http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/25/eveningnews/main4479062.shtml
In 1977, when I was 21, I moved to Fairbanks Alaska for the summer. I had been working at a title insurance company in Santa Barbara in an entry level clerical position. I posted documents, by hand, to ledger cards, and later located parcel numbers by reading the legal lot descriptions on the documents and finding the boundaries on a map. I had worked there for less than a year, earning just above minimum wage. Hoping to capitalize on my minimal experience, I applied for a job in a title insurance company in Fairbanks. I was enthusiastically hired because of my "experience", and was quickly conducting title searches. I was a quick study, but I certainly considered myself quite unqualified to do this work, since, after all, the company was issuing insurance policies verifying clean title based on my say-so. What's more, on some of the searches I was working on, I was able to document title history only for the previous 10 years, but no more. When I asked my boss why I couldn't find documentation to validate title for these properties, he said, "Well, all of those maps and documents were destroyed in the big flood of 1967. Just go back as far as you can and don't worry about it." The company was quite pleased with my work and offered to raise my pay by over 30% if I would stay (I was already making twice the salary I had been making in Santa Barbara). But I didn't like the title insurance business, and I planned to go back to college, so I declined.
This was my experience in Alaska in 1977: there was plenty of opportunity for anyone with half a brain, and sometimes that was all the resume one needed. The state was booming, oil money was everywhere, people were flying by the seat of their pants. I was astonished that people with little or no experience were able to step into jobs they would never ever be considered qualified for in the Lower 48. The climate was harsh, the population was sparse, the state and the economy were growing, jobs were abundant and sometimes hard to fill. So entrepreneurs and ambitious snake-oil salesmen stepped in, and that was how things seemed to run.
It's been 3 decades since then, but, judging by the state and national politicians that Alaska has produced, not much has changed. Thus, McCain brings us Sarah Palin. She wants us to know that "If Putin rears his head. . . " she'd be right there across the border, ready with her Early Response System, since, when Russia "comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska, it's right over the border." Yet she can't hold her own in an interview with Katie Couric.
No comments:
Post a Comment