Things I've Learned In Life So Far: Never Apply, Interview, and Accept an Entry Level Sales Job.

It's been over a week since the Living Blog was updated. I apologize for not remaining committed to writing on this. I do have an excuse, and it's, "Things have been kind of crazy the past week."

You can probably gather from the title what we're talking about today, boys and girls. Afterall, that's what titles are for, to give you somewhat of an idea of what this massacre of phonetic symbols is going to communicate.

All right. Where do I begin...

Monday, February 15th, 2010. A normal day if I do say so myself. At first. Two days prior I spent a few hours on my laptop at the Bread Co. on Olive browsing Career Builder. I found a lot of listings for entry level marketing jobs (Entry level sounded good. A guy fresh out of college likes the sound of that, mostly because a fellow like myself has found a lot of jobs asking for 3 or 5+ years field experience, which at this point in my life, I just don't have. There's a lot of jobs I just don't have the qualifications for...except for these entry level jobs which exclaim, "No Experience Necessary!"). Of course, I'm easily enticed. I figure there could be a fair chance of landing one of these jobs. I apply for a couple, find a writing job in Clayton which I also apply for (I never heard from them though. They're legit I'm sure, since they didn't come begging to me for an interview. They probably found a very qualified individual very quickly and went on their merry way). I sit back, take a sip of coffee, and hope for the best.

So we get to Monday. I get two calls from two of the places saying they want to set up interviews the next day. Giddy with excitement, I agree, schedule the interviews, and then run out to get some nice clothes. My father slips a few twenties into my hand, and I rush out to find something nice. I get a nice blue shirt, a nice sports jacket, a couple ties, some nice shoes, and come back home to prepare to tackle the world.

Tuesday comes and goes. I go to both interviews, get an idea of the jobs, asked by both to come back for a second interview (which was pretty much in spending a couple hours in the field, seeing what they do).

So I'm excited, completely unaware of the lies and deciet. I rest easily.

I go to the first job. They are a company in the auto glass repair market. Now, red flag number one: I come in, sit down, wait, and see some of these entry level guys preparing for a road trip to a location in Arkansas. One guy has a couple grocery bags with loaves of bread and snacks. I'm fine with it. We all need some snacks when we go on long drives. We're freaking Americans, we need to eat all the freaking time. So the manager (the man who interviewed me) says, "Well, when I go on trips I usually eat out." Poor kid, brainwashed and pulled into this mess says, "Yeah, I've had a lot of bills this week so I only have eight bucks in my wallet." Are we serious? This is the major bank going on here? This guy works his butt off here, and has barely enough to scrape by?

All right, so I go out with two girls and this guy Tim. Now, here's what they do on a day to day basis: They go to these "events" at car washes and and gas stations. They have permission to be there, but what they do is they try to "fit in" like this is some covert operation and clean customer's windows. As they do, they look for chips and small cracks in the windshield. When they find one, they mention it to the customer, tell them if they have full coverage the service is free, and then fill in the chip/small crack right there on the spot.

As you can imagine, all though it's not completely terrible, it still felt...if I could invent a term..."scammy". I will say the employees were nice about it, and didn't try to press anything onto these people (or at least trick them, or hold them down until they agreed to have their windshield fixed), but I still thought this whole thing was a sham. Sure, there was this faint promise in the future to reach managment level, but the goals were unrealistic. Plus, I didn't want to spend eight hours of my day in the freezing cold. As you can probably already gather, I didn't properly express my passion for the job, so Tim called Nick (the manager. Funny Story actually, the managers of both places I interviewed for are named Nick) at the end of the "second interview" and then gave the phone to me. Talked to Nick, and he told me they would call. Haven't heard back since Wednesday. Thank God.

Trabajo Numero Dos. This job was VERY similar to the other one. Later on Wednesday I met with a guy named Maxwell Harrison to do pretty much what I had done only a few hours before and that was shadow his lousy sales job. I did for a couple hours. It wasn't too bad. At least it was a little better gig than the windshield repair. I was warm and inside and things seemed like they would be okay.

Job description: Basically, this company has people go to Home Depots around the area, walk around with a binder, and sell people free in-home consultations.

"Sell them something free? How does that work Michael? Do tell."

Well, basically I walk up, tell them who I am, ask them how old their home is, and if they had done anything with the kitchen cabinets. If they were new, I would be on my way. If they were old and crappy and they wanted to change the look of them, I would tell them about the resurfacing project and have them sign up to have an appointment. At the appointment, people from Home Depot would come out, talk about ideas with the potential customer, give a quote, and the customer would decide if they want to to do it or not.

Of course, with anything you try to sell, there is a big "No Factor". Now, they told me about "The Law of Averages". Basically, for every no you get, there's bound to be a yes coming. This of course is a lie and a sham.

Anyway, I want to get into more detail about that later. I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, I meet with Maxwell. Walk around with him. Talk with him. I start lying to myself and saying, "I could do this. Maybe this will be okay." The time with Max goes well, he calls Nick, talks to him, then tells me to leave the Home Depot where we're at (On South Lindbergh) and go to where Nick is at, the Home Depot on Manchester. I visit Nick, we talk a little more. He gives me the job, I agree (I shouldn't have) and leave.

Now. Thursday, February 18th, 2010. First day on the job. I get to the "office" (I put it in quotes because, although the top level of this building is an office and thats the HQ for this company, there's multiple companies/businesses that use the office [I believe] and the office for Systematic Services, as far as I could tell, was just Nick's little office way in the back of the catacombs. Oh, and there was a break room, but I'm still pretty sure that was communal). I fill out paper work, listen to a little lesson on the "Five Steps" (What they use to talk to people and pitch their sale) and then we were on our way.

I was assigned to be with Maxwell again to be trained. The office is in Chesterfield and we were told to go back to the South Lindbergh Home Depot (roughly about 35 mins with light traffic). Max doesn't have a car. Great. So I drive both of us. I talk to Max on the way about a number of things. There is mostly business talk, but we also discuss other things. I find out Nick (the manager guy) Joey (an employee) and Max are all living in Nick's aunt's house. Now, they haven't been in town all that long, but long enough they should be able to find a place and...oh, I don't know....pay for it with the "good" money they're making (also, the previous day Maxwell slammed 9-5 jobs because no matter how much work you put in, you only make what's on the paycheck, and then when you retire you don't have money. What he fails to realize is he's not really making money now and that there is SO much work put into this that whatever money you make it will never be worth it [By the way, the job was 6 days a week. And to give you an idea of the hours, I went in at 10:30, went through a normal day, came back to the office, left around 7. Today they wanted me to come in at 9. No way.])

Sorry, tangents.

So we get to Home Depot. Sign in. I watch him, then I start to get my feet wet and try it myself. In the end, I walked around Home Depot 700 times for 6 hours. We took a couple five minute breaks. The first one was mostly so I could practice the pitch with Maxwell. The other one was a legitimate sit down, relax, realize how much this sucks break. No lunch. Just straight sales. They even said before we left that there's an hour for lunch, but they don't take it because that just eats into sale time (haha...lunch...eats in....man, where do I come up with this stuff?).

What kind of hell condones sacrificing an important meal time just to hound more people?

Sorry. Tangent again.

So we do this forever. Max gets 2 leads. I get none. He says that's typical for the first day. And I think I want to pull a gardening hoe down and chop someone up with it to release some tension. Just a little.

Now, he calls this a slow day. The day before when I was with him, he got a lead before I came. With that said, earlier on Thursday when I came in they had a total of 31 leads. So lets do some math here. Without me, there is 5 people. So with 31 leads, that gives each about 6. Of course this is with the assumption that they all make about the same, which there is error in that, but with what I'm showing, there is wiggle room. So, it's Thursday and they've had about 3 days. So if we continue with MY mathmatic reasoning, that makes for 2 leads per day. Now, if you'll recall, for Max at least, 2 leads is a slow day. Bull. It's average, and they're trying to con me into this trap.

At 6 o' clock, with my belly aching for food, we leave the store and go back to the office. I deal with the mess of traffic on 64. I consider smashing the car and killing us both, but I'm not quite over the edge. Actually, once we left Home Depot, I believe I felt better. But I had to spend and eternity in there first. We make it back to the office, they tell me to come in at 9 in the morning and I bid them goodnight.

As you can tell, I called today and quit the job. I have more dignity. I want a salary and benifits. And freaking lunch! Even if I do talk to a bunch of people into this free service, they still have to make the decision to reface the cabinets. That's where I would make money. What little I would make.

It's a sham, a lie, a trick, and I've learned a valuable lesson from all of this: Never apply to entry level sales/marketing jobs, especially when they have multiple postings on Career Builder and have the posting in big, capital letters. They're cheating you out of time and sanity and will only feed you propaganda like, "Law of Averages" and "Postive Attitude" and "Strong Work Ethic".

Thanks guys. But I'll take my 9-5 job any day. You can take this job and...well, you know the rest.

Procrastination Aid

Hey there.

I'm only making a new post because I hate to see the same post up all the time. Even I come here from time to time. And then I see that it's the same post from three days ago. And I get upset and I say, "Hey, why doesn't this Mike guy get