By Chance: My Story (Part One)

This was originally posted in "the blog within". Sorry if you already read it.


The automobile industry was still king of the Motor City in the 1980's. Tool and Die shops where everywhere. China was just a country where they made cheap plastic toys. The Big Three were undisputed rulers. The Japanese were coming but we could handle them. Our quality could be just as good. Large contract engineering firms (design houses) with names like Modern, Stellar, Aero and Pioneer where around the city catering to the rulers. I was fresh out of Macomb Community College's Auto Body Design. The years was 1986. I had worked a few design jobs while going to school but I was ready for my first real job. I interviewed with B.B. . He was a thin man in his mid-forties an impressive age it seemed to me at the time.

B.B. looked over my resume and said, "I have two different places in mind for you. Give me a few days and I'll give you a call." Two days later I had a job. I had joined the ranks of the contract designer or jobbies as we were called. We designed the cars for the big three. We took the "3-D" ideas of the design studios and turned them into "2-D" drawings for the tool shops to make. It was a sort of an art form and we got paid well.

Jobbies were an exclusive group. We could go from job to job and we would always know someone. When times were good a person could jump from one job to another every six month's for a few more dollars an hour. We bought big houses, had big boats and fast cars. There are still big bi-annual boat parties on Lake Saint Clair called "Jobbie Nooners". A "nooner" was a common practice back then. Pulling a nooner meant you were not going to come back from lunch. Try doing that at will on a job today.

I doubt many jobbies still attend the boat parties. There aren't many jobbies left. First computers can along and each one of the big three decided on a different design software. This divided the jobbies into three different groups. Designers lost there hold on the car companies. Few designers became efficient on more then on software. Gone where the days of jumping from a GM job to a Ford job. Then the efficiencies can along and our numbers dwindled. One by one the big design house folded or where bought out. Foreign automakers gained market share and whispers of off-shore engineering firms doing the work for half the price became reality.

The designers that survived took direct jobs with the big three or one of their bigger suppliers. A move that would never have appealed to a jobbie of the 1980's. Back then it would have meant less freedom and lower pay. Today it doesn't even guarantee you will have a job.

Back then I would never have imagined this future. No one would. Money flowed from the big three. The design houses were fat with graft and waste. 55 hour weeks were normal. I had a job. I was making $11 an hour and I was going to draw cars.

B.B. said he was considering me for two different jobs. I do not know what his second choice was, but his first choice influenced my career for the next 15 years.