Good luck Job Offer Rejected: Did your recognized good luck go untapped?

By Charles Harmon

Good Luck Job Offer

Have you ever had good luck happen to you and you not fulfill its promise?

What about what you feel is a good luck job offer, but you are not ready for it? We never hear about such circumstances, but they surely happen, and to the best of us.

I’d be curious to know who reading this had toyed with the idea of essentially rejecting good luck that has come their way. Of course you may not have recognized good luck when it presented itself, but I’m not talking about such times.

I mean when you realize there is good luck facing you smack dab in the face and yet you still refuse to take action, the action the good luck is beckoning.

Yes, one never knows what is really good luck until sometimes well after the fact, but other times one had a strong feeling of good luck present or a good luck opportunity just waiting for you to take some action.

Well it has happened to me, and more than once, but here’s the one time I recognized a good luck job offer and had to make a decision whether to take advantage of it or not.

I was twenty-two and would be getting out of the Army shortly. A few weeks before, or maybe a couple of months previous, I had visited a relative in Chicago. That was about an eleven hour’s drive from where I was stationed in the 101^st Airborne.

My job at the Army Post was a communications operator where I had my own secret communications truck. It was secret in the sense that I was one of the two or three enlisted persons in my battalion that had a secret clearance.

As such, being “privileged” I handled the secret messages for Headquarters Company.

It was great for me because I was isolated from my previous sergeant who disliked me and had made me hate the military. That happened once I saw how unfair my sergeant was to me and my friend. I had been fortunate enough to know electronics and communications.

Somehow with good luck I had finally been able to transfer to Signal Platoon.

Back to my relative in Chicago who had a cousin that had a good job as an Air Traffic Controller (ATC).

He was making big bucks back then, several times what my father was making. My father had an ok job, not a big salary, but acceptable and about average for the times.

My relative’s cousin, whose name I have forgotten during the forty or so years since I got out the Service, convinced me to apply for ATC job. I was pretty darn sure I had no chance because I read the Federal bulletin about the job and the requirements.

I didn’t meet them and certainly did not have the military experience handling airplane traffic that they wanted. It seemed like the only real candidates would be those in the Air Force, Navy, or Marines who had been an air traffic controller.

Maybe only those people who worked directly with guiding planes upon takeoff or landing for the military would have a chance. The only experience I had with airplanes was jumping out of them! Oh, and riding in them as a Civil Air Patrol cadet who operated radios back before I went into the Army.

Nevertheless, I was coached into applying for the Air Traffic Controller job. After filling out the application and mailing it I forgot all about it. I just knew I had no real chance. I had not one iota of experience like they wanted.

I was discharged from the Army and went to Chicago to look for a job. I looked and looked, but no job was to be found. I applied for an electronics related job with Western Electric and wasted a week of interviews only to be turned down as being overqualified.

Several other jobs I was turned down as being overqualified. Mind you, that was only the second job I was applying for. My first job as a 17 – 18 year-old had been part-time with the Post Office.

I moved on to Detroit where I was sure I’d get a job with one of the auto companies only to strike out there too. I was really discouraged. I had had two years of college and still could not find a job.

I had been hoping to work full-time and go back to school part-time to get my four year degree. In fact I got out the Army three months early so I could go back to school.

After the no luck situation of finding a job in Chicago or Detroit I started thinking of the dreaded idea of going back to California which I really didn’t want to do. One of the major reasons I joined the military was to get out of California.

The job situation didn’t look good so I resigned myself to driving back to Pasadena California where my family was. I was fortunate to find a family that wanted to take a vacation in California and they offered to pay me to drive them there. I obliged them and drove back home.

Because I was not swimming in cash after having spent a tidy sum living in Chicago and Detroit for a month or so, I decided to look for a job immediately. I lined up three interviews that day and the very next day (actually about a half-day later) I went on all three job interviews.

I was offered a job with all three companies, but only accepted the one closest to my home and related to computers, which were new at that time. It was a decent job at Burroughs, which made mainframe computers.

I was an assembler, a job I really didn’t want, but figured it was a stepping stone to a much better job in the future (which actually happened a year later).

After working about a month at Burroughs I received a letter in the mail from the FAA. I was shocked. I figured it was my rejection letter for the Air Traffic Controller job. I really didn’t like the idea of being rejected, but decided to open the letter anyway.

Surprise, surprise! It was an offer for an Air Traffic Controller job. It was a double shocker! A job offer for the job I just knew I couldn’t get because of no experience whatsoever, like they required.

I just couldn’t believe my luck. The time I really wanted that job I heard nothing from them. I had dismissed that job and hadn’t thought about it since I applied.

I knew I had virtually no chance of actually getting it. I had applied for it with a wish and a hope, not really believing I had a decent chance of landing such a good job.

Now I had a decision to make. What to do. I had a decent, but low paying (compared to an air traffic controller job) job right then. I had already applied and started school at Pasadena College. As much as I had wanted that job before it was now not looking so good.

The big disadvantage of the job offer was that it was located outside of Oklahoma City. Unfortunately I didn’t know anyone there or close by there. If I took the job I’d have to drop my classes in school and I didn’t want to do that.

I’d also have to give up working with computers and that was an up-an-coming field that I wanted to learn.

I recognized how lucky I was to have that job offer. It was a stroke of very good luck. That was a very difficult job to get and openings were few and far between. I had a good reference by someone working as an air traffic controller and it may have made the difference of the job offer or not.

After careful deliberation I decided it was better to continue on the path I was already on and not take advantage of that job offer. Who knows how that job would have changed my life had I taken it?

I certainly would have made a lot more money than my job at the time was paying.

Often over the ensuing years I have thought about that job. Especially during times I went looking for new jobs over the years and times when I was not working. But one never knows how life will turn out.

As it so happened, my measly assembler job I had at the time of that good ATC job offer occurred lead me to a precision assembler job in electronics.

Then a year later to an electronic technician and eventually to a Sr. electronic technician.

During those few years later I got a Radiotelephone First Class License that allowed me to operate any radio or TV station transmitter in the USA. I still have that license some 50 years later. I became the president of the Pasadena City College Amateur Radio Club.

And not to forget computers, I got a two-year computer science degree. Shortly afterwards became a computer operator for an engineering company. I also got a job diagnosing aircraft navigation computers as well as repairing them.

So did my dismissal of that good luck job offer hamper my chances for the future? I don’t know. I never did get the good salary that that job would pay until I was a computer programmer. Even then I never really had a good salary.

That is a salary that compared to Air Traffic Controller until I was a programming consultant working for myself.

But I did get in on the newest technology with mainframe computers and programming in many languages. I got in on PC programming right from the start. Now I am managing a mini Web empire of my websites about bird quotes, travel, PLR, good luck, and even old comics, etc.

Copyright © Charles Harmon