April 2, 2025 • 27 mins
Brandon reflects on his transition from military life to a civilian career and the rollercoaster of personal and professional challenges that followed his Army service.
Please start with Episode 1. Go to my site BrandonHeld.com
• Built strength through intramural sports and weightlifting during military service
• Met and married 3rd, who initially wanted to become a Pediatric Physical Therapist and pulled a switcheroo
• Relationship dynamics changed dramatically after marriage when wife abandoned career plans to be a stay-at-home mom
• Faced challenging blended family situations with his son Ethan and new stepmother
• Landed a job at Raytheon through a chance connection with a personal training client
• Experienced the remarkable coincidence of his son's birth and dream job offer occurring on the same day
• Encountered toxic workplace supervision that led to unfair performance evaluations
• Successfully challenged his supervisor through HR, resulting in her remedial training and loss of supervisory position
• Lost his job during defense budget cuts despite moving to a better team situation
• Left reeling from sudden unemployment while supporting a new house and family
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
Welcome back.
This is Brandon Held.
Life is crazy.
Episode 14.
So last episode, I spent theepisode going through my
military life at Fort Huachuca.
There were some things that Ididn't talk about and I left out
(00:26):
that I'll briefly just throw inhere.
I Played some intramural flagfootball, basketball,
volleyball.
I had some really coolintramural experiences.
One time in a basketball game, Iscored 35 points just by hitting
(00:48):
pretty much all threes the wholegame.
Pretty much, obviously, becausethree doesn't go into 35.
But I did have some...
regular two-pointers and freethrows.
I won a volleyball championshipand I just had a good time
between playing intramuralsports and working out.
(01:13):
I was getting really strong,strongest I had been to this
point in my life.
I don't know what my max benchwas because I never could max
bench but I did a chest workoutone day where I did flat chest
bench press incline decline someflies and I think at the end
(01:36):
just to burn myself out I wantedto see like how many reps of 225
I could do and at the end of aworkout I did 15 repetitions of
225 and that was after I haddone a complete workout.
So I knew I was pretty strongand in good shape.
(01:59):
And so again, I'd gottendivorced in bootcamp and I had
been, uh, went through a littlephase of being a man whore again
after I did my first divorce ofEthan's mom.
And, but again, it's not allterrible.
I met and hooked up with somegirls from Different cultures I
(02:24):
had never been with, differentraces, different countries that
happened to be here in Arizona.
I had my second threesome withthese two girls when I was
dating and she knew there was agirl that was into me and into
her also.
(02:44):
So she invited me to have athreesome with her and we did.
I had a second threesome andthat was cool.
All that stuff was just themiscellaneous, if you will.
And then I met the significantpart is obviously getting my
MBA, meeting my buddy Jason.
(03:06):
And then now I have asked Sonyato marry me.
And so now I'm getting out ofthe army.
We're getting married.
I'm getting out of the army.
And what I want to say is this,one of the reasons I had asked
Sonya Sonia to marry me isbecause she was completing a
(03:26):
bachelor's degree at the U of A.
And when we first startedtalking, even though I was 30,
about to be 31 and she was 19,she was saying that she wanted
to go to school and get adoctorate and she wanted to be a
physical therapist for children.
(03:47):
And I thought that was reallycool.
And I thought, wow.
How great would that be ifyou're a physical therapist for
children and I have an MBA andyou start your own business and
you have an office and I runthat office.
I run your office while you runthe physical therapy side of the
(04:08):
house.
And that was the vision I hadfor us as a future.
And we got married and.
Almost immediately after gettingmarried, I saw this totally
different side of herpersonality change.
She became, she went from beingmore fun loving and easygoing to
(04:29):
more serious and almostdemanding to a point and
definitely saw a spoiled bratside of her that I didn't really
see before that I later wouldlearn is because that's how She
was, and that's how her fatherlet her be.
(04:50):
And almost right after we gotmarried, she insisted on getting
pregnant because I was quoteunquote old.
I was 33 years old and she wascalling me old, too old to be a
dad, basically.
And we got her pregnant andbasically she said, all right,
(05:10):
I'm going to be a stay at homewife now.
She had a job at the time shewas working at a commissary and
going to school and all that.
But she graduated school andthen shortly thereafter quit her
job at the commissary.
