He's been a great asset to the team, and it's it's fun to have around, and he's he's just soaking all this stuff up like a sponge. When Eric Schubert hired Chris Brewer to join the Vancouver, Washington office of Express Employment Professionals, he thought he had a winner, but he didn't know the full extent of the journey Chris had taken. After a year, both men are sure they've
made the right choice. On this edition of On the Job from Express Employment Professionals, we meet a young man whose life took a radical detour and who landed on his feet in a job where he can help others every day. If you want to find your next job, or if you're a company hoping to grow your workforce, Express Employment Professionals is for you. Find more information at express pros dot com. Chris Brewer and I are driving
around his hometown, Vancouver, Washington. He tells me that he dropped out of high school at age fifty, quick going, and then I started working. Got my first job at a golf course and worked there for about a year. Then you started working odd jobs, then worked for les Schwab Tires for about a year, then I quit that job and join the army. What did you do with the golf course? Worked on the driving rain show as a moving target. That's how that. That's all that was.
I washed golf carts and did the driving range and literally turned into a moving target whenever got in that golf card to go get the range balls off the driving range. There's a funny commercial you've probably seen with that same theme. So you can probably picture Chris under fire from golf balls. But it's all part of something we'll learn about him and much more depth. He's unstoppable.
What'd you learn from that job? Golf balls hurt um it, But it taught me a lot of responsibility too, because I was there by myself, so I had in that part of the golf course. So I had to stay on top of uh getting you know, golf balls for the driving range and uh having enough golf carts ready for um when people would show up for the twilight golf at about two thirty in the afternoon. And but just a lot of self responsibility because you had to work by yourself and stay up on top of everything.
After the golf course, there were odd jobs then the tire store for a while, but an event in two thousand three inspired Chris to make what he thought was a move into a lifetime career. And this one day I just up and quit. Was like, I'm gonna join the army because my friend came who um I went to high school with, was killed in Iraq in two thousand three, and he was the first person from Vancouver to be killed in both con or in either of the two conflicts. And I was like, well, I gotta
do it, finally do it. And so I did. And my parents were not happy at all about me joining the Army. I walked in because it disappeared for two days and I was like I was walking. I was like, hey, I joined the Army. I leave for basic training and in a week and they're like, so that's how that went. Chris didn't really know what to expect from basic training.
The Army takes raw recruits and tries to toughen them up. Well, the hardest part for basic training, and like I told the kids when I was a recruiter, it's like, if you've ever went to a sports camp, basic training will be up cake walk for you. But so Fort Knox, Kentucky has these hills they don't notorious throughout the army called heartbreak, misery, and agony, and they are just so insanely long and steep. Like one of them, it's so steep, like when you're going up you can actually reach your
arm out and touch the asphalt. Is that Steve. So that was the hardest part for me. It was those three hills because I had despised them, so they were not fun. Other than that, it was easy. Korea has been in the news a lot lately, both the South, where the Olympics were held, and the North, where the political situation has us on guard. Chris served two tours of duty in South Korea and that place is the
most beautiful country I've ever been to. The people are super friendly, um, very welcoming and when they find out that you're an American and um, yeah, recommend anybody goes to Korea and a heartbeat and not be afraid of the guy that's in North Korea. So yeah, when you're deployed to Korea, what's your day to day like there?
In all honesty is the exact same as it would be a state side for me, because my ji worked with a Patriot missile system, so like we trained a lot, but I still woke up and did PT at six thirty in the morning. And PT stands for physical training, alright, so exercise and so forth every more Monday through Friday exercise.
After that it was onto the motor pool for maintenance of the vehicles, and the time was filled with plenty of training on their specific job responsibilities, which Chris can't go into in too much detail, but his overall impression of the people of Korea and the country was overwhelmingly positive. Now talking with Chris, you can hear how life in the army goes in cycles. Korea, then back to ford Hood, Texas,
and Korea again. But Chris's life was about to undergo another big change after a chance meeting sparked the conversation. This was one of the first things Chris wanted to tell me as we were having breakfast on the day of our interview. Like most everything else, Chris says, he sounds a bit nonchalant about this, but his eyes are sparkling. And then ten I got stationed and for Ulis, Texas, which is an El Paso, so the middle of the desert,
and that's where I met my wife. Um. She worked at a gas station or a convenience store, whichever he preferred to call it. And I just happened to come in one day and I had to talk and to her, and I got ready to leave about thirty minutes later because she looked really bored us. I was like, I wanna started talking, because like, you look bored. What I let off with, I mean, I SACA and I went to a walk out. She's like, well, you're not gonna ask me for my phone number? And I was like,
I was like, well, can I have your phone number? Then? And here we are, all these years later, now we're married. We've been married for February twenty six will be a year. That happy event was still far in the future when Chris was sent to the Middle East. Then two thousand and eleven, I got deployed to bah Rain, which was
the most miserable year of my life. I don't know if you've ever been there, but bah Rain's eleven miles wide and thirty one miles long, so it's crazy small and take you about an hour to drive around the whole entire country. UM. And I was on a little eighty bitty air base which was refa air base. UM. And our job was ballistic missile defense, you know, from anything might become like out an Iran or anything like that. To pass the time and stay fit, Chris lifted weights.
