Welcome back to week two of the journey. It’s time to leave the loading dock behind and move past the world of package delivery, at least I thought. At this point in my life, I knew I had ambition; I just didn’t have a clue what to do with it or how to get started. However, my brief exposure to the early world of computers seemed genuinely cool. The big question was simple: how do I get from this shipping dock to that keyboard?

I reached a point where the warehouse job started feeling a bit “odd”—I knew I needed something more. I landed a new gig on a shipping dock, but this was a real company, not just a drafty warehouse. It had an actual office section and a manufacturing floor. Suddenly, I was dealing with people who had “career direction” instead of just people moving pallets in circles.

I stayed there for about a year or two. That summer, my friends and I lived at the beach, and life really started to expand. I had a “real” job with coworkers who could actually hold a conversation, a taste of independence, and—if I’m being honest—a lot of late nights drinking. It’s funny looking back because I don’t drink at all anymore, but at the time, it felt like we owned the world.

Eventually, I started to get “the itch.” I wanted more responsibility. I left the dock and moved into a role at a large government contractor as a parts expeditor. This was my first real taste of the digital age; we used an early form of computer activity tracking to enter and move parts around the facility.

By 1984, the winds were shifting. Some cutbacks were hitting the contractor, and I set my sights on a new goal: I wanted to work at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation). I went to a contract agency, and as luck would have it, they placed me at a DEC office facility—right back on the shipping and receiving dock.

It felt like coming full circle, but with a massive difference: I was finally at a premier computer company with a real future ahead of me. I was no longer just moving boxes; I was on the runway, ready to take off.

Life has a funny way of dropping people into your path right when you least expect it. In the long history of “Kev,” this might seem like a minor detail, but looking back, it was the spark that changed everything. I still remember him vividly: John Casey. One of John’s favorite sayings was “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and the three wise guys.” John was a 70-year-old retired guy from the phone company who was working part-time in our mailroom just to kill some time. We had lunch every day in the shipping room, and one afternoon he looked at me and said, “Why don’t you look into the computer operator training program?” I looked at him and said, “What the hell is that?”

As a side note, this highlights a major difference between my day and today. These kinds of internal “growth” programs do NOT exist in companies anymore. They don’t just pluck kids off the dock and train them for the data center anymore; today, you’re expected to arrive with a master’s degree and three years of experience just to get an interview.

Anyway, John told me to go apply and gave me the information. But there was a kicker. To get into the program, you had to meet two criteria:

1. You had to be a full-time employee. I was a contractor.
2. You needed to find your own internal sponsor. I had no real contacts.

Challenge accepted. Since sitting on a loading dock alone provides a surprising amount of free time, I started my quest. I called and I emailed—and yes, working for DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) meant I was using advanced tech; we had email before most people even knew what the internet was. I hounded everyone I could for contacts.

On the very last possible day, the sun finally shone on Kev again. I found a sponsor who offered me a position as a full-time DEC employee. This was monumental. Suddenly, I had a “real” job and actual training. The manager committed to hiring me, paying my salary for 16 weeks of full-time training, with the agreement that I would give them a two-year commitment in the role afterward.

Easy peasy. I was in. Then it got even better. Not only was I getting real career training, but my post-training job assignment was at the corporate training center for the entire company. Are you kidding me? I was going to be working at the place where they taught all the classes, right in the heart of a full data center. Career launched.

So, there I was: I finally had a real job and some professional training under my belt. But there was a catch—I still had no college degree. That mattered for a lot of reasons, not least of which was a promise I had made to my parents. I told them I’d get it done, and in my family, a promise like that carried weight.

Now, the challenge was the “triple threat”: fitting in night classes, working a demanding full-time schedule, and trying to maintain some semblance of a social life while building a career. I started hearing rumors that companies like DEC had something called “tuition reimbursement.” Woah. What was that all about?

It sounded too good to be true—a company paying you to learn? As we go on, you’ll see that it definitely helped, but it wasn’t a total free ride. At various points, I still had to reach into my own pocket to foot the bill. It was a lesson in skin in the game. But that’s a story for next week.

Get ready, because next time we’ll dive into how the new job actually went and how the “climb” truly started. Everything starts somewhere, and trust me, there are plenty of setbacks and unexpected jumps forward waiting in the wings.

Hold on tight… here we go. The next part of the story is next week….

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