Career slashers

Three individuals - six careers.

Meet Keith McDaniel, firefighter/auctioneer. Then there's Keena Goines: paramedic/drapery deliverer. Lastly, Frank Chaney: general clerk/movie ticket taker.

The three people are part of a growing employment movement called career slashing - a buzz phrase to describe people who pursue more than one occupation that in many cases are vastly different and can tap into a person's various interests.

Different than freelance, moonlighting or temp work, slashers do away with traditional single careers and opt for multiple careers in parallel for personal, professional or economic reasons.

Marci Alboher, self-described "author/journalist/speaker" and former lawyer, wrote about "slash careers" in her 2007 book, "One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success."

In the book, Alboher describes several slash case studies, including a

psychotherapist/violin maker or a litigation lawyer/cartoonist.

In the Shoals, several residents have been slashing careers for years, combining their interests and skills to produce a multifaceted - albeit busy - career.

Frank Chaney works 40-hour weeks for the city of Florence as a general clerk and parking meter technician. During the weekends, he switches gears and works at the local cinema in the box office, at the door or the concession booth.

"When I was younger, I was always fascinated with the movie theater," Chaney said. "To me, it's just a fun job, you get to meet a lot of people."

The jobs contrast with fewer older co-workers who are established in their careers at the city clerk's office to the high turnaround of younger co-workers at the movie theater.

Chaney has worked with the city, first on a part-time basis, for 30 years and has worked at the cinema, first Cinema Twin, which closed, then Hickory Hills, which closed and now Regency 12.

One bonus from his movie job: that's where he met his wife.

Lt. Keith McDaniel, firefighter for 27 years entered the world of real estate auctioneering 19 years ago. Like most firefighters, with schedules that include large blocks of time on or off duty and salaries that many say are just shy of making a living, McDaniel, 53, got his inspiration from a family member who was going to auction school.

He started in the auctioning business 19 years ago and now averages 56 hours in the Florence fire department and 32 hours at Fowler Auction and Real Estate Co. per week.

Other firefighters have career slashed as painters, lawn service guys, home builders or some other form of self employment.

"It's one of those things you never know which hat to wear when you get to work," McDaniel said. "We juggle quite a bit of things to work two jobs."

Both careers have had successes: he's a lieutenant at the fire department, and he was state champion bid caller in 2006 and former president of the Alabama Auctioneering Association.

For McDaniel, auctioneering helped pay the bills for this family.

"If I could work at the fire department - and the fire department only - and that would pay the bills, I would do that," McDaniel said.

He said, however, with the two salaries, even though the children are grown, financial expectations are still for two careers.

"We still think we need that extra money to do the normal everyday things," McDaniel said.

With a hopeful retirement coming in four years, McDaniel said he might make the transition to a full-time auctioneer.

That foot in the door is one of the reasons why Keena Goines, 20, holds multi-jobs that include dispatcher/deliverer for her family's business.

She's in her third year at Northwest-Shoals Community College with a major in criminal justice. Plus, she had to help her mother plan her June 28th wedding.

"It gets really hectic sometimes," Goines said during a lunch break at the college.

Goines ultimately wants to become a police officer and said not only her degree, but the experience as a dispatcher in Red Bay would give her a better chance of becoming an officer and becoming one sooner.

Her other job - as a deliverer for Lindsey and Winchester Drapery, a family business - is not only a source of income, "Like I said, I'm getting married," but also a connection with her family.

"I have to have that job, but I also get something out of it, too," she said. "I get to work with friends and family."

She said she could imagine becoming a police officer and help run the business on the side, "because I want to keep it in the family," she said, a business owned by her stepfather and two aunts.

For now, her goal of becoming a police officer/entrepreneur makes for much work, including working from seven in the morning to midnight some days or working midnight to 3:30 the next afternoon. And, she and her finance also spent the last six months remodelling their home.

"Hopefully, when I get some time off, I can lay around and watch TV and relax."

TimesDaily Staff Writer Trevor Stokes can be reached at 740-5728 or trevor.stokes@timesdaily.com.