Speaker 1: Welcome to Season four of On the Job, a podcast
Speaker 1: about finding your life's work. On the job is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Express Employment Professionals, a leading staffing provider
Speaker 1: that employs nearly six hundred thousand people annually across more
Speaker 1: than eight hundred franchise locations in the US, Canada, and
Speaker 1: South Africa. Our long term goal is to help as
Speaker 1: many people as possible find good jobs by helping as
Speaker 1: many clients as possible find good people. In these uncertain times,
Speaker 1: it's more important than ever to take care of ourselves
Speaker 1: and our loved ones to do what we can to
Speaker 1: stay healthy and productive. Express Employment Professionals will be with
Speaker 1: you every step of the way. We understand what it
Speaker 1: takes to land a new position at a top employer
Speaker 1: or start a new career in today's job market. Plus,
Speaker 1: we never charge a fee to find you a job.
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Speaker 1: to fill open positions in your company requires more than
Speaker 1: sorting through applications. It takes real people, real interviews, discovering
Speaker 1: the skills you need. At Express, we find people for
Speaker 1: jobs and companies of all sizes and industries, from the
Speaker 1: production floor to the front office. Express Nose Jobs Get
Speaker 1: to Know Express. This season, we're speaking with folks who
Speaker 1: are finding their professional stride in a tumultuous job market
Speaker 1: and learning how to double down on their skills and
Speaker 1: their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you inspiring stories
Speaker 1: of people making themselves essential, an important skill set in
Speaker 1: any economy. Today. For on the Job, we look at
Speaker 1: a profession that you might not have thought was still
Speaker 1: around cartography. I went and sought out a modern mapmaker
Speaker 1: to talk to him about the job, how it's changed
Speaker 1: over the years, and the beauty of finding your own
Speaker 1: way in the world. Vermont, on the first really warm
Speaker 1: sunny spring day of this year, I got in my
Speaker 1: car as I took out my Big Road Atlas Londonderry,
Speaker 1: and I set out to find half good Pond, Half
Speaker 1: good Pond. Here we come. Before COVID nineteen, I was
Speaker 1: on a cross country trip and right towards the end
Speaker 1: I started using this big Road Atlas I had in
Speaker 1: the car instead of the GPS on my phone, and
Speaker 1: it made a world of difference. I felt so much
Speaker 1: more present and was so happy to not constantly be
Speaker 1: looking at a phone. In a lot of ways that
Speaker 1: the data we have on our phone is just data.
Speaker 1: It's just a couple of lines and maybe some nasty
Speaker 1: looking font. This is Tom Harrison. He is a cartographer,
Speaker 1: a map maker. Was something interesting about looking at a
Speaker 1: map and say, oh, this is the landscape around me.
Speaker 1: I'm going through, um, you know, new town, but right here,
Speaker 1: about five miles away his old town. I wonder what
Speaker 1: old town looks like five more miles do we take it? Right?
Speaker 1: Tom is the reason I'm looking for Half Good Pond.
Speaker 1: He got his own company called Tom Harrison Maps Company.
Speaker 1: He lives and works in San Rafell, California, just north
Speaker 1: of San Francisco. And I've been producing shady releaf topographic
Speaker 1: maps for hiking and backpacking for over thirty years. I
Speaker 1: had been using my atlas around the country in places
Speaker 1: that I've never been before. But after talking with Tom,
Speaker 1: I looked on the map to see if there's anything
Speaker 1: I didn't know about right where I grew up, southern Vermont,
Speaker 1: and I saw Half Good Pond, not even twenty miles away.
Speaker 1: It was right off a road that I've driven a
Speaker 1: million times. I think I just went past it. I'd
Speaker 1: grown up hearing about it, and I heard it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: I just never went I never realized it was right there. Guy.
Speaker 1: See this is where it gets tricky. But I live
Speaker 1: in a very rural area. So on the map, half
Speaker 1: Good Pond is just in a big green patch off
Speaker 1: the main road. It's all country roads, so it might
Speaker 1: be a little lost. Tom says, that's the beauty of maps.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you gotta figure it out exactly. So, even though
Speaker 1: you're you're making these things so people can orient themselves
Speaker 1: in space, you hope people still wander and get lost
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, very much. You don't have to
Speaker 1: know everything, and some things are better off just have
Speaker 1: being part of the discovery of your day. Where is it?