And she said, I'm going to be afull-time mother.
That's what I'm going to do.
And I said, wait a minute.
(05:31):
That's not what we agreed upon.
That was not the future I sawfor us.
I thought you were going to,what happened to you getting a
doctorate and becoming aphysical therapist?
I'm not doing that anymore.
I'm going to be a stay-at-homemom.
So that's what I was told.
And I didn't agree with it.
I didn't like it.
(05:52):
I didn't want it to be that way.
But what could I do?
She was pregnant with my childat this point.
And I already was going throughthe bumps and bruises of having
Ethan and not being with hismother and now living across the
United States away from him anddealing with All that difficult
(06:17):
situation of basically gettinghim in the summers, which is
what I was doing.
I was getting him every summerand she was great to Ethan.
When I got Ethan the summerbefore we got married and she
was my girlfriend or fiance.
She was great to Ethan.
(06:39):
She treated him really well.
She loved him.
They got along great andeverything.
was great and then we gotmarried and then she got
pregnant and then we had Maximusour first son who again I love
him very much and he knows howmuch I love him he's the only
(07:02):
son that I still see on aregular basis every other week
even though he's 17 and he'sabout to be 18 and in a few
months, not through any fault ofMaximus's.
Once he was born, his mom likejust didn't care about Ethan
(07:23):
anymore.
As a matter of fact, she wentthe opposite direction.
She was mean and nasty to him.
And so now I had this problemwhere I had a wife that I needed
to try to get along with.
I had a son with her that was anew baby boy.
And then I also had another sonwho would come to see me in the
(07:46):
summers and now he had to put upwith this evil step-mom.
And maybe a dad wasn't as coolas he was before because I was
in the middle trying to balanceboth, right?
I was in the middle trying tokeep my wife happy, but also not
(08:07):
be too hard on my young son thatI only get to see three months
out of the year.
Granted, I wanted to put somesense of structure into his life
because it appeared he didn'thave any with his mother, at
least not the way he related tome.
(08:28):
He didn't really have a bedtimewith her in the summertime.
He didn't have rules.
If he took a shower or whatever,he was pretty dirty.
Let's just put it that way.
He would leave his towels allover.
He would leave his clothes allover.
He would just help himself towhatever food at whatever time
(08:49):
he wanted.
It was just, it was anunstructured childhood.
And I was trying to bring alittle structure to his life and
balance that delicate situation.
So anyway, not to be...
Jumping the gun too much, but Igot out of the army and I was
(09:09):
trying to survive by being apersonal trainer at LA Fitness
and being newly married andhaving a pregnant wife.
And I was applying for otherjobs and I was talking to people
because I was now living inTucson, Arizona, and this was
all new to me.
(09:29):
I didn't know Tucson.
I didn't know what was the wayto live life in Tucson.
And everyone kept telling me,oh, Raytheon is the place to
work.
If you're going to live inTucson, you want to work at
Raytheon.
That's the place to work, right?
So I kept hearing everyone saythis.
I never really went to apply forany jobs at Raytheon.
(09:51):
I was looking for things andapplying for things, but I
didn't make my way to Raytheonjust yet.
And then while I was a personaltrainer at LA Fitness, I was
training this guy and we got totalking and his name was Gene.
And Gene was cool.
He was lighthearted, fun, bigguy, taller than me.
I'm 6'1".
(10:12):
I don't know how tall he was,6'4", 6'5", bigger guy.
And we laughing, joking around,having a good time while I'm
training him.
And we just got to discussinghow I had gotten out of the army
and I had an MBA and I was justpersonal training until I found
a quote unquote real job.
And he's, oh my gosh, I work atRaytheon.
(10:35):
He's, you have an MBA, you cancome work for me at Raytheon.
And boom, just like that, I hada connection.
He said, you still got to apply.
You still got to go through theinterviews.
I'll recommend you and youshould be good to go.
And so I was excited, right?
This was great.
The move that I was looking forin life, this to me was the
(11:00):
reason I had gone througheverything I had gone through
prior to this was to get thistype of job and this type of
career.
And so he set everything upwhere I would go to this event
that they do a recruiting eventhere in Tucson, where they set
people up in a really nice hotelhere, La Paloma.
(11:21):
And then they do interviews andstuff, and then they offer and
hire people based on theseevents.
I had a nine month pregnant wifeand he said, you don't have to
come stay at the La Paloma sinceyou live here locally, but you
will need to go out here to therecruiting event.
And I said, sure, no problem.
(11:42):
And on August 15th of 2007, Thatmorning, my wife gave birth to
Maximus.
She gave birth to Maximus andMaximus was born at 8 AM that
morning.
And like 9 30, 10 AM.
(12:06):
I had to be at a Raytheonrecruiting event that same day.
So I had been up all night withher in labor at the hospital.
Maximus was born.
Then I had to go put on a suit,drive to this recruiting event
and be interviewed.
(12:27):
And I was dead tired running onadrenaline, basically, of the
birth of a child and potentiallygetting a job to start my career
finally for the first time in mylife.
And it went over so well thatthe same day they offered me the
(12:48):
job with a, a pretty nice incomeand certainly an income I had
never been used to in my life.
And it was just an amazing day.
Maximus was born and I got a joboffer to go work at Raytheon and
(13:09):
It just felt all the struggles,all the trials, all the hard
times, they were finallystarting to pay off.
And this one day was just anincredible day.
So now I have a newborn son thatI got to name.
By the way, Maximus is the nameI came up with because he...
(13:34):
I loved that name since I sawGladiator and I knew I wanted to
have a son with that name oneday.
And she had agreed topreviously, if we had a son, he
was going to have the nameMaximus.
So it was just all great.
Outside of the fact that Ididn't have Ethan on a regular
basis and things were startingto go sour with him and
(13:59):
Maximus's mom, my new wife.
I felt everything else is goingwell, we can work on that too.
So I was just really positiveand really happy.
And I was taking on the new roleat Raytheon, doing my new job,
which frankly, when I got therewas quite underwhelming.
(14:21):
I got hired as a seniorconfiguration analyst and I got
there and I was expecting thisprofessional large corporation
to just have their shit togetherand they just didn't.
They put me on a program undersomeone that I was supposed to
quote-unquote replace who wasretiring and she was supposed to
(14:44):
train me as part of her lastthree months before retiring.
Come on, that's just stupid.
There's a lot of personalpersonality that goes into being
someone like that.
You're three months out fromretirement.
(15:05):
What recourse do you have if youdon't train the new guy and you
don't want to spend your day andyour time training a new guy?
None.
There's nothing anyone can do toyou.
And again, she just didn't,right?
She would do the very minimalwith me.
She might spend half an hour toan hour in a day showing me how
(15:25):
to do something.
And then she just left me therest of the day to myself.
And I didn't, I wasn't reallylearning anything.
Yeah, they had some modules togo through, but that wasn't
really so much about the job.
That was more about your basics,your sexual harassment and all
those other things you gothrough.
(15:48):
But I was just reallyunderwhelmed and dissatisfied
with the start of my careerthere at Raytheon.
So I was dealing with that andthen dealing with a newborn son
and a wife who had gone frombeing my wife to now being
(16:08):
full-time mother, 100% of thetime, much less concerned about
about being my wife and muchmore concerned about being a
mother.
And then about a year into it,she's, I want to have another
child.
I want to have, I don't want mykids to be too far apart.
And so I thought it was tooearly and too quick.
(16:33):
But again, at the end of theday, I try to be a good man and
I try to consider my partner inthings, even if it's not exactly
what what I want.
So I agreed.
And so life was going on and Iwas working at Raytheon and she
got pregnant again.
(16:53):
And then eventually we had oursecond son, Bexton.
And it was a crazy time.
I was doing a job that I wasstruggling to make my way
through because again, likeevery career before me, I was
trying to give 110%.
(17:14):
and do the best that I couldbecause I wanted to advance.
When I started my job atRaytheon, this is where I would
spend my entire working career.
I really thought I would spendthe next 30 years of my life,
maybe less, working at Raytheonuntil I retire.
(17:35):
I would carve out a career andthat's where I would be until I
retire.
And so, yeah, I was pushing towork hard, pushing to do
whatever I could do todifferentiate myself and assert
myself as a leader and someonewho should be strongly
considered for promotion andmoving up in the ranks.
(17:59):
And they put me under someonenamed Mary Bonnet.
Absolutely destroyed my careerat Raytheon.
