Good luck not realized/2

Good luck not realized: Did your recognized good luck go untapped? /2

I was offered an Air Traffic Control job!

Good Luck Job Offer

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, knowing 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.

I assembled computer circuit boards on my first full-time job for Burroughs computers

As it so happened, my measly computer 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, 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 became the president of the Pasadena City College Amateur Radio Club.

And not to forget computers, I got a two-year computer science degree, became a computer operator for an engineering company and later diagnosed aircraft navigation computers as well as repaired 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, and even then I never really had a good 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, programming in many languages, PC programming right from the start, and now managing a mini Web empire of websites about quotes, physics, astronomy and even online dating, etc.

Let me hear some of your stories of good luck in all its forms whether you took advantage of it or not. Submit your story here.

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