Cara Johnson
Office Manager, Michigan Power Rodding
Ann Arbor Michigan
Interview Highlights:
Kyle: "What is different about working at a regular job as opposed to being a college student?"
Cara: "I think you feel a lot more responsibility...when you're in college, you might not want to get up and go to class and you could probably get away with that. But, as an adult with a family, you have people that rely on you. Even if you feel like you need that snooze bar, you can't do that because no one's going to do the work for you. You have to take the responsibility to come every day and do your job and do it to the best of your capability. Prove yourself, because in the long run the more you work, the more chances there are for advancement in your career."
K: "You said you were married...what does your husband do?"
C: "He is an airline pilot for U.S. airways, but he's currently furloughed so right now he's working for my brother's contracting company. He has a background in computers, and before he got his pilot license he was a computer programmer."
K: "So how would you say the recession has affected your job and work life in general?"
C: "My job here has been very steady (thankfully!), but Michigan Power Rodding has continued to do very well even though there's a sort of slowing down from what they were five years ago, which was just kind of the beginning of the economic slide. So my job hasn't been directly affected, but people around me have. If my husband had stayed with the company he was working for previous to flying, he would be out of a job because they are pretty close to being completely closed. A lot of the decline in customers here is directly related to the automotive decline, because most of Michigan's residents work in the auto industry, so when [these companies] leave people out of jobs, [the people] aren't calling us as much."
K: "So what are some of the day-to-day challenges you face when working with your colleagues?"
C: "Well, being a manager, one of the biggest challenges is keeping people motivated. Some of the tasks that the other girls do here are reptitive and can be pretty boring and if they're not motivated to do the work doesn't get done. And when you have to talk to someone about the work not getting done it's hard to do it in a manner that isn't angry with them to the point where they're not going to want to do it, but you still need to be firm enough to let them know that this does need to get done. I think dealing with the attitudes of people that just don't care can be really hard because you can tell them five times to do something, and then they don't so you have to write them up. When you use disciplinary action against them they get angry with you and I think that's one of the hardest things to deal with."
Kyle: "What is different about working at a regular job as opposed to being a college student?"
Cara: "I think you feel a lot more responsibility...when you're in college, you might not want to get up and go to class and you could probably get away with that. But, as an adult with a family, you have people that rely on you. Even if you feel like you need that snooze bar, you can't do that because no one's going to do the work for you. You have to take the responsibility to come every day and do your job and do it to the best of your capability. Prove yourself, because in the long run the more you work, the more chances there are for advancement in your career."
K: "You said you were married...what does your husband do?"
C: "He is an airline pilot for U.S. airways, but he's currently furloughed so right now he's working for my brother's contracting company. He has a background in computers, and before he got his pilot license he was a computer programmer."
K: "So how would you say the recession has affected your job and work life in general?"
C: "My job here has been very steady (thankfully!), but Michigan Power Rodding has continued to do very well even though there's a sort of slowing down from what they were five years ago, which was just kind of the beginning of the economic slide. So my job hasn't been directly affected, but people around me have. If my husband had stayed with the company he was working for previous to flying, he would be out of a job because they are pretty close to being completely closed. A lot of the decline in customers here is directly related to the automotive decline, because most of Michigan's residents work in the auto industry, so when [these companies] leave people out of jobs, [the people] aren't calling us as much."
K: "So what are some of the day-to-day challenges you face when working with your colleagues?"
C: "Well, being a manager, one of the biggest challenges is keeping people motivated. Some of the tasks that the other girls do here are reptitive and can be pretty boring and if they're not motivated to do the work doesn't get done. And when you have to talk to someone about the work not getting done it's hard to do it in a manner that isn't angry with them to the point where they're not going to want to do it, but you still need to be firm enough to let them know that this does need to get done. I think dealing with the attitudes of people that just don't care can be really hard because you can tell them five times to do something, and then they don't so you have to write them up. When you use disciplinary action against them they get angry with you and I think that's one of the hardest things to deal with."
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