So Mary Bonatati was someone whohad been working in the
configuration analyst field foranother company in Florida for
(18:22):
20-something years with nothingmore than high school education.
But Raytheon hired her based offher experience, even though they
told me they required degrees tobe employed there, and I had an
MBA at this point.
And she got to come in at ahigher level because of her work
(18:44):
experience.
So now she was my supervisor, mynew supervisor, and she was just
not a good person.
Just a conniving, underhanded,dirty person.
And I got caught in her web.
And so...
I would go to work and I wouldconstantly come under certain
(19:08):
scenarios that I had never seenbefore.
I wasn't trained for them.
I hadn't seen them before, so Ididn't have experience on them.
So my only choice was to go tomy supervisor and say, hey, this
is an issue that I have.
How do you want me to handle it?
So she would always verballytell me, this is what I want you
(19:31):
to do.
And so a few times thatdirection that she sent me in,
even though I knew in some ofthose cases that didn't sound
right, I wasn't sure, but itdidn't sound right to me.
I was following her directionbecause she was a supervisor and
that's what I was doing, but endup being the wrong direction.
(19:53):
Right.
And so then it would fall backon me and the people on the team
that I was on would say, Why didyou do this?
That wasn't right.
Why did you do this?
I would say my supervisor, MaryBonatati told me to do it.
And Mary Bonatati would go, no,I didn't.
And she would completely throwme under the bus so much to the
(20:17):
point where she had written twoevaluations on me within a year.
And they were both negativeevaluations and none of them
about my actual work.
She was making up personalconduct BS that I would rebut in
the evaluations, but it didn'tmatter because her evaluation
(20:40):
and her score for me was allthat mattered in the end.
So by the second time she did anevaluation on me, I went to HR.
I went to human resources and Isaid, look, this lady is
corrupt.
She's conniving.
She's a liar.
And I went through everythingwith HR.
And Mary came to this meeting atHR with, wouldn't you know it,
(21:04):
the department head, Gene, thevery guy who got me in to
Raytheon and got me hiredsupporting her, having her back.
And HR decided independentlythat she was in the wrong and
she needed to take remedialsupervisory training.
(21:26):
And she eventually got fired asa supervisor.
So I was going through all thiswhile now having two young kids.
So Bexen was born and my wife atthe time was 100% focused on
being a mother, 0% focused onbeing a wife to me.
(21:47):
She woke up, she attended to myboys and she went to bed with my
boys.
My boys slept with her in theroom.
And some nights I slept bymyself in a different room and
she slept in a different roomwith the boys.
And this was my life.
This is what I was goingthrough.
And when I thought everythingwas going to be great,
(22:10):
everything wasn't.
I got moved again after goingthrough all this.
A little over three years atRaytheon, I got moved again to
another program under finally asupervisor that I...
thought was a good supervisorshe seemed to have my best
interest at heart and she seemedto want to help me succeed and
(22:34):
do well and her name was sherrycook and with sherry i thought
everything was going great righti was only under her for about
six months and then you peoplecan like whoever you want or
dislike whoever you want.
(22:55):
What makes America great is thefact that we are a melting pot,
a cocktail of people withdifferences of opinions,
different religious beliefs orno beliefs at all, different
political beliefs.
You can believe whatever youwant.
I have no political affiliation.
(23:17):
I've never felt no type of wayof about any president until
President Obama became presidentand he made cuts to the Defense
Department.
And when he did that, that hitRaytheon and then it hit me
(23:40):
personally.
So Raytheon now lost a bunch ofmoney from the defense budget
that they were going to getbecause Obama cut the defense
budget.
And because he cut the defensebudget, that meant the program
that I happened to be on wasgetting shut down.
(24:00):
Now Raytheon could do anythingat this point.
They could move the people onthat program to different
programs, or they could letpeople go.
So Raytheon It just so happensthat I happen to be a white male
on a program that needed to becut.
(24:23):
And oh, by the way, I had twobad evaluations, my last two
evaluations, because I had ahorrible supervisor who, mind
you, was put in remedialtraining by HR for being a bad
supervisor and being found to beuntruthful.
(24:46):
And now I was laid off fromRaytheon.
I got called in one day and Igot laid off.
And I was just felt like I gotpunched in the gut and got just
the wind knocked right out ofme.
