In 1936, Mayer was hired in the accounting department of the family business's
Chicago offices. He relocated to the company's office in
Madison, Wisconsin, in 1946, which became the site of the company's headquarters in 1955. In February 1966, Mayer was named the firm's chairman, filling the vacancy created in the post when his father died nearly a year earlier. P. Goff Beach was named to succeed Mayer as the firm's president. Mayer credited his success to his involvement in the smallest details of the company's operations during his career, recalling how he had processed the company's payroll account by hand when he was one of the firm's three accountants. He stated that "I've always felt I might have a little better understanding of what people in our plant have to do because I did it myself—I've always seen our employees as individuals and I respect the hard work they do." Few people believed that there was a real "Oscar Mayer" at the company, as the company for many years employed George Molchan, a little person, as a mascot called "
Little Oscar," and Mayer himself avoided publicity. He would travel nationwide with Little Oscar and the
Wienermobile. After being informed that there were choking risks from the whistles shaped like hot dogs that he would distribute to children on these publicity tours, he had 2 million of the whistles destroyed, despite assurances from doctors that the likelihood of risk was low. After leading the company to its first $1 billion in annual sales, he retired as chairman in 1977. A division of
Kraft Foods at the time of his death, the company had been sold to
General Foods, in 1981, some four years after Mayer's retirement. ==Personal life==