Mariner signed on with the Federal department of Medicaid. (Job 18) He was the manager of the contract support center, which provided coding support to about 12 state contracts. It occupied a five-story building in Texas. 18 months later, he was transferred to the headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Job 19). His job was to visit contract sites to evaluate operations. While in Washington, he was offered a consultant project manager position for a bank in Iowa. The bank was upgrading its computer system. It offered a pleasant salary so he took it. (Job 20)

Once connected with the computer services agent, the next twenty years constituted winning contract offers from the Agent’s clients. This job situation could be called ‘one job, many locations’. Mariner considers them individual job applications because he had to be accepted by each client. Mariner’s career track finally has a name: ‘independent consultant for managing computer conversions’.

He lived this career track for 20 years, participating in about 20 contracts – the shortest one was 2 hours, the longest was three years. (Job 21-41 jobs?) Near the end, he stepped out of the traveling consultant job and signed on with John Deere Finance (Job 42)  to manage a merger of two departments. His last job (Job 43) was a one-day job advising a small consulting firm how to shape their bid for a large tech department.

Shortly after, Mariner sold his farm to live in a quiet, rural, crime-free town. All things considered, he skate-boarded through one of the better eras in American work.

Ancient Mariner