And I didn't know how tobreathe.
(25:07):
I had just bought a new house.
I had two young kids, a wifethat didn't work.
And now I'm being laid off.
And in almost no time, it felt,because that time just flew by.
By the way, I went from sittingon top of the world with a
(25:29):
newborn son and getting a dreamcareer job to, holy crap, how am
I going to take care of thisfamily of mine?
Yeah, that's where I'm going toleave off.
and pick up next time.
So thanks for joining me andnext time I will continue from
(25:49):
there.
Welcome back.
This is Brandon Held.
Life is crazy.
Episode 14.
So last episode, I spent theepisode going through my
military life at Fort Huachuca.
There were some things that Ididn't talk about and I left out
(00:26):
that I'll briefly just throw inhere.
I Played some intramural flagfootball, basketball,
volleyball.
I had some really coolintramural experiences.
One time in a basketball game, Iscored 35 points just by hitting
(00:48):
pretty much all threes the wholegame.
Pretty much, obviously, becausethree doesn't go into 35.
But I did have some...
regular two-pointers and freethrows.
I won a volleyball championshipand I just had a good time
between playing intramuralsports and working out.
(01:13):
I was getting really strong,strongest I had been to this
point in my life.
I don't know what my max benchwas because I never could max
bench but I did a chest workoutone day where I did flat chest
bench press incline decline someflies and I think at the end
(01:36):
just to burn myself out I wantedto see like how many reps of 225
I could do and at the end of aworkout I did 15 repetitions of
225 and that was after I haddone a complete workout.
So I knew I was pretty strongand in good shape.
(01:59):
And so again, I'd gottendivorced in bootcamp and I had
been, uh, went through a littlephase of being a man whore again
after I did my first divorce ofEthan's mom.
And, but again, it's not allterrible.
I met and hooked up with somegirls from Different cultures I
(02:24):
had never been with, differentraces, different countries that
happened to be here in Arizona.
I had my second threesome withthese two girls when I was
dating and she knew there was agirl that was into me and into
her also.
(02:44):
So she invited me to have athreesome with her and we did.
I had a second threesome andthat was cool.
All that stuff was just themiscellaneous, if you will.
And then I met the significantpart is obviously getting my
MBA, meeting my buddy Jason.
(03:06):
And then now I have asked Sonyato marry me.
And so now I'm getting out ofthe army.
We're getting married.
I'm getting out of the army.
And what I want to say is this,one of the reasons I had asked
Sonya Sonia to marry me isbecause she was completing a
(03:26):
bachelor's degree at the U of A.
And when we first startedtalking, even though I was 30,
about to be 31 and she was 19,she was saying that she wanted
to go to school and get adoctorate and she wanted to be a
physical therapist for children.
(03:47):
And I thought that was reallycool.
And I thought, wow.
How great would that be ifyou're a physical therapist for
children and I have an MBA andyou start your own business and
you have an office and I runthat office.
I run your office while you runthe physical therapy side of the
(04:08):
house.
And that was the vision I hadfor us as a future.
And we got married and.
Almost immediately after gettingmarried, I saw this totally
different side of herpersonality change.
She became, she went from beingmore fun loving and easygoing to
(04:29):
more serious and almostdemanding to a point and
definitely saw a spoiled bratside of her that I didn't really
see before that I later wouldlearn is because that's how She
was, and that's how her fatherlet her be.
(04:50):
And almost right after we gotmarried, she insisted on getting
pregnant because I was quoteunquote old.
I was 33 years old and she wascalling me old, too old to be a
dad, basically.
And we got her pregnant andbasically she said, all right,
(05:10):
I'm going to be a stay at homewife now.
She had a job at the time shewas working at a commissary and
going to school and all that.
But she graduated school andthen shortly thereafter quit her
job at the commissary.
And she said, I'm going to be afull-time mother.
That's what I'm going to do.
And I said, wait a minute.
(05:31):
That's not what we agreed upon.
That was not the future I sawfor us.
I thought you were going to,what happened to you getting a
doctorate and becoming aphysical therapist?
I'm not doing that anymore.
I'm going to be a stay-at-homemom.
So that's what I was told.
And I didn't agree with it.
I didn't like it.
(05:52):
I didn't want it to be that way.
But what could I do?
She was pregnant with my childat this point.
