I LOVE MY JOB!

I had every intention of writing this in January but you can see that didn’t work out. And since I subscribe to the theory of “better late than never”, I’m doing it late as opposed to never. And since I use this blog as more of a documentary of the Schubert family lives, I feel like this is an important part of my life that I’ll need to remember when I’m in a nursing home and can’t remember that at one time I even worked much less that I had a job I really liked.


Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll say it again…I love my job! 13 years ago this coming week, I was hired on with Moore Supply Company, a plumbing distributor. At that time I was hired and worked for a really great boss, Steven, who was an Aggie (that always helps) and I was kind of his right hand gal…he was the President of Sales & Marketing. I didn’t really care what my title was nor did I care what I was doing because I was engaged at that time and figured I’d be having kids sooner rather than later and once I had kids, I’d quit and be a SAHM. So when I had Calli I had been with the company for 2 ½ years. When I was pregnant with her my boss kept hounding me about if I was coming back or not. I could never give him an answer. He finally said “If we need to work out something where you work from home a little, we can”. The next day, 8:00 am, I was in his office negotiating my part-time, work from home status. So I had Calli and came back to work working 2 days in the office for 5 hours each and then doing some from home. It was an agreed upon 20 hours a week or so. And then my boss tells me he’s moving positions in the company and I was going to have a new boss….it was his (old) boss whom he never spoke very highly of. I was like “oh great, there goes my part time deal”.

Long story short, Mark became my boss and in a very short time I began to realize that Steven was wrong in everything he had said about him. So my responsibilities changed, I took on a lot of what Steven had done and Mark got me more and more involved in the showrooms…which I love! So my position evolved and it’s still hard for me to tell people what I do. After you’ve been at a place for 13 years, you become the “go to” person for a lot of things that you probably shouldn’t be the “go to” person for. My official title is Marketing Manager and my primary responsibility is the marketing and advertising of our showrooms. However the corporate culture of Hajoca (which purchased Moore Supply about 10 years ago) only allows for decisions to be made by the manager…so I really am just a sounding board, resource and salesman for marketing and advertising ideas and then I execute whatever they want to do. I am also a support to our showroom sales team and come up with things and ways to make their job easier.

Here’s why I intended to write this in January….my boss, Mark, semi-retired. He gets this silly grin on his face if you don’t put the semi in front of the retired so I need to be clear. He stepped down as South Texas region manager so that he can enjoy himself…he’s a work-aholic and doesn’t really need to work (he’s married to a Moore daughter…Moore Supply Co…..and his position paid well I’m sure). He was my boss and the boss to him was/is the CEO of the company. Anyways, I always said that when Mark retires, I retire and I had a feeling this was coming. I can’t put into words all that I have learned from Mark. You always hear that you really don’t learn everything in a college classroom…it’s the hands on experiences that help you in your career. Working for Mark has taught me how to think through projects, ideas, presentations. He’s taught me how to keep my mouth shut when I should (man that’s hard!). He calls me his little sister although he likes to tell the story that there’s at least one person who thinks I could be his wife (that remark was made by a waitress one time when we were out eating one night on a work related trip back to Conroe). The waitress couldn’t figure out why we were sitting across from each other and why we blew the candle out at our table. She thought we were in a fight. Folks the man could really be my dad if he was an active teenager. He’s like 17 years older than me. 17 years makes him a great mentor though. I felt kind of silly walking into his office before SEMI-retirement and asking for a picture and even sillier when I would tell him it’s for my blog. So in my nursing home days I’ll just picture Bradley Cooper or something.

I also have another boss. Mark’s counterpart in North Texas…Eddie. And they are polar opposites. Eddie is the fun loving, crazy, let’s have a good time salesman type of guy. I always say I work for Jekyll and Hyde. I can send an email out to the two of them and 1. I know exactly what their responses will be and 2. They will not be the same. Eddie will reply back with “yea, that’s a great idea” or “looks good” and Mark will reply back with “This is good. Have you thought about”…and there will be 5 things he wants me to consider or think through. So, Mark stepped down in January and the million dollar question was…”was I going with him?” I stayed because of the other reason I love my job…our management team. We have 36 branches in the two regions and there is only 1 manager that I just don’t care for. I’m counting down the days till he retires. There are about 12 that are young, Aggie grads that worked through our 5 year management trainee program and are terrific!

Of course they give me a hard time about most things….they call me “Miss 20 minute work week” and they love to call and ask what is on Oprah that day. Haha! But they are fun, smart and successful! I’m glad I did stay too because my new boss I love just as much as Mark. Marshall was the manager of our most successful profit center so I had worked with him on many things. He’s just as thorough as Mark was and I know I will learn equally as much from him. Wow am I lucky!

Which brings me to where I was last week. We had a vendor meeting with our management team. I spent 3 days in the beautiful Horshoe Bay Resort outside of Marble Falls. You could put a Motel 6 in that part of the country and it still be beautiful though. I had a short presentation to give but other than that it was full of fun meetings and time with our managers. I got an hour long massage that was TO.DIE.FOR. I think she squeezed 5 pounds out of me. It was heavenly.

I was to awake at 4:45 AM on Friday and since I overslept the day before and was awoken by my boss (the life of the party boss) asking if I was coming to the meeting or not I was paranoid I would oversleep again so I hardly slept. By the way…I haven’t overslept like that in a LONNNNGGG time. I had to meet the CEO of Hajoca in the lobby at 5:30 to take him to the airport. The early morning sucked but the ride to the airport was refreshing. I’ve spent a good deal of time with Rick but never one on one. He is an amazing leader for our company. So encouraging, intelligent (of course) and personable.

So…I know it was lengthy and if you want to read the cliff notes here they are…I am blessed!