Now when I was preparing to meet him and learn about his life, I did hear that he'd had an accident when he was in the service, but I pictured something service related. The incident that was to end his dream of serving twenty years in the military happened in the gym and was just an unfortunate and awful fluke. It happened when I was in Ba Rain. What happened that day, I was actually I was just working out
at the gym. I mean, yeah, really, he was just trying to because I had I had a good amount of downtime, so I'd work out two times a day. And so I tried to go for a new record for Wait for Me, and my back didn't like it. He heard of pop and his drop the weights. That wasn't quite the end of Chris's military career. He was a and to work in Northern Virginia for a while and then became a fantastically successful recruiter, but Army doctors caught up with him found his extensive injuries and realized
that he shouldn't stay in the service. So I got medically retired because of my back. I would have did the folks morning if I would have had the chance. So how did they tell you? Do they send a letter? Do they call you into the office? How do you get this news that that your whole life is about to change? Um? So what you do is it's called a medical board. So your case gets presented to army doctors and you go through the med board process, which
takes about seven or eight months. And at the end of that process is and when you find out yea or nay that you can either stay in or you gotta go. So and I I knew that I wasn't going to be staying in, so I started preparing, started getting everything all packed up and ready to go. And then I got the letter in the mail said you I took all my in these five days of vacation that I had saved up, and I came home to Washington. All right, you're here, You're now you have to take
sort of a left turn. And this was wasn't what you planned. You had a different plan. So what what are the kinds of things you start doing once you're back home. Um So there for about a month or so, I went into a pretty dark space and I was just in a downward spiral. And I thankfully I had my friends Jason and Sherman and Richard who won the brewery. They're like, hey, Chris, like you want to come help
us build the brewery? And I was like sure. So I did that for the first six months that or after that initial like depression face because this is a lifestyle that you get so used to, you know, do it for ten years and then they tell you can't do it anymore, and you don't. I didn't know what to do with myself. So that then I helped them and I got to get really really they weren't my friends per se. Then they were acquainted, is that I knew.
But then over the six months of us building that place, we became really really good friends, and it altered my life, Like they were great and it made me feel like I had a purpose again. As you're starting to get to know Chris Brewer, you can probably tell that having a purpose is key to his sense of well being, whether it was working on Patriot missile systems or switching to recruiting before he was, as he says, med boarded
out of the Army. After the break, we'll learn more about how he helped his friends build their microbrewery in Vancouver, Washington, and once that volunteer gig was done, how he pursued and earned a job at the Express Employment Professionals office in Vancouver as a staffing consultant. You're listening to On the Job, the podcast from Express Employment Professionals. One company is on a mission to put a million people to
work each year. It sounds like a big number, doesn't it not to Express Employment Professionals taking a skilled labor position or administrative work, and maybe you're an executive looking for a career that fits. We take pride in connecting the right people with the right company. Express Employment Professionals is on a mission to put a million people to work each year. Let us help will open geors for you to go to Express pros dot com to find
a location near you. Welcome back to On the Job and the story of Chris Brewer, who found meaning helping others find jobs after his own career reached a turning point. Chris didn't go directly from the Army to express prose. He did what many people recommend when thinking about life transitions. He dove into an all consuming volunteer job to acquaint himself with civilian life and get his mind focused on positive energy. In an industrial area of Vancouver, Washington, a
micro brewery is becoming a destination for beer lovers. Brothers Cascadia is open every afternoon and evening with food trucks out front for those who love fine beer. Jason, the brewmaster, is showing me around. So in the fermaters, this is where we're gonna add yeast and let fermentation happen. The beer will sitting there for roughly two to three weeks while it's finishing. We may add more secondary greediance to
that or not, depending on the beer. And then uh, this is also where we'll carbonate the beer and then package it as well. So where did Chris fit in here? Well, once he had reconciled himself to leaving the army and spent a month or so with his head down, he offered his services completely as a volunteer to help build this brewery. Yeah, my name is Sherman Gore and uh, one of the owners of Brothers Cascadia brewing here in Vancouver, Washington.
