Stride Welcomes Dooley!

It's not even noon time and I've had three calls today from various agencies asking if we are hiring.  A lot has been said about the high unemployment numbers across the nation but have you ever stopped to think about people with developmental disabilities needing work? 

Slider Memos -
Shipping  to  an
Office Depot
retail store near you.

Stride, Inc. welcomed another new employee today. Dooley joined the team as a Packaging and Assembly worker.  Dooley is an accomplished photographer and likes graphic art.  Coming from the good folks at APS Transitions (http://goo.gl/MUQma), this is Dooley's first paying job and we are delighted to have him working with us.  The work on the schedule today is packaging replenishment packs for Office Depot retail store orders.   Dooley's lucky because the team loves packaging the colorful Memo and Slider XBs, it's a round table operation where everyone has hands on and teamwork is the key!

Stride would like to warmly welcome Dooley to the team! 

Spotlight on Jude - a Shuttle, a Train, a Bus, a Hike and Back Again.

Today's spotlight is on an employee of Stride, Inc., who has been with us for many years and his method of transportation to get to work five days a week is an indication how dedicated he is to his job!!

Jude gets up every work day @ 4 a.m. to make it to work. He lives in a Indian Pueblo 50 miles from Albuquerque. Jude is Stride's Production Assistant and he happens to have a developmental disability. He does not drive; so to get to work he must take a shuttle from the Pueblo to a rail station. There he catches New Mexico's commuter train, the Railrunner, to downtown Albuquerque. Once in downtown Albuquerque, his trip is not over! Jude catches a city bus and then completes his trip by walking two miles to the office. By the time he arrives, it is 7:30 in the morning and Jude begins his day.

Jude only recently became Production Assistant, previously he was a member of the Packaging and Assembly team and worked the tables with the rest of the crew. As our business has been growing, the fellow who had organized the crew and kept them busy working throughout the day was being spread too thin. Jude saw a need to be filled and fell naturally to doing the job. Of course, the cracker-jack management team eventually realized what was going on and promoted him!

One of the most rewarding things about working with people who have developmental challenges is that they are more than willing to try a job, fill a need and, in the case of Jude, travel two and a half hours to get to work!

The CEO Becomes the Worker - Appreciating our Developmentally Disabled Co-Workers

Interesting day today @ Stride, Inc. As I mentioned yesterday, we got a big shipment of pens from our friends at Schneider of Germany. Now, keep in mind, the head of our Shipping and Receiving Department came to us some 25 years ago as a developmentally disabled adult. His disability was a communication disorder, basically he didn't speak.  Nada, zip.  Communication is no longer a problem "huge" for this valued employee and we call him the head of shipping, but truth be told, he is the Shipping and Receiving Department.

With our big shipment help was acquired from the assembly tables, so our work crew lost our Production Assistant (incidentally another DD employ who is now a full-fledged staff member). So, when I came in today, our work crew was sitting around with nothing to do! Nothing is tougher on a boss or on the workers. Our special needs employees love to work but one has to find them work.

I spent a good part of my day getting the crew working and keeping them working. No sooner did I get them on a task then they would come to my office stating they were done and needed more work. Around three o'clock in the afternoon as I was creatively creating yet another project I warned them that I was out of ideas and if they needed something else before the end of the day we'd all go out front and pull weeds together!

So much for my plans for the day. Let me tell you, it's humbling when the boss has to do the job of a person with documented developmental disability and has trouble keeping up.

That is what I find is truly rewarding about working for Stride, Inc. We have people here the world views as "retarded." What I find is we have employees with special job skills and abilities that far exceed mine.