David Jensen:  

What have I done and who am I? Hmm. Well, here goes, Ken Kesey style, the whole story in one marathon typing session. After graduating from CWA in 1986, I went on to the University of Washington, where I pledged the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity and joined the Navy ROTC program in hopes of getting a 3-year scholarship beginning with my sophomore year. My deal with my parents had been that if I stayed at CWA for high school, I was on my own to pay for college. So, with years of experience working in my parents' paint store, I got a job at a Seattle paint store called Daly's. I loved the fraternity life, but between the partying, the studying, and the working, ROTC had to go. (I would have had to quit anyway when I had to take spring quarter off to work because I was out of money). The paint business is very seasonal in Washington, so for my first four years I went to school fall and winter quarters and worked full time spring and summer quarters while still living in the fraternity house. At some point I also switched my major from pre-business to English, which seemed logical since I was able to pull A's in English with very little effort, whereas I struggled to earn B's (or C's) in my pre-business classes. I continued to work at Daly's, where I became a perpetual closer, working a couple of nights a week at the Bellevue store and the rest of my hours in Seattle. I became very active in Phi Tau, serving as Secretary my second year in the house, President my third year, and Treasurer my fourth year. Of course, my abbreviated academic year put me behind the rest of my pledge class. I vividly remember one night in the spring of my fourth year when I was trying to sleep and the underclassmen were partying it up in the hallway and on the balcony outside my window...and I suddenly realized there was no way I could stand two more years of living in Party Central. But how to live cheaply and still eat in the manner to which I'd grown accustomed? Simple...I got a job as a live-in houseboy at Delta Zeta sorority! I stayed there for 2-1/2 years until I finally graduated in December of 1992. The girls were incredibly cool, treating us houseboys like sorority sisters, and I have as many friends from there as I do from my own fraternity. Shortly after graduation, I accepted a job as manager of the Daly's store in Redmond in January of 1993 and rented my first apartment. This was the only Daly's store where I'd never worked, but it quickly became apparent that the store was not performing as it should, and I had the dubious honor of overseeing its closing and liquidation in May. At that time I took over as manager of the flagship store in Seattle and rented a house on Queen Anne with my high school friend Harry Korrell and his brother, soon to be replaced by another high school friend, Beth Anne Kreger and new roommate Scott Taylor. In 1995 I decided I'd had it with the glass ceiling inherent in a family-owned company and left for a management trainee position with Kmart, where I trained in the Marysville store. Upon completing my training, I was given my first assignment: ...Expand for more