was to be expected. My wife and I left for a vacation to go back to one of our favorite places, Glacier National Park. The first day out we got to a place called Buffalo, WY. We checked into a motel for a well-deserved night of rest. The next morning as I was doing my morning push-ups I stood up with an incredible pain in my chest, and then I almost collapsed. My wife took me to the small hospital there where the ER Doctor told me he had found a dime sized hole in my esophagus behind my heart. The doctor using the laser to perform the ablation had burned a hole in my esophagus. My entire chest was filled with infection due to the food and water I had eaten and drank. My white blood count was going through the roof and my chest wall was rubbing against my heart. I needed surgery, the kind I could not get there, and I needed it immediately or I would die. If the infection broke lose I would be septic and soon dead. They also saw the top of my heart was burned and bursting out (but not given way yet). I was flown by Lear jet to the University of Colorado in Denver. Two surgeons met me in ER and just a bit later told me they had to get me to surgery immediately. They told me the surgery was very grave and it would last six hours. I asked them what my chances were, they looked at each other and said in unison, “We do not know, we have never had to fix the kind of damage you have. People’s hearts do not normally get burned nor do people just get holes in their upper esophagus!”

They then told me they even were not sure what to do until they got in. I told them to wait just a minute longer. With my beautiful niece holding my hand, I closed my eyes and said to myself, “God I will not beg you for my life, this is way beyond anything I have control, I know you have a plan for all things and I am part of that plan so whatever you wish to do with me is fine, but please watch over my family!” I immediately felt like I was covered with a warm blanket any was surrounded in warm water. my opened my eyes with no fear, and said, “Well let’s go!”

Twelve hours later, not expecting to wake up I did. Surgery had taken 10 hours and I had died three times and they had to bring me back each time. I was first told I was a fighter and few men my age (59.5) would have survived the surgery, I was a tough son of a gun! I was soon further told I was in super critical condition, and I was a long way from being out of the woods, and the next week would be touch and go due to the infection. Further if I survived the first week it would be at least two months before I could eat or drink anything! I would not die of thirst or hunger because I had two tubes in me, one for eating and one for hydration. However, my throat would not know it and I would have a really dry mouth! Worse yet was if the hole did not heal and seal shut I would have to live like that the rest of my life on tubes. I again felt like I was in the foundry and cornered, and had to fight or flee. So, I held up my hand to quiet the doctors, and I said, “God did not bring me though all this only to lay in a bed with tubes in me the rest of my life! I want my life back! Look there are two things I really enjoy in life, First, the love in ALL ways of that lady over there (pointing at my wife), Second at 59, I still LOVE to play basketball. God and both those things are why I am still alive! So, I am telling you the way it is going to be. I will not be vulgar because of all the lady nurses here, let me just say if I can do one I can do both, so I will be 60 in February, I will be playing basketball before my 60th birthday! Let’s get to work and make it happen. I do not want to hear again that I cannot do those things from anyone!”

The doctors both smiled, and the Cardiac Surgeon replied, “Well Ok then, let’s go!” he shook my hand, the Thoracic surgeon shook my hand and they both left. All the nurses snickered, and my wife stood there with her mouth open. I looked at all the ladies and said, “OK that is that! I am going back to sleep!” Well that foundryman spirit proved to be the best. I was playing basketball in January. As far as the other let us just say, “A gentleman never tells!” I will be 63 soon and still at them both.

“Finally, the term vice president is relative, friend!” Should I be a vice president of a ten-person company or 60,000 people? My present company has 60,000 people. The Vice President of Human Resources and the next three levels down are executive positions. I had no expectations to be an executive. By temperament and culture, I would not know how to be one. A Vice-President of Human Resources of any company our size is most often in 2017, an attorney, by at least education. In addition, as a Human Resources Specialist and Safety Manager in a plant of 350 employees I have as much responsibility of anyone that is a vice-president of a small company. “So, my friend, what kind of vice-president do you refer?”      

To my friend, who asked me the original question, I guess I would say it was just not in the cards. I shot myself in the foot a few times, but always tried with all my will to do the best job I could always. I never made a decision based on greed, or personal gain. I always tried to treat people the way I wanted to be treated, although I now wish I would have been friendlier. I think I always did the ethical thing and have a clear conscious over my entire career. Along the way, I have made a good living, I met so many great people and many have become close friends, I have a wonderful family that loves me very much. No job or position could bring me greater riches. The answer to the question my friend, is what does it matter I am rich beyond all expectations!   So, there you go…….