Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I write a lot of stories about my life, and it’s therapy for me. I don’t do it to brag or to make myself out to be someone special. If you knew me well enough to see inside my head, you would understand that, in my mind, I am far from anybody who has deserved the plethora of opportunities that have made my life interesting enough to write about. Those of us who know Jesus call those blessings.
My life has been graced with more blessings than my mind can comprehend; certainly more than I feel I deserve. And that, in a nutshell, is why I am totally convinced that God is real, and God is good, and He is capable of loving a sorry reprobate such as myself. Okay, maybe “reprobate” is a bit harsh, but without God in my life, “there but for the grace of God, go I.”
I recently had a friend suggestion on Facebook that I successfully responded to. I’m going to call him “John Doe” because most of the people who read my stuff won’t know him anyway. But I write this carefully as I am confident that he will see it and recognize himself. John was someone who mentored me. I do not understand why, and can only wrap my head around it by believing that it was one of those God things.
The Postal Service was undergoing a major management shift, and my position as Superintendent of Postal Operations (SPO) was being eliminated. The SPO was basically the assistant postmaster. This position was a staple in the management structure of most associate offices. It was typically higher-level than a supervisor position, as it required the SPO to assume the postmaster’s duties during a temporary absence. Most SPOs were promoted to vacant postmaster jobs during this period of adjustment.
At the time, I was seeking a Master Instructor position at the Headquarters Management Training facility in Bethesda, MD. I had been doing some significant work assignments there, and I thought that would be a good job for me. I bypassed postmaster opportunities as a result. While I was working special assignments there, preparing for a Master Instructor job, they decided to drop the Instructor positions, so I now had nowhere to go.
I eventually went back to my associate office and was trying to get placed in a District Office job dealing with route inspections in Sacramento. I didn’t hear from them, so I accepted the supervisor job that replaced the SPO position with my saved salary. Within a week, I got the call from Sacramento offering the job I desired, but I would have had to take a pay cut. I said no thanks.
So, here I was with all the postmaster jobs filled, and I missed that opportunity. I decided I should be a postmaster now, but it would be a bit harder after turning it down. My postmaster was one of the displaced SPOs. We were friends when we were both SPOs together, and he knew I had something to offer the post office; we just needed to make it happen. I had been on several detail assignments at Headquarters and was recognized for that work by the District office in Sacramento.
Instead of wasting my talents in a supervisory position, I was given the opportunity to be mentored by a high-level district manager. I don’t think that position even existed, yet there I was. That’s where I met John. John gave me some tasks that prepared me for what higher-level managers looked for. I was sent to some officer-in-charge positions, acting as postmaster for offices with temporary vacancies. I was also placed in a vacant Station Manager position in Sacramento. I was applying for postmaster jobs all over the country. And John took me under his wing, not just as a mentor, but more like a champion of getting me promoted into the right job for my skills and abilities. I was applying for small-town postmaster jobs as well as bigger ones. I wasn’t getting any interest in the smaller offices, and I was seeing people with way less experience getting interviewed for those jobs.
I had an opportunity to speak with the District Manager about this, and he said to me, “Wouldn’t it be a waste of your talents to put you in an office that didn’t even have any delivery employees?” Yes, delivery was something I was well trained in, and hearing that comment from the top manager in our district opened my eyes to what was really going on. John was preparing me for a higher-level postmaster job, and the district manager was in on it. I was eventually appointed Postmaster in Dixon, California, a job that would benefit from all the preparation I had received.
And that wasn’t the last I saw of John. He still pulled me out of my postmaster job to use me in other district-level productivity assignments. I got to know him personally, and we became good friends. I like being reunited with him on Facebook. He was a Godsend as a manager who got me back on track after I missed a big opportunity.
It wasn’t just God that got me back on track. He used several other good people in the process. They all made it happen after I messed it up by seeking jobs that God didn’t want me to have. There are too many side blessings in this story to share. Besides, I’m running out of paper. Thanks, John, for being a part of my journey, whatever the reason. And you need to know that I cherish your advice and the wisdom that you shared with me.
