Jerry Cox is a Portland resident celebrating his 19 year anniversary at the Portland Kroger. He has never missed a shift in that time. Jerry doesn’t drive but that doesn’t stop him. He walks back & forth from 19th & Duncan to 35th & Bank regardless of the weather. In fact, Jerry even walks to his church in Jeffersonville Indiana! Jerry posted his story to Facebook, here are some excerpts:
I was 19 years old when I first started working at Kroger. So I’ve officially been apart of the work force for over half of the years that I’ve been alive.
I remember fasting on fast Sunday (a Mormon tradition to fast for two meals of 2006 asking God to help me find a job. I searched part of the time with my brother who was looking for work around the same time. However, no luck by the time school started back up. One of the things I used to say a lot, during that time, was the word umm. Even more so when I was asking for a job applications, this was BSP [Before Smart-Phones] and most places still had paper applications.
I had only one interview during the whole summer. I had applied and was interviewed to work in the call center at Mercers trucking company and had kept saying umm throughout the entire interview. It’s a safe bet why the interviewer felt I wouldn’t work out well there.
My dad had advised all of us whenever we started looking for work to look for something close to home or easily accessible by bus until we could have our own means of transportation, as he might not always be able to provide it. I guess I clung to that advice because I still walk everywhere and seek to be responsible for my own means of transportation to this day.
After the failed interview I kept working on training myself to quit saying the word umm, as it is a word of uncertainty and using it in a job interview tells the interviewer that you are uncertain of whether or not you really want to work there.
After a month’s time I successfully weaned myself from saying it. Mid-August, I was advised to apply at Kroger. I prayed that God would help me to get the job and within the two days’ time of applying I was called in for an interview, and apparently had a much better interview because about a week later after the results of the background check and drug test came back my orientation date was set for Sept. 1st, 2006. I started out as a bagger and my first day was one of the hardest days (not my only one).
When I applied I was only seeking a job for two reasons:
- My parents firmly believed that once you graduated from high school you must either go to college or go to work. Which is fair.
- At the time I wanted to serve a full-time mission for two years for the Mormon Church and in order to do that I had to raise most of the money myself.
Now fortunately for me through the grace of God and my own stupidity I was never able to serve and while at the time I found out that I was ineligible to serve, I was truly devastated.
However, now looking back I am truly grateful to God that He prevented me from going, for in His own timing.
I never intended to work at Kroger this long. However, my parents instilled in me good work ethics and a sense of responsibility to pay my bills and to take care of my personal needs on my own instead of relying on someone else to take care of my needs unless necessary. It’s part of the reason I would prefer to walk just about everywhere.
Some of the best advice I was given when I first started working at Kroger was to learn all that I could to make myself a valuable associate at Kroger, and I took that to heart. Nowadays, I know how to work most of the front-end jobs, I can work in produce, grocery, fuel, frozen, and dairy. I’m usually one of the first people they call whenever they get stuck or self checkout breaks down.
Congratulations and thank you Jerry!
