I Want Your Job, Lady!

摘要

Jim warner always had good jobs, but they never seemed to last. He had been a technical sergeant in Vietnam, and then, after returning to Los Angeles, he worked as an air-traffic controller, a Hughes Aircraft manufacturing coordinator and a real estate agent. When the cold war ended and Southern California's economy slumped, Warner moved to New Jersey and took a low-wage position as a shoe salesman. He worked hard, but the job didn't really pay off-until the day he fit a pair of black, Italian flats on the slender feet of Mary Del Guidice. Del Guidice, a director of nursing at Hackensack University Medical Center, liked Warner's way with customers. "He was helping out these little old ladies who would have driven anyone crazy," she recalls. "I saw how patient and compassionate he was with them, and I thought he was a natural for nursing." They got to talking, and, over time, she persuaded him to make yet another career switch. Today Nurse Warner, 53, bustles around the hospital's unit for patients emerging from surgery, his goateed face smiling above a burly frame clad in spotless white scrubs. He earns $65,000 and goes home feeling a sense of satisfaction. "A lot of men have had good careers-even many good careers, like me," he says. "But at some point, you realize you're lost. I have finally found my calling in, yes, a women's field."