Becoming a corporate man in Los Angeles, California


Something that I set out to do after I got my degree from Arizona State University, was to go to the "BigCity". To me, the United States has only two: New York and Los Angeles. And since I grew up in the snow and cold of Minneapolis, I had absolutely no interest in living in New York, and besides, LA was much closer to Phoenix. So, after I accumulated enough credits to graduate, I moved to California.

My degree was in graphic design, so I assumed that I would end up working for an advertising agency. But it never really mattered to me, I just wanted to work somewhere that I could put my skill in graphic design to work. I had never even heard of an "In-House" graphics department, which is where I ended up, at Blue Cross of California.

I can't even begin to describe how happy I was there. It was a decent salary, with health benefits, and a free health club membership, in a suburb of Los Angeles called Woodland Hills. If you're familiar with the LA area, specifically it was in Warner Center.

The building is still there, sitting on spacious grounds, but the park-like atmosphere is long-gone. Back when I worked there, the building was surrounded by big open lawns, and trees. When I tell people that I worked in Los Angeles, they picture congestion, but I see myself walking around the grounds during my breaks, and after lunch. My girlfriend said that I lived in a triangle, which was true, home, work, gym. Sometimes of course it would become a square.

My apartment was only a couple of miles away from Blue Cross. I never used the freeways, and the commute was so short that I often took what I call "long cuts" just to make it interesting, and be sure that the engine of my car would be thoroughly warmed up. Back then you could drive through the campus of Pierce College, and I enjoyed seeing the cows. Yes, they still have cows, it's an agricultural college.

Becoming a corporate man was a real pleasure for me. I invested in dress shirts and sports coats, and tried not to look too young and stupid. I was there from the time I was 29 until right after my 31st birthday, when my department was laid off. It was called a "RIF", which means "Reduction in Force".

After the job ended I was lost, and on impulse I decided to visit Phoenix, and see some old friends, good for the soul. And during that visit I put a deposit on an apartment and decided to come home to Phoenix. I said goodbye to LA, borrowed a van, got my stuff, and looked for a new job, which I found at Valley National Bank. I became a corporate man again.

I'd like to say that I never look back, but sometimes I still do.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more