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I was really surprised doing research for
Speaker 1: this show and finding out that not only is matt
Speaker 1: making still an occupation, but there is a lot of
Speaker 1: work out there for cartographers. All there's tons of the
Speaker 1: tons of it. I mean, McDonald's has cartographers really well.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to put a McDonald someplace,
Speaker 1: you want to find where the nearest school is and
Speaker 1: and figure out what the what's the cheapest real estate
Speaker 1: you can buy nearer schools so kids can walk there
Speaker 1: for the lunch break and all the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that everybody needs to know where things are. And that's
Speaker 1: what cartographers do. Tom designed beautifully endered, in shaded maps,
Speaker 1: mostly for hikers. And while I might have assumed that
Speaker 1: advancements in technology would put people like Tom out of work,
Speaker 1: it's actually opened up tons of cartography jobs all over
Speaker 1: the world. Any planning department in any city uses cartographers.
Speaker 1: Like when you put a new subdivision in and you're
Speaker 1: trying not to upset the people that live there, you
Speaker 1: need to show why that is not going through the
Speaker 1: local cemetery and why I won't affect the spot of
Speaker 1: owl population and blah blah blah. A cartographer has to
Speaker 1: find that data put on the map for the planner
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, here's what we're gonna do. And that's
Speaker 1: designing both printed and digital maps for the public to see.
Speaker 1: And if you're thinking, okay, but I've never needed a cartographer,
Speaker 1: I've got GPS. Well, a lot of the base maps
Speaker 1: that your GPS uses are made by cartographers. If you
Speaker 1: think about it, GPS just gives you a latitude and
Speaker 1: a longitude doesn't show you where you are. You ever
Speaker 1: look at a GPS on your phone when you don't
Speaker 1: have any service and you're just a blue dot in
Speaker 1: the middle of a gray grid. That's what or GPS
Speaker 1: would always look like without the Tom's of the world. Wow.
Speaker 1: So okay. So any company who is expanding and building
Speaker 1: new stores, any apps that use geo location, everyone needs
Speaker 1: mat makers. You don't. You don't see them very much
Speaker 1: because you're kind of behind the scenes. But they're out there.
Speaker 1: Tom was born in ninety seven in Bakersfield, California. He
Speaker 1: grew up there. He was a boy scout. He's a
Speaker 1: pretty adventurous kid. He loved hiking and exploring and backpacking.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get super lost as a kid? Is
Speaker 1: that why you do what you do? I've never been lost.
Speaker 1: I've been confused a few times, not lost. That's good.
Speaker 1: That means you're a good map maker. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I trust a mat maker who gets lost regularly.
Speaker 1: In the sixties, Tom went to college for a semester,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't his thing at the time. The Vietnam
Speaker 1: War was in full swing in nineteen sixty six, he
Speaker 1: decided to join the army instead of getting drafted, so
Speaker 1: he could at least choose where he wanted to go,
Speaker 1: and there was something going on to someplace called Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, let's mess go see what's going on
Speaker 1: over there. So you kind of went on a adventure basis.
Speaker 1: I picture sas there's a big, long backpack trip. How
Speaker 1: that's turned out. I was okay ntil the day I
Speaker 1: got shot, and that after that not so much. The
Speaker 1: first six months Tom was in Vietnam, he didn't see
Speaker 1: much action. But then another company got ambushed in a
Speaker 1: nearby village, and so they brought in the rest of
Speaker 1: our battalion surrounded the village. There was a firefight that
Speaker 1: lasted through the night, and the next day they got
Speaker 1: word that there was a battalion of North Vietnamese nearby,
Speaker 1: so they started to pull back. As we're pulling back,
Speaker 1: somebody wagh in the weird decided to walk through artillery
Speaker 1: back to cover us. And they walking back too fast,
Speaker 1: too far, and I got hit by friendly fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fendy fire. Tom got sent home with a purple heart
Speaker 1: and spent about a year in the hospital. He soon
Speaker 1: met his future wife back in the States, and even
Speaker 1: though he wasn't a fan of college, he decided to
Speaker 1: use the benefits from the g I built to go
Speaker 1: back and get his degree. The courses I hated the
Speaker 1: least were geography. He was outdoors and I had this
Speaker 1: curiosity about the world and how things were made, how
Speaker 1: geology and weather, and the geography tended to cover a
Speaker 1: lot of those areas. Kind of the same reason you
Speaker 1: went to Vietnam. You were looking for adventure. Yeah. Right
Speaker 1: after graduating, he became a park ranger in the Redwoods
Speaker 1: area around San Francisco. He loved the outdoors, but he
Speaker 1: got tired of the bureaucracy. So after six years he
Speaker 1: ain't got his masters in geography and he was figuring
Speaker 1: out what to do next. Why it was a park ranger,
Speaker 1: people kept asking where can we get a really good
Speaker 1: map of the park? And parks aren't in that business,
Speaker 1: he says, the Park Service. They make very basic maps,
Speaker 1: rough sketch of the camp ground where the bathrooms are,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit of history, and it's sufficient for
Speaker 1: most people, but a lot of people really want to
Speaker 1: know more about it. They want to know the elevation
Speaker 1: and trails and the mileages and you know that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. You know, here's a business here, someplace, somebody
Speaker 1: should do this. I didn't know any better, So after
Speaker 1: I got my master's degree, I just started making maps.
Speaker 1: More on Tom story after the break. A strong work
Speaker 1: ethic takes pride in a job well done, sweats over
Speaker 1: the details. This is you. But to get an honest
Speaker 1: day's work, you need a response, You need a call back,
Speaker 1: You need a job. Express Employment professionals can help because
Speaker 1: we understand what it takes to get a job. It
Speaker 1: takes more than just online searches to land a job.
Speaker 1: It takes someone who will identify your talents, a person
Speaker 1: invested in your success. At Express, we can even complete
Speaker 1: your application with you over the phone, will prepare you
Speaker 1: for interviews, and will connect you to the right company. Plus,
Speaker 1: we'll never charge a fee to find you a job.
Speaker 1: At Express. We could put you to work with companies
Speaker 1: of all sizes and endo race from the production floor
Speaker 1: to the front office. Express Nose Jobs you get to
Speaker 1: no Express. Find your location at Express pros dot com
Speaker 1: or on the Express jobs app. Tom Harrison started by
Speaker 1: doing what he knew. He started making detailed hiking maps
Speaker 1: of the San Francisco area that he'd grown up and
Speaker 1: they weren't very good, but nobody else had anything like it,
Speaker 1: so I kept selling maps and getting customers, and you know,
Speaker 1: after a while I had a business. When he started
Speaker 1: in the eighties, all of Tom's maps were done completely
Speaker 1: in pen and ink. I mean when I was in
Speaker 1: grad school. The McIntosh should first come out black and white,
Speaker 1: so cool. So everything was by hand. He would get
Speaker 1: all the maps and guide books that he could find
Speaker 1: on an area and to hiking trails. And I look
Speaker 1: at him and go back and forth and say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: this is a government map, and that's a probably a map,
Speaker 1: and these two guide books, but they don't agree here,
Speaker 1: here and here. He'd go and do more research looking
Speaker 1: for wear maps do agree. He'd make a ton of calls,
Speaker 1: but sometimes when there was just no way to get
Speaker 1: an accurate read on a map, he'd go and figured
Speaker 1: out himself. Just put on the hiking boots and go
Speaker 1: out and hike the trail. So I get him a jeep,
Speaker 1: go out like the trail for a couple of days
Speaker 1: with a major wheel, and make my notations. And he
Speaker 1: ended up with the super accurate, beautifully rendered topographical maps.
Speaker 1: He copied a bunch and started selling them around the
Speaker 1: immediate area map stores, backpacking stores, boat shops, any place
Speaker 1: that would sell a map of the area I was doing.
Speaker 1: His first maps were well received. One map store said
Speaker 1: they take a dozen, but said he should really think
Speaker 1: about talking to a distributor if he was going to
Speaker 1: make any profit. I didn't even know what a distributor was.
Speaker 1: They put him in contact with one and he sold
Speaker 1: more maps to her. That distributor put him in contact
Speaker 1: with another in l A. He said he didn't really
Speaker 1: need any maps of the San Francisco area, but I
Speaker 1: need a map of this and this and this. So
Speaker 1: I went back and I made a map of this
Speaker 1: and this and this. He said, great, keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Here's what else I need. Other companies started seeing his
Speaker 1: work and asked him if they buy his maps for
Speaker 1: their stores, And after about seven years of doing that,
Speaker 1: it got to be the point where I need help
Speaker 1: in the business. So I asked my wife to quit
Speaker 1: her job and she came to work with me. His
Speaker 1: wife started on the business side of the operation. She
Speaker 1: handled the fulfillment service that they ran out of the
Speaker 1: garage for a while, and after thirty four years, Tom's
Speaker 1: maps can now be found in huge outfitting stores like
Speaker 1: ri I with maps of death Valley, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe,
Speaker 1: the Palisades, and tons of others Over the years. The
Speaker 1: biggest thing that's changed in Tom's business is the technology,
Speaker 1: what she says, has actually made the occupation of matt
Speaker 1: making far more accessible to anyone interested in doing it.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it's made our life much easier, much smoother.
Speaker 1: I don't need to bend over this light table all day.
Speaker 1: I can sit down in front of a laptop and
Speaker 1: do it there. There are plenty of hard skills that
Speaker 1: are a must when going into cartography. You definitely have
Speaker 1: to know Adobe Illustrator, and you have to know how
Speaker 1: to use g i S software g i S Geographic
Speaker 1: Information System basically software where you can analyze, manipulate, and
Speaker 1: manage geographical data. You almost have to have a reasonably
Speaker 1: decent understanding of printing and how colors are put on paper. Essentially,
Speaker 1: you can create a beautiful map on the computer that
Speaker 1: might not translate to the printing press. But all of
Speaker 1: these hard skills aside, there's one thing that hasn't changed
Speaker 1: at all since Tom first started out. In order to
Speaker 1: be a good map maker and love what you do,
Speaker 1: what you really need is curiosity. You need to know
Speaker 1: understand that what you see and digital data isn't always correct.
Speaker 1: You have to always question everything. What's the truth? Doesn't
Speaker 1: say what the name of the road is on the map.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about making maps? You know?
Speaker 1: For me, maps are a kind of a way of meditation,
Speaker 1: very zen like I can I completely clear in my
Speaker 1: mind of anything else. I don't think about any of
Speaker 1: the problems or issues. I'm just focusing on a map.
Speaker 1: I think this is a lover's lane taking a left
Speaker 1: on And for some reason, that single minded focus makes
Speaker 1: my life easier and clearer. There's something that that's very
Speaker 1: interesting about having yourself spatially oriented to to landscape around you.
Speaker 1: Oh there it is have good pond recreation area. But
Speaker 1: something about looking at the map and say, oh, I
Speaker 1: always wondered where that us And and then you're out
Speaker 1: there and you're it's like you put it in your mind,
Speaker 1: both the map and the landscape, and they come to
Speaker 1: come together and it's it. It's sort of embeds itself
Speaker 1: and our special memory. For some reason, it's actually pretty warm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like phones make you the center of whatever you're doing,
Speaker 1: wherever you're going, and maps allow you to exist as
Speaker 1: a smaller part of something bigger. Yeah. Yeah, the phone
Speaker 1: is throw I'm right here, but a map is like,
Speaker 1: oh oh that's out there. Yeah, I'm I'm in the
Speaker 1: middle of all this. There's no one out here. There's
Speaker 1: a really slight breeze, really little ripples on the pond.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I've never been here before. To see
Speaker 1: Tom's maps and learn more about him, you can go
Speaker 1: to Tom Harrison maps dot com for On the Job
Speaker 1: on Motus Gray, thanks for listening to On the Job,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. This season of
Speaker 1: On the Job is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures.
Speaker 1: The episodes are written and produced by me Otis Gray.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed
Speaker 1: by Matt Noble for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville,
Speaker 1: New York. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what
Speaker 1: you heard, please consider rating and reviewing the show on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 1: For more inspiring stories about making yourself essential as you
Speaker 1: discover your life's work, audiation