And I already was going throughthe bumps and bruises of having
Ethan and not being with hismother and now living across the
United States away from him anddealing with All that difficult
(06:17):
situation of basically gettinghim in the summers, which is
what I was doing.
I was getting him every summerand she was great to Ethan.
When I got Ethan the summerbefore we got married and she
was my girlfriend or fiance.
She was great to Ethan.
(06:39):
She treated him really well.
She loved him.
They got along great andeverything.
was great and then we gotmarried and then she got
pregnant and then we had Maximusour first son who again I love
him very much and he knows howmuch I love him he's the only
(07:02):
son that I still see on aregular basis every other week
even though he's 17 and he'sabout to be 18 and in a few
months, not through any fault ofMaximus's.
Once he was born, his mom likejust didn't care about Ethan
(07:23):
anymore.
As a matter of fact, she wentthe opposite direction.
She was mean and nasty to him.
And so now I had this problemwhere I had a wife that I needed
to try to get along with.
I had a son with her that was anew baby boy.
And then I also had another sonwho would come to see me in the
(07:46):
summers and now he had to put upwith this evil step-mom.
And maybe a dad wasn't as coolas he was before because I was
in the middle trying to balanceboth, right?
I was in the middle trying tokeep my wife happy, but also not
(08:07):
be too hard on my young son thatI only get to see three months
out of the year.
Granted, I wanted to put somesense of structure into his life
because it appeared he didn'thave any with his mother, at
least not the way he related tome.
(08:28):
He didn't really have a bedtimewith her in the summertime.
He didn't have rules.
If he took a shower or whatever,he was pretty dirty.
Let's just put it that way.
He would leave his towels allover.
He would leave his clothes allover.
He would just help himself towhatever food at whatever time
(08:49):
he wanted.
It was just, it was anunstructured childhood.
And I was trying to bring alittle structure to his life and
balance that delicate situation.
So anyway, not to be...
Jumping the gun too much, but Igot out of the army and I was
(09:09):
trying to survive by being apersonal trainer at LA Fitness
and being newly married andhaving a pregnant wife.
And I was applying for otherjobs and I was talking to people
because I was now living inTucson, Arizona, and this was
all new to me.
(09:29):
I didn't know Tucson.
I didn't know what was the wayto live life in Tucson.
And everyone kept telling me,oh, Raytheon is the place to
work.
If you're going to live inTucson, you want to work at
Raytheon.
That's the place to work, right?
So I kept hearing everyone saythis.
I never really went to apply forany jobs at Raytheon.
(09:51):
I was looking for things andapplying for things, but I
didn't make my way to Raytheonjust yet.
And then while I was a personaltrainer at LA Fitness, I was
training this guy and we got totalking and his name was Gene.
And Gene was cool.
He was lighthearted, fun, bigguy, taller than me.
I'm 6'1".
(10:12):
I don't know how tall he was,6'4", 6'5", bigger guy.
And we laughing, joking around,having a good time while I'm
training him.
And we just got to discussinghow I had gotten out of the army
and I had an MBA and I was justpersonal training until I found
a quote unquote real job.
And he's, oh my gosh, I work atRaytheon.
(10:35):
He's, you have an MBA, you cancome work for me at Raytheon.
And boom, just like that, I hada connection.
He said, you still got to apply.
You still got to go through theinterviews.
I'll recommend you and youshould be good to go.
And so I was excited, right?
This was great.
The move that I was looking forin life, this to me was the
(11:00):
reason I had gone througheverything I had gone through
prior to this was to get thistype of job and this type of
career.
And so he set everything upwhere I would go to this event
that they do a recruiting eventhere in Tucson, where they set
people up in a really nice hotelhere, La Paloma.
(11:21):
And then they do interviews andstuff, and then they offer and
hire people based on theseevents.
I had a nine month pregnant wifeand he said, you don't have to
come stay at the La Paloma sinceyou live here locally, but you
will need to go out here to therecruiting event.
And I said, sure, no problem.
(11:42):
And on August 15th of 2007, Thatmorning, my wife gave birth to
Maximus.
She gave birth to Maximus andMaximus was born at 8 AM that
morning.
And like 9 30, 10 AM.
(12:06):
I had to be at a Raytheonrecruiting event that same day.
So I had been up all night withher in labor at the hospital.
Maximus was born.
Then I had to go put on a suit,drive to this recruiting event
and be interviewed.
(12:27):
And I was dead tired running onadrenaline, basically, of the
birth of a child and potentiallygetting a job to start my career
finally for the first time in mylife.
And it went over so well thatthe same day they offered me the
(12:48):
job with a, a pretty nice incomeand certainly an income I had
never been used to in my life.
And it was just an amazing day.
Maximus was born and I got a joboffer to go work at Raytheon and
(13:09):
It just felt all the struggles,all the trials, all the hard
times, they were finallystarting to pay off.
And this one day was just anincredible day.
So now I have a newborn son thatI got to name.
By the way, Maximus is the nameI came up with because he...
(13:34):
I loved that name since I sawGladiator and I knew I wanted to
have a son with that name oneday.
And she had agreed topreviously, if we had a son, he
was going to have the nameMaximus.
So it was just all great.
Outside of the fact that Ididn't have Ethan on a regular
basis and things were startingto go sour with him and
(13:59):
Maximus's mom, my new wife.
I felt everything else is goingwell, we can work on that too.
So I was just really positiveand really happy.
And I was taking on the new roleat Raytheon, doing my new job,
which frankly, when I got therewas quite underwhelming.
(14:21):
I got hired as a seniorconfiguration analyst and I got
there and I was expecting thisprofessional large corporation
to just have their shit togetherand they just didn't.
They put me on a program undersomeone that I was supposed to
quote-unquote replace who wasretiring and she was supposed to
(14:44):
train me as part of her lastthree months before retiring.
Come on, that's just stupid.
There's a lot of personalpersonality that goes into being
someone like that.
You're three months out fromretirement.
(15:05):
What recourse do you have if youdon't train the new guy and you
don't want to spend your day andyour time training a new guy?
None.
There's nothing anyone can do toyou.
And again, she just didn't,right?
She would do the very minimalwith me.
She might spend half an hour toan hour in a day showing me how
(15:25):
to do something.
And then she just left me therest of the day to myself.
And I didn't, I wasn't reallylearning anything.
Yeah, they had some modules togo through, but that wasn't
really so much about the job.
That was more about your basics,your sexual harassment and all
those other things you gothrough.
(15:48):
But I was just reallyunderwhelmed and dissatisfied
with the start of my careerthere at Raytheon.
So I was dealing with that andthen dealing with a newborn son
and a wife who had gone frombeing my wife to now being
(16:08):
full-time mother, 100% of thetime, much less concerned about
about being my wife and muchmore concerned about being a
mother.
And then about a year into it,she's, I want to have another
child.
I want to have, I don't want mykids to be too far apart.
And so I thought it was tooearly and too quick.
(16:33):
But again, at the end of theday, I try to be a good man and
I try to consider my partner inthings, even if it's not exactly
what what I want.
So I agreed.
And so life was going on and Iwas working at Raytheon and she
got pregnant again.
(16:53):
And then eventually we had oursecond son, Bexton.
And it was a crazy time.
I was doing a job that I wasstruggling to make my way
through because again, likeevery career before me, I was
trying to give 110%.
(17:14):
and do the best that I couldbecause I wanted to advance.
When I started my job atRaytheon, this is where I would
spend my entire working career.
I really thought I would spendthe next 30 years of my life,
maybe less, working at Raytheonuntil I retire.
(17:35):
I would carve out a career andthat's where I would be until I
retire.
And so, yeah, I was pushing towork hard, pushing to do
whatever I could do todifferentiate myself and assert
myself as a leader and someonewho should be strongly
considered for promotion andmoving up in the ranks.
(17:59):
And they put me under someonenamed Mary Bonnet.
Absolutely destroyed my careerat Raytheon.
So Mary Bonatati was someone whohad been working in the
configuration analyst field foranother company in Florida for
(18:22):
20-something years with nothingmore than high school education.
But Raytheon hired her based offher experience, even though they
told me they required degrees tobe employed there, and I had an
MBA at this point.
And she got to come in at ahigher level because of her work
(18:44):
experience.
So now she was my supervisor, mynew supervisor, and she was just
not a good person.
Just a conniving, underhanded,dirty person.
And I got caught in her web.
And so...
