Lee,

While I did once join a fairly new department (one that was only a 1 1/2
years old) back in the early 1980s, my "throw caution to the wind"
experience was one that took me out of the field for a couple years.

During my time at Gulf Oil as a Records Management Coordinator, I moved
from Gulf Oil Records Management Program into a more general role,
managing the recruiting of new accounting personnel, the tracking of
their progress through the Gulf training program, and had tied in with
that some facilities management responsibilities reporting to me.
Eventually that role included a rather short-lived Productivity
Improvement program (just prior to the Chevron acquisition).  

Most of my time, however was spent working with two different groups
within Gulf..... the Houston-based Office Automation team (a group
focused on getting early PC technology into the hands of professionals),
and the Houston-based and IT directed Communications Department.  I
spent more time as a presentation ghost writer (in pre-PowerPoint days)
for some of the Gulf executives in those areas than I did on the
administrative roles.

That job (or those jobs lumped into one) turned out to be more fun than
I've had in any job environment ever.... quite varied, challenging and
with great exposure to Director level executives.  The additional work
with the new accounting department recruits (primarily recent college
grads with 3.5+ GPAs from some of the better Texas business schools)
proved to be pretty rewarding as well.

Doug Allen, CRM, CDIA+

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance