What America’s longest-tenured workers reveal about how jobs really changed

What America’s longest-tenured workers reveal about how jobs really changed

Most Americans change jobs every few years. A tiny minority never did. They joined before email, outlasted recessions and restructurings, and learned new tools as they came. Their careers—spanning retail counters, jewellers’ benches, factory floors and design labs—offer a ground-level history of work’s evolution and what it takes to stay useful for decades, the Wall Journal reported.

From punched paper to point-of-sale

When Target’s Jacqueline Graf started in 1970, cashiers typed long strings of numbers and registers punched holes into paper tape that was mailed to headquarters for analysis. Stores sold wigs and ran a full diner. Over 55 years, Graf moved from cashier to guest-services lead, trained hundreds, and watched automation creep from inventory systems to self-checkout. Her lesson is simple: embrace change and people. The technology kept shifting; the customer never stopped mattering.

Craft that resists the robot

Tiffany’s master engraver Harold Gainer joined in 1961 and retired at 82 after carving everything from teenage monograms to the Super Bowl’s Lombardi Trophy. His method—paint, sketch, scratch, then cut the metal—has barely changed since the nineteenth century. Machines improved, but the fine judgment of a human hand still anchored the job. In a world chasing efficiency, his craft argues there is enduring value in deep skill.

When speed became the job

Real-estate investor Prologis hired Bobby Bransfield in 1994, when the company had one office and decisions moved at office-hours pace. Mobility, competition and data compressed everything. The workday lost its edges, and “time to decision” became a competitive differentiator. His challenge now is not only moving fast but protecting teams from burning out inside the blur.

Factories learned to learn

At Ford’s Chicago Stamping Plant, Arthur “Art” Porter and Calbert Wright remember the 1960s shop floor: few women, stifling heat, and early robots that mis-punched parts. Decades later, hundreds of reliable robots make work safer and steadier. The takeaway is not automation versus people; it is that better automation reduces injuries and reassigns human effort to where judgment and coordination still matter.

Start small, stay curious

Patagonia’s Vincent Stanley arrived in 1973 by nepotism and luck, typing invoices while colleagues surfed. He watched a gear workshop become a global brand and saw a new risk: designers tethered to screens forgetting how fabric behaves on a shoulder seam. His prescription for the AI era is old-fashioned: get your hands on the thing you make, and let tools serve craft, not replace it.

The more tech, the more human

Qualcomm’s Derek Punch joined at 22 from a newspaper ad and now manages millimetre-wave device work. Automation multiplied output with fewer people, yet the human network grew more central. In high-complexity systems, relationships grease problem solving. If you dislike the people, he says, longevity is impossible—no amount of tooling compensates for frayed trust.

Reinvention inside the same badge

3M’s Ron Stafne walked in at 18 for a product-development role that touched Scotch tape tabs; today he troubleshoots ceramic fibres for aircraft and spacecraft. The tools moved from handwritten notes to digital systems, but the core remained: diagnose, fix, iterate. His daily push-ups are a metaphor for career endurance—small repeated reps compound into resilience.

Finance grew up

Merrill’s Stanley Heilbronn once posted the Dow by hand and phoned in quotes. Now portfolios are tuned to risk, age and goals with models and planning software. What kept him around was an appetite for change and the chance to serve families across generations—including with his own sons on the team.

What it all adds up to

Across nine stories, the plot is the same: technology accelerates the clock, spreads decision-making and demands new skills; craftsmanship and judgment remain stubbornly valuable; relationships decide whether the tools actually work. Longevity is less about loyalty for its own sake and more about staying curious, moving with the speed of the moment, and finding meaning in service—to customers, teammates or a product that deserves your name on it.