Peter Scray, a customer service representative at Peckham’s London, Kentucky location, began his working career miles away — figuratively and literally — from his current position. 10 years ago, as a store manager for Sam’s Club, Peter ran a $83 million facility and was responsible for 480 employees. To discover how he transitioned to his current work, let’s rewind the clock and revisit an incident that forever changed his life.
In 2014, Peter was involved in a car accident in which his car bent accordion fashion, crushing both of his legs in the process. The four years that followed found him bedridden, and in the early days doing nothing more than counting “the little squares on the ceiling.” After a total of 13 leg surgeries, Peter was mobile enough to start learning to walk with a cane. One thing led to another until the day he saw an ad for a company looking to hire people to help callers with similar problems to what he had. “Wow, that’s awesome,” Peter recalled thinking at the time, adding, “I love to help people, and especially having gone through it, I was able to help them better than the help that I received.”
Five years into his job at Peckham, Peter continues to enjoy the work, the people he works with, and the company he works for. He feels a sense of enjoyment, knowing that every day he makes a positive difference in people’s lives. He explained that some callers are in such despair that “they don’t even know if they want to be alive,” because they don’t know where to go for help. He’s even had callers ask him for his address so they could send him Christmas cards. He called his position “a blessing from the Lord,” and is thankful he gets to work for an organization that values its employees and customers the way Peckham does. And although one might find it strange to hear, Scray said, “Money is great, but (it) can’t buy happiness. And I have happiness in the fact that I know I’ve made differences in people’s life.” After reflecting a moment, he added, “I’ve never had as much sense of satisfaction as I have with this (job).”
Back in the day, Peter served in the Air Force as a weapons’ mechanic in San Antonio, Texas. Following his service, Peter’s jobs included running a store in El Paso, Texas prior to moving to Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked until the car accident. Scray called himself “an old rocker,” whose favorite band is Lynyrd Skynyrd. That may be because before they rose to fame, Peter used to watch them practice in a storage room out in back of the K-Mart store where he worked as a young man.
Asked for advice to give people wondering if a career at Peckham might be right for them, Scray said, “You’ll never regret it. If you haven’t enjoyed whatever job you’ve done in the past, I assure you, you will enjoy this one.”
