There are just a few times in your life when you consciously make a decision that you know will alter your life significantly. Most of our decisions do not rise to that level of importance, although even the seemingly unimportant ones hold the potential of major consequences.
Those big, conscious decisions, however, often mark turning points or markers in our lives. Should I ask her to marry me? Should we buy a house? Should I move across the country for a job opportunity?
Since I am not given to risk taking, those decisions for me can involve a lengthy period of consideration and reflection. To make it easier for myself, I have been known to create pros and cons lists to categorize the factors and possible outcomes. I try to be analytical. Sometimes, though, circumstances result in a snap decision. A hurricane was the impetus for me to make a truly important decision and to answer the question, “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
Labor Day weekend 1979 was approaching and so was Hurricane David. Two years out of college with a degree in mass communications, I found myself working at a Winn-Dixie supermarket in Palm Bay, Florida, which is on the east coast not that far from the Kennedy Space Center. I felt lucky to be in the chain’s management training program and was taking home more money than I had ever had before. Even so, I wasn’t sure it was the career for me.
The program was a great, practical indoctrination for someone hoping to become a store manager or to climb even higher to a corporate position. My rotation started out on the stock crew. The daily routine would begin in the afternoon with unloading the trailer that had been dropped off earlier in the day. We would then stock out the store through the evening and finish out the shift by mopping the entire place. As the only person on the crew with a college degree, I was initiated and tested by my new colleagues. Would Joe clean up the mess made when a multiple spaghetti sauce jars fell in the back room? Yes, he would. Would Joe be able to catch a heavy full case of laundry detergent being thrown to him off the back of the trailer? Yes, he could. Eventually, I found my way to a comfortable place within the team, trying my best to fit in and be accepted.
After the stock crew, there would be lengthy rotational assignments in the dairy section, the produce section and finally the very cold meat department. The only part of the road ahead that really concerned me was that last assignment. Back then, it was normal for a supermarket to have a butcher shop operation within each store. So, there were knives of all types, scary looking (and sounding) band saws, and veteran meat men who were missing tips of fingers.
“My hands were so cold,” I heard one recount an accident from the past, “that I didn’t even feel it when I cut my finger off.”
As Hurricane David approached, I was still on the stock crew, and we were working extra hours to try to keep the shelves stocked. It looked like it would arrive late in the holiday weekend. So, on Friday and Saturday, there was an onslaught of shoppers buying far more than normal in preparation for the unknown days ahead. By Sunday, just about all of the canned goods were gone, and there were no backfills on hand. Inexplicably, there remained an adequate supply of canned pork and beans.
One customer grabbed several cans and said to me, “I don’t even like pork and beans, but I better buy them.”
David was a category five storm with winds of up to 150 miles per hour. It plowed through the Caribbean causing horrendous destruction and the final tally later showed that it was responsible for over two thousand deaths. Landfall was predicted for the southeast coast of Florida on Labor Day evening. Although our own apartment was well inland, Barbara’s mom was living by herself on Merritt Island, about thirty miles north of Palm Bay. We decided that morning to pick up her mom and all of us go to Barbara’s grandmother’s house in Titusville, another twenty-five miles north of Merritt Island.
Our transportation at that time was a tiny Ford Pinto. When we arrived in Merritt Island, Barbara’s mom said that she also wanted to take with her Winston, a huge English sheepdog that she had been watching for her son. And, oh yes, we needed to take the parakeet in the cage, too. And of course, we needed to save all of these family documents and framed photos in case there was flooding. It was not a comfortable ride to Titusville.
That night, David hit a glancing blow to the Florida coast and went barreling off toward a true landfall in Georgia. The destruction left behind in Florida was nowhere near what had been feared. Upon returning to Palm Bay on Tuesday, however, we learned that a tornado that had spun off from David had touched down in the community and had damaged the roof of the Winn-Dixie, my workplace. So, it was back to work immediately to help clean up. The entire roof had not been blown off, but there was damage and debris throughout the store.
We worked very late that night to start to bring some order and cleanliness back to the store. I was very tired and maybe not in the best emotional state. Round about midnight, I was working through the flat-bottom, open freezer cases, picking out fragments of roofing and cleaning off the frozen foods that remained. It was sort of mindless work, and I started thinking about what had brought me to that point in my life. And then I asked myself a fateful question. Do I really want to work for Winn-Dixie for the rest of my life?
I shocked myself with the vehemence of my own response. No! I do not want to work for Winn-Dixie, and I don’t want to work in retail! Maybe it was my exhaustion or maybe I just finally acknowledged what had been building for weeks in my subconscious mind.
It was at that moment that my mindset changed, although it would take several weeks to determine what I did want to do with my life and several months to act on my new career objective.
Hurricane David ruined many lives, but it set my life straight.