Sherman Gore has poured himself a glass of cast Scadia's best beer and sits down to talk with me about his friend. How how I met Chris was basically about how I met everybody that is a part of this
family here at Brother's Cascadia. Uh. The three owners, Jason Richards and myself, we were all bartenders and servers and brewers that in a place called north Wood up in Battleground, Washington, and we were able to get a bunch of people behind us for the brewery and Chris happened to be one of our regulars there and we've got to know him.
And through circumstances, Uh, since Chris didn't have a job at the time, he started volunteering down at the at the brewery and became one of the family members down here, and he was here at least five days a week helping us out. It was it was, it was incredible, incredible. It wasn't just someone that showed up every day. Actually he brought something every day, you know, So it was
it was fun to be around. But he was also he was willing to learn from some of the electricians and contractors, and also he was willing to do research and all sorts of stuff. So he became when we asked him, you know after after a little while, was hey, Chris, would you like to help with this? You know, this has become became kind of a thing that that Chris
really made himself invaluable just do hard work. Even with if he didn't even have any skills in a certain area, he made himself valuable in that area and became just like, well, Chris is going to help us with this, and we're gonna help us with that. And I mean he really is. He's kind of a one of those old old school stories to where he really got involved in and he made himself to it that we couldn't imagine it without him. Now, so then it's a yeah, I mean he's just part
of the family now. It's that's just how it is. He became such a part of the family that he had his wedding here. Part of the family maybe. But remember two things. Chris was a full time volunteer in the effort building the Brewer re, so he didn't have a salary during that time, and there was never any promise made about the future. There it's a micro staff as well as a micro brewery. So once the hard work of constructing the place was over, Chris was once
more forced to confront the future. Where could he go from here? On the hunt for paid work. Now, Chris attends a job fair. Eric Schubert, who with his wife Julie, runs the Express Employment Professional's office in Vancouver, Washington, had sent someone from that office to the fair, And the story behind it was before I met Chris, was that
Chris was at this job fair. He was coming out of the military, um, looking for his first civilian job, and um, he met Michelle, and um, the first thing that Michelle noticed was now this was after the fact, of course we found this out, but noticed that his hair was long and and he he he was nice and and and really looking forward to starting a new job. But he came in the next day completely high and tight haircut, ready for an interview with his suit and
tie and all this kind of stuff. And Michelle didn't even recognize him when he walked in the door. But he took it. He obviously took it serious. I mean, he was ready and uh, and that's that's when he ended up meeting with me all right now. You have a lot of meetings I've seen, I've been in the office for a while, a lot of people come in and out of there. When you had that first meeting
with him, what what stood out to you? Mm hmm. Well, to me, I could instantly instantly tell he was polished, um, which which was kind of funny in the beginning, because that's Michelle was like, I don't remember him looking all polished when I saw him at the interview, but it was fun and it was a big joke for a while. But but um, but that was my thing, is he came in looking all polished, and he um, he did. He just had a good attitude about about life in
general and just just wanted to help people. And he spent the you know, the first few minutes of our of our meeting, talking about his recruiting experience for the military and um, and that's I mean, that's helping people get into the military, and we're also helping people find jobs. So it seemed like that was a good match. And I just said, what do you think about working in
here for us? And that's where it's kind of started and and I and I said, well can you, I mean, can you start tomorrow because we were in need of some help at the front desk. I said, because I think you'd be awesome at it, and he says, actually, Eric, I'm I appreciate it, but I'm gonna have to turn you down. And of all things, when Eric offered me
the job, He's like, so, can you start tomorrow? And I was like no, and he gave me this funny look because like, I just offered you a job and you're telling me no. And I was like, and I was a little thrown off by that. So I'm like, what do you mean, like you're gonna be great? Like why are you gonna turn me down? While he was getting married the next day, like, well, in my defense, I'm getting married on Sunday, and well she my fiancee.
They have my wife now, And I was like, she's flying in in a couple of hours and where everything's already paid for it, we're doing everything. So so he ended up having and I said, oh, well why don't you say so. I'm like, you made me think that I was like offering you a bad position or something. And so then he um. He ended up going off and get got married, and then then he started shortly after that said, I've been here ever something almost a year now and it's been a great experience so far.
And I love waking up and doing what I do and helping the people that we get to help because Eric and Julie took me in and helped me out when I was in a in a bad, bad situation, and I just love the end of the day, I feel like I truly accomplished something by helping people find their find jobs. I'm getting them working so they can still take care of their family, and that's a really, really good feeling to me. Chris is a busy bee.
