Tony Spadaro (before 2022)
When I left Hamden in August of 1969 to go to school in Chicago, I fully intended to major in Mechanical Engineering and to be a great automobile designer. I soon found out that 8:00 AM lectures on Space Time Physics with 200 other freshmen was not what I thought I signed up for....my bad.
I found myself with a 1.95 GPA at the end of my freshman year, a very low draft number (Remember Viet Nam) and to top it off, when I returned to Chicago in August 1970, my full ride scholarship was gone. The school arranged student loans so I could register, but I needed to get a job to pay room and board.
This is where a broken dishwasher in a large office in downtown Chicago changed the direction of my life...I was standing in the hallway outside of the Dean's office kind of in shock when an office aide put a postcard up on a bulletin board listing among other things part-time jobs. It turned out that a major international design firm had a need for someone to wash coffee cups for over 100 employees, because the dishwasher died that morning!
Well, I grabbed that postcard, found a payphone (even then, I was a Master of Technology!) and ended up at that company that afternoon, and got that job.
Turned out this publicly held company with 12 offices around the world had some management issues and was losing money big-time. After getting the coffee cups under control, the CFO asked me to help out in the accounting dept. I ended up coming up with a project cost control system and got a handle on the operating losses....at 22 years old, The Board of Directors made me Vice President - General Manager of the whole operation.
And that began the "Mad Men" life (I saw virtually everything that happened on that show in real life, and then some....) I lived for the next twenty years, but that is another story...
I am very content with my life at this time, married to my best friend for 40 years now. Our adult son lives with us, along with two kittens, who we all spoil constantly. I pray we all survive the next few months.
I found myself with a 1.95 GPA at the end of my freshman year, a very low draft number (Remember Viet Nam) and to top it off, when I returned to Chicago in August 1970, my full ride scholarship was gone. The school arranged student loans so I could register, but I needed to get a job to pay room and board.
This is where a broken dishwasher in a large office in downtown Chicago changed the direction of my life...I was standing in the hallway outside of the Dean's office kind of in shock when an office aide put a postcard up on a bulletin board listing among other things part-time jobs. It turned out that a major international design firm had a need for someone to wash coffee cups for over 100 employees, because the dishwasher died that morning!
Well, I grabbed that postcard, found a payphone (even then, I was a Master of Technology!) and ended up at that company that afternoon, and got that job.
Turned out this publicly held company with 12 offices around the world had some management issues and was losing money big-time. After getting the coffee cups under control, the CFO asked me to help out in the accounting dept. I ended up coming up with a project cost control system and got a handle on the operating losses....at 22 years old, The Board of Directors made me Vice President - General Manager of the whole operation.
And that began the "Mad Men" life (I saw virtually everything that happened on that show in real life, and then some....) I lived for the next twenty years, but that is another story...
I am very content with my life at this time, married to my best friend for 40 years now. Our adult son lives with us, along with two kittens, who we all spoil constantly. I pray we all survive the next few months.