I would go to work and I wouldconstantly come under certain
(19:08):
scenarios that I had never seenbefore.
I wasn't trained for them.
I hadn't seen them before, so Ididn't have experience on them.
So my only choice was to go tomy supervisor and say, hey, this
is an issue that I have.
How do you want me to handle it?
So she would always verballytell me, this is what I want you
(19:31):
to do.
And so a few times thatdirection that she sent me in,
even though I knew in some ofthose cases that didn't sound
right, I wasn't sure, but itdidn't sound right to me.
I was following her directionbecause she was a supervisor and
that's what I was doing, but endup being the wrong direction.
(19:53):
Right.
And so then it would fall backon me and the people on the team
that I was on would say, Why didyou do this?
That wasn't right.
Why did you do this?
I would say my supervisor, MaryBonatati told me to do it.
And Mary Bonatati would go, no,I didn't.
And she would completely throwme under the bus so much to the
(20:17):
point where she had written twoevaluations on me within a year.
And they were both negativeevaluations and none of them
about my actual work.
She was making up personalconduct BS that I would rebut in
the evaluations, but it didn'tmatter because her evaluation
(20:40):
and her score for me was allthat mattered in the end.
So by the second time she did anevaluation on me, I went to HR.
I went to human resources and Isaid, look, this lady is
corrupt.
She's conniving.
She's a liar.
And I went through everythingwith HR.
And Mary came to this meeting atHR with, wouldn't you know it,
(21:04):
the department head, Gene, thevery guy who got me in to
Raytheon and got me hiredsupporting her, having her back.
And HR decided independentlythat she was in the wrong and
she needed to take remedialsupervisory training.
(21:26):
And she eventually got fired asa supervisor.
So I was going through all thiswhile now having two young kids.
So Bexen was born and my wife atthe time was 100% focused on
being a mother, 0% focused onbeing a wife to me.
(21:47):
She woke up, she attended to myboys and she went to bed with my
boys.
My boys slept with her in theroom.
And some nights I slept bymyself in a different room and
she slept in a different roomwith the boys.
And this was my life.
This is what I was goingthrough.
And when I thought everythingwas going to be great,
(22:10):
everything wasn't.
I got moved again after goingthrough all this.
A little over three years atRaytheon, I got moved again to
another program under finally asupervisor that I...
thought was a good supervisorshe seemed to have my best
interest at heart and she seemedto want to help me succeed and
(22:34):
do well and her name was sherrycook and with sherry i thought
everything was going great righti was only under her for about
six months and then you peoplecan like whoever you want or
dislike whoever you want.
(22:55):
What makes America great is thefact that we are a melting pot,
a cocktail of people withdifferences of opinions,
different religious beliefs orno beliefs at all, different
political beliefs.
You can believe whatever youwant.
I have no political affiliation.
(23:17):
I've never felt no type of wayof about any president until
President Obama became presidentand he made cuts to the Defense
Department.
And when he did that, that hitRaytheon and then it hit me
(23:40):
personally.
So Raytheon now lost a bunch ofmoney from the defense budget
that they were going to getbecause Obama cut the defense
budget.
And because he cut the defensebudget, that meant the program
that I happened to be on wasgetting shut down.
(24:00):
Now Raytheon could do anythingat this point.
They could move the people onthat program to different
programs, or they could letpeople go.
So Raytheon It just so happensthat I happen to be a white male
on a program that needed to becut.
(24:23):
And oh, by the way, I had twobad evaluations, my last two
evaluations, because I had ahorrible supervisor who, mind
you, was put in remedialtraining by HR for being a bad
supervisor and being found to beuntruthful.
(24:46):
And now I was laid off fromRaytheon.
I got called in one day and Igot laid off.
And I was just felt like I gotpunched in the gut and got just
the wind knocked right out ofme.
And I didn't know how tobreathe.
(25:07):
I had just bought a new house.
I had two young kids, a wifethat didn't work.
And now I'm being laid off.
And in almost no time, it felt,because that time just flew by.
By the way, I went from sittingon top of the world with a
(25:29):
newborn son and getting a dreamcareer job to, holy crap, how am
I going to take care of thisfamily of mine?
Yeah, that's where I'm going toleave off.
and pick up next time.
So thanks for joining me andnext time I will continue from
(25:49):
there.
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