That's Tunisia Williams, a fellow staff and consultant at Express Pros. That's what I call him because bees are very important population insect for this world to go around, so um I call him a busy bee because he does whatever he can to help the team, to help himself, to help everyone around him. So being a busy bee, he's always moving and doing whatever you can to make sure
that everyone is successful, not just hisself. As when he was talking about his resume, he was real proud that he was one of the best recruiters in the country from a from a statistic standpoint, and um, and that that appealed to me as well, because I'm like, he's
obviously got the drive. And my own dad was a recruiter for the army in the past, so I know how much it takes to to go to all the high schools and to go to all the career centers and and and I mean there's a lot to be considered one of the best in the country as a recruiter standpoint. UM. And so I knew I knew he would be successful here, like just just knowing that driving itself, I knew I knew he could do it. So that was one of the big decision making factors for hiring him.
To UM, I would say, someone who is definitely um having a heart of helping people. I think that's the most important thing. The actual staffing consultant position can be taught, but you have to have a heart for people. That's the only way you'll be successful. And tell me about some examples in the last six months of how you've seen that in Chris, that that he's just not doing the job, but has that, as you say, a heart for people, UM, Well, Chris, his willingness to help people.
Is not just in associates, is also in his clients as well as even us as co workers. He's always there in the mornings. Um, he's there kind of waiting for us, ready to go, kind of preparing us on everything we need to do that we may have missed. UM. So he's very verbal and he's you know, he cares about us a lot, even on a professional and personal level. Chris's path at Express Employment Professionals as born out everyone's
confidence in him. He started as a front office coordinator, really the heart of the operation in some ways, helping people who come in the door find their way through the system. Two jobs. After six months, a position opened up as a staff and consultant and that's what he does now. So he's also interfacing with clients as well as associates. There's a great example of how Chris has gone above and beyond to help everyone. And it really just depends on um. Like, we really try to take
care of our associates. So we have, like I said, the Gummy Bear vitamin factory. UM, so the production is done here in Vancouver, right down the road. It's about two and a half mile three miles from here. UM. The packaging and sorting and all that for the Gummy Bear vitamins has done up in Ridgefield, which is just up the highway I think eight exits from here, nine
exits um. But I was talking to our local public transportation and they have a bus that runs out there a couple of times a day, and I spoke to them. I spoke to their like president of the division that does the planning for the routes last week, um to see if we could get them to shift, um the pickup time like a few minutes earlier. So he could, because then if we could, I could get associates that are on public transportation out to work at the Ridgefield
factory with public transportation. So I told him how many of people we have working out there, and they're strongly considering changing the bus schedule so people are our associates can get to work. I don't know. I mean, I've been doing this a long time. I've never had somebody called the bus station athid change of schedule for a bunch of people looking for work. Um, that was pretty neat. That was pretty neat. We don't have an answer yet, but he did say that it was It was a
good possibility. He's been a great asset to the team and and it's it's fun to have him around. And he's he's just soaking all this stuff up like a sponge, and UM, I can just tell in his heart he really loves to help people. So this is a I think this is a good long term fit for him. I get the sense that you're a bit of a spark plug here in the office that people kind of count on you your good energy and your high spirits and and it kind of helps bring the office forward.
Is that sometimes a struggle for you or is that something that comes natural or how does that work with you? Um, it comes naturally. I've always been a wiry person when it comes to I'm sure they said, my coworkers said, and my boss said something about it. I move at a hundred miles an hour. You if you catch me moping or going slow, there's something wrong, and they will call me out on it, like, what's wrong, Chris, You're not your normal self. And it's happened before, and it's
just how I have gotta So. I had my boss when I was in Korea. His name was Staff, so that Danny of staff starts Keel He used to tell us every days, like, if you're not gonna give me a hundred percent, why are you showing up? He's like, I needed people that are trained and ready to go to war and want to do what they have to do if we have to do it. So that's how I've been ever since. D percent. No matter where I go, what I'm doing, you're not gonna well, no one's gonna
change me. I'm gonna beat myself until the day that I'm going So I may not be as fast in twenty years, but I'll still be giving a That's Chris Brewer, a staff and consultant with Express Employment Professionals in Vancouver, Washington. And that's all for this edition of On the Job. Find out more at Express Pros dot com, and you can listen to every podcast this season at Express Pros
dot com slash podcast. This podcast is produced by your host, Steve Mencher for men'sh Media, I Heart Radio and Red Seat Ventures. You can subscribe on I Heart Radio and iTunes, where we hope you'll leave a nice review that helps other folks find us too, and of course you can listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time on the job