Previous Employment Memory

Way back when, in the time I frequently now refer to as being "When I lived in the dark ages" (cause that's how old my kids have always thought me to be) I worked for that big outfit in D.C. that often strikes fear in to political rhetoric for their defense of the Second Amendment.

I figure most of you can figure out easily enough that I'm referring of course to the National Rifle Association.

I worked there for eight years and to be honest, I loved working there. I really did!

It's kind of funny though when I think back on how my beliefs were when I was hired were a bit skewed to be working for them though because I was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, fairly strong feminist too back then and I firmly believed that the lack of gun control had been a major issue with respect to the assassination of President Kennedy.

When I left there, I was still a liberal, still on the feminist bandwagon too but my views on gun control had changed a bit by then.

But that isn't what I'm writing about here in this post. I'm writing about the last job I had while working there and that was being in charge of a program called "Coupon Awards."

This program was set up originally to provide awards of considerable value to those people who competed in various NRA sponsored competitions around the country through gun clubs who were registered with the NRA.

The first awards were pieces of sterling silver flatware and other decorative items made of sterling silver but some of the competitors began asking if there couldn't be other items made available to them to turn in their "coupons" they won at these competitions and so, my boss put me in charge of finding companies where we could purchase gift items of various types at wholesale and then, put together a catalog the competitors could request and make their selections from said catalog. Kind of like a "Green Stamp" type operation if you remember receiving those stamps when you purchased things at select stores that gave them out.

I really learned a lot while working to get that catalog put together and to set up plans with the companies we joined forces with for them to drop ship items ordered through the NRA directly to the competitors and had a lot of diverse items from which they could choose their prize -or gift -whichever you would care to call it.

I had items that people who enjoyed all types of guns -whether it be for competitions or for hunting -with companies where they could get things like Bausch and Lomb glasses and binoculars, bushnell rifle scopes, bench loading equipment on one hand as well as Corning dishes, Coleman camping items, to name a few things we lined up for their shopping pleasure.

Once the catalog was set up and in place, I then handled all the requests from the competitors from start to finish -to make sure they received the correct items and took care of any problems that could -and sometimes did -occur in the process too.

It was a very interesting job to see the program as it began and then grew to a point where it was profitable from all angles and gave me a great boost to my ego then to see it flourish as it did.

When I left that area and moved back to my hometown -where I still live today -I really missed not doing that work and not being able to find anything that provided as much of a challenge to me as that job had done.

But that was the choice I had made when I decided to return to living out in the sticks I guess.