Mary on the move
Want to take a photograph of Mary Brake, 58, while she is at work?
Good luck.
A fulltime hardware associate at The Home Depot store on South Elm-Eugene Street in Greensboro, North Carolina, she bounds from one section of the store to the next. Brake helps a customer find the charger he needs for a drill and gives a polite farewell. Then before you know it, she’s already one aisle over helping a customer purchase 20 feet of rope.
“I just love it,” Brake says. “If I don’t keep moving, I’m hurting.”
While at work, Brake is in the zone. She loves working at The Home Depot, where she has been employed for more than eight years.
But the truth is Brake would have never guessed she could work at a place like The Home Depot. Having worked as a waitress for most of her professional career, she didn’t realize she had the potential to change career paths until she attended training courses and a job fair as part of Triad Goodwill’s Career Development Services program.
This is the story not only of how Brake was able to forge a new career path, but how doing so gave her purpose as well as a second place to call home.
Facing a crossroads
Before Brake found a job that she loved at The Home Depot, she was unemployed for three years. The radiator company where she worked went out of business, and even though her husband had a job, they were having trouble making ends meet for their family.
“The little extra money that I was bringing in all the sudden was gone, and my unemployment ran out,” Brake says.
She later adds: “We were at our wits end, because I had already maxed out all of my credit cards trying to pay bills and eat and everything.”
For most of Brake’s professional life, she worked as a waitress at restaurants. She loved the customer service aspect of these jobs. At the same time, these low-paying jobs offered Brake limited potential in terms of career growth.
I hate to say it, but waitresses don’t get much. They rely on their tips and stuff, which I did pretty good in tips, but I didn’t have the gumption to go further in the restaurant businesses,” Brake says. “It seemed like restaurants are just waitressing, you do your job and you’re out.”
After stepping away from working to be a stay-at-home mom for her newborn kids, Mary re-entered the job market, landing a job at a company called Bower Radiator, where she worked before they suddenly went out of business.
Facing this crossroads with the money at home starting to shrink, Brake decided that instead of jumping back into another waitressing job, she would invest in herself by visiting Triad Goodwill’s Career Center, located on 1235 South Eugene Street in Greensboro.
Forging a new path
First, Brake attended a workshop that helped prepare job seekers for interviews with prospective employers. They helped by showing attendees what to wear at a job interview as well as how to prepare for the questions they might ask.
“They gave us mock interviews back and forth until we got comfortable talking about what we want to do,” Brake says.
After the job interview course, Brake attended a Triad Goodwill job fair hosted at the same building as her class. She says that the Career Services staff were incredibly helpful and that they even reviewed her job resume on-site.
“I’m almost 60 now, and I hadn’t done resumes or anything when I was younger,” Brake says. “This is my first resume and they go, ‘You did pretty good on it!’”
Brake left her resume with virtually every company that had a table at the Job Fair. This included many restaurants that she was already familiar with as well as an employer she had never considered before, The Home Depot.
“I was trying to get back into the waitress business, and none of them called me,” Brake says. “But Home Depot did, and I was like, y’know, it’s still customer service and I like dealing with people.”
Two phone interviews later, Brake was invited for an on-site interview inside the store. While waiting to meet with the manager, she said she noticed an older woman in a wheelchair trying to return something she had bought earlier.
“I just helped her out, and when I went to the interview, he goes, ‘Y’know you’re not even an employee of mine and you are already helping my customers!’” Brake says. “And I replied, ‘Well sir, I hope when I get older like she was and there’s someone younger, that they will help me.’
“That’s the way I work, because one day I am going to be old and I am going to need help.”
And with that, Brake landed the job.
A new job, a second family
Brake started working for The Home Depot as a part-time cashier before later moving to full-time. It was nice to be able to make money again, but more than that, Brake loved how her new job gave her a sense of purpose.
“When I got the job, I felt like I’m contributing to my family now,” Brake says. “I’m not a burden, and it gave me a sense of being able to go and get my paycheck but also to help other people.”
With almost nine years at The Home Depot, Brake still loves her job. The pay and the hours are a marked improvement from her time as a waitress. More than that, the job provides a second family for her that has supported her in times of crisis.
“The store I work for, they treat us like family,” Brake says.
Recently, Brake’s family suffered a personal loss. Her sister-in-law passed away. She was crying at work, and one of her co-workers noticed and immediately told her to go home.
“And I said, ‘But I’ve got a customer,’” Brake says. “And here comes the customer and he says, ‘No ma’am, no ma’am, you just go home,’ because I was just crying.”
Brake went home after that and says that one of her supervisors even called her later to make sure she was okay and gave her several days off from work in order to grieve.
“I thank Goodwill for the job,” Brake says.
Ready to forge your new path? We can help!
Looking for a job or for career training? Triad Goodwill’s Career Development Services is here for you.
Our Greensboro Career Center on 1235 South Eugene Street in Greensboro is currently open at 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday (closed for lunch at 12 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.).
We also offer virtual services including Virtual Training Courses and Virtual Job Fairs and Hiring Events. For a schedule of offerings or to register online, visit https://www.triadgoodwill.org/virtual-services/
For more information or assistance, call 336-544-5305 or email careerassistance@triadgoodwill.org.