Last Thursday, May 14, I had the opportunity to attend the Employment Awards Fundraising Banquet at Employment Options in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The event honors the companies that employ Options' members, the staff at Options, and most importantly, Options' members. When I heard about the event from my co-workers, I said I'd like to go.
In just a minute, I'll tell you about my experience at the banquet. Later, you'll read about a conversation I had with an Options member and an LCI employee, Mark. First, let me quote the Employment Options mission statement:
Through inspiration, support and encouragement, Employment Options creates a home-away-from-home, where people can overcome barriers to employment and discover personal growth, self-sufficiency and hope.
Back to the banquet... At my table was Linda, our Office Manager, Iem and Mark (both LCI employees and Options members) and Joe Valarioti and his wife. Joe is a Marlborough business owner and is active in local government.
At LCI Paper, I'm fortunate to work with a lot of good people that have been willing to be patient and show me the ropes. After working in the music business for the first part of my career, transitioning to LCI Paper was a steep learning curve. Mark--I mentioned he was at our table--is one of the people that is always available to answer my questions. Whenever I'm helping out in the warehouse, I can always go to him with a question about finding an item, putting together a kit for a sample order, or anything else that I might need.
Dave MacNeill, a radio personality from local classical music station WRCB FM, was the guest speaker. He talked about different people who had inspired and influenced him over the years. He also recognized his daughter, Emily Greenwood, who received Options' "Voice of Hope Award" that night.
At the end of the night, when Executive Director Toni Wolf extended an invitation to those who'd like to speak, I took the opportunity to recognize LCI's employees, Iem, Mark, and Scott, all of who are also Options members. I relayed a conversation I'd had with LCI's President, Larry Chase, who told me that LCI's error rate is "ridiculously low." I relayed that working in the warehouse at LCI takes a special kind of person with amazing attention to detail.
Earlier today, I sat down with Mark who told me about his experience at LCI and being a member of Employment Options.
"I started in August of '07. Before that, I worked at Verizon through Options for three years, in the kitchen. I didn't know too much about LCI before I started. It's Options' best job. It's cleaner work. It's better work."
Mark was recognized for his great work at Verizon and that's how he was fitted for his current job at LCI.
I asked Mark about some of the key people at Options.
"All the staff are great. There's Keith. He's definitely a stand up guy. He's the Employment Coordinator. He goes out and gets new jobs and places people in the jobs and tries to match people to each job. The drivers... You always get a chance to talk about whatever is on your mind, just informally, when you're driving to work. Dave, Fran, Beth... I really can't say enough about the staff over there. They are really good, like Shannon, the Director, is always really encouraging. Toni Wolf, she's the Executive Director. There's Maria... When I first got there, when I was having problems, she got me work in the kitchen. I worked there for about three months before I went to Verizon. And that was a really difficult time and it was really nice to have a place to go. She helped me out, training me in the kitchen, and then I was able to do the kitchen work at Verizon after that. Any one of the staff I could probably say something nice about."
I asked Mark if he remembered what I said in my little impromptu speech about the attention to detail that people need when working at LCI.
"Yeah, I like that. That was the perfect comment and that's what I like most about the job is just working for exact standards or precise standards. I like the freedom too. It's not like someone is breathing down your neck. That just makes you want to work all the harder because people aren't ordering you around."
Mark said he appreciates the thorough training he received when he started at LCI.
"Will [LCI's Warehouse Manager] is a great boss. It just makes you work all the harder when people give you room to work and they expect you to work at an exact standard and it just makes you want to be that much more precise. The job really does help me out a lot. I love running around the warehouse and working hard, being around professional people, getting good experience. It's nice working around a nice, clean working environment with an aesthetically pleasing product. I like working with the product. It's perfectly clean and the paper is spotless."
I asked Mark who he thinks is responsible for the organization in the warehouse. "Is it Will? Is it a group effort?"
"I try to keep the stock in order, labeled right. Everybody does. Will does most of the organizing. Little things are important like labeling, making sure the samples don't get confused with the regular packs, if you have an open pack of samples. Making sure everything's labeled. Everything has its spot."
Regarding his LCI training, Mark credits Will, Naomi, Keith from Options, and former employee Lisa (now in another job through Options).
"I started on the samples which is good because that's the quickest way to learn where everything is. Because you're dealing with so many different items repetitively that you learn where each thing is."
I learned my way in the warehouse by starting on samples too, and as I mentioned earlier, Mark was always there to help me. I asked Mark, "How long did it take you to get acclimated, to really feel confident about what you were doing and to feel like other people had confidence in you."
"About six months. There are a lot of little details like everything from weighing individual cards to get an exact count, how to get the shrink wrap just right on each machine, assembling the kits, how to keep everything organized, knowing exactly which box to use for each order and how to pack the boxes. There's a lot of details."
Mark closed by listing the aspects of his job that are most important to him.
"Being productive, being around professional people, making good money."
I thank Mark for his time and for his willingness to share some of his experiences.
Recommended Link:
Employment Options
Joshua Birch
josh@lcipaper.com
Barry Levine, LCI Paper's Vice President of Sales & Marketing, was pleased to receive a letter written by Shelbe, a fourth grader at St. Charles Elementary School in St. Charles, Michigan. She wrote that the class was planning to visit the elderly residents at a local assisted living facility. The students came up with the idea of making cards and stationery with the seniors so that they could write to their friends and family. Shelbe asked LCI Paper for a donation. 
But my new product is called Embellie Jellie and that one is very, very cool. Think of a small wad of a sticky substance. Maybe think about chewing gum except for it’s totally not that. And you would take a small pearl-sized piece of the Jellie, and you put it on the end of the wooden wand. And what it’s for is for picking up and placing small embellishments. If you have tried to pick up a gem or a sequin or a punched out shape, and you want to put it down on your card or on your scrapbook page, it’s hard to pick those up with your fingers and if you try with tweezers, a lot of times they go flying out of the tweezers. So you just this little sticky stuff, touch it to your little embellishment, and then you have your glue, glue dot, or liquid glue on your paper, and you just touch it to your glue. The Ebellie Jellie is sticky enough to pick up the object, but it’s must less tacky than the glue so it lets you transfer it. 
So I’m sure what my next product... It depends what next frustration I have. Most of my enjoyment comes from figuring out a problem, finding the solution, and then hearing back from all the people that just absolutely think it’s fantastic. It really is unbelievable, but I get e-mails continually from people just saying that they can’t believe what this can do. And many of them started out... The comments I’ve gotten were from designers. They’re in the professional world of this. But I get lots of e-mails from people. One woman said she had a house fire and after she got an apartment this was the first thing that she wanted to order. That was like, “Oh my goodness!”
That’s the other end of it is. And I’m not trying to convince anybody to use it or to do something differently; it’s just I get e-mail after e-mail from people explaining what they’ve done. And part of the cool thing is that I invented it strictly for vellum and inkjet printers because that was the problem I was having. And the way that the pouch is being used now in so many different applications is because people have kind of had the same freedom that I had where they went, “Wow! I wonder if it’ll work for this?” Like people can stamp on muslin or on ribbon or on twill tape or on popsicle sticks or other wooden objects, tags. People are using it on cork. And again, like even the stamp idea or the markers, that each of these were like from someone going, “Oh, I wonder... I’m having problems with this.” Someone else used it at CHA in a class for a clay and they wanted to stamp on the clay and they used it as a release agent so that the stamp didn’t stick to the clay and then they used it with ink so that the ink would print better onto the clay. And another company, another woman from an earth-friendly company that does inks, they’re using it and just think it’s unbelievable with their product. It’s neat the way people are able to take it and extend it to their own uses.
Hmm. Well, my background, professionally was as a hydrologist. I have a Master’s in science and I was a teacher, but as far as crafts go, I pretty much will try anything. I do some basket weaving, some beading, some quilting, some sewing, and when I discovered scrapbooking it was like the world, because all of the crafts that I’ve ever done can be done on a page. So that’s why I think the pouch was so important because I wasn’t satisfied with just printing on regular paper. I wanted to use muslin fabric or use really kind of cool textured papers that I saw. And when I discovered, you know, vellum, it was like, “Oh, I really like the way that looks, it just doesn’t print well.”
