Michael Gonzalez:
CLASS OF 1980
Theodore Roosevelt High School Class of 1980
San antonio, TX
Michael's Story
I received an ROTC scholarship to Angelo State University in San Angelo, TX. During my second semester I dropped a chemistry course thinking I was still had the required hours for my scholarship, but I forgot about the lab hour so I fell below the required hours and lost my scholarship. Ouch! I continued going to school in San Angelo during the school year and returning to San Antonio to work during the summers.
I started working for GTE (the local phone company) in 1984 and didn't want to give up the job so I began living full time in San Angelo. The company reorganized and in 1990 I moved to Irving, TX. GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to become Verizon. Verizon went through multiple reorganizations and at the end of 2009 I was relocated to Folsom, CA. I didn't want to, but I had 25 years invested in the company and I wasn't quite retirement eligible. If I didn't move I would have lost my job. I couldn't throw 25 years away so I moved. It wasn't that different out there. I was in Northern California. Wine country was West. San Francisco was 90 miles West and Lake Tahoe was 90 miles E...Expand for more
ast. Not a bad place to be. I supervised a team of employees that managed our company's corporate card programs (about 80,000 cards). It was quite a challenge because they were all middle aged women. I think you get the picture.
Shortly after I relocated the company announced they were outsourcing our jobs to India. Fortunately they needed somebody to help manage the relationship between the company and the outsourced team so I was retained. That was another big challenge because of all of the cultural differences. I got to go to India twice and gotta say it was an eye opening experience. Either you have money or you don't. There's really not a middle class. You see shacks right beside glass high rise buildings. And yes, depending on where you go there are cows and monkeys.
At the end of 2013 the company announced they were centralizing all of the Finance jobs in Tulsa, OK and Lake Mary, FL. My department was relocated to Tulsa so I relocated again. Not really my first choice of places to live, but I still have a job and it puts my closer to my family and friends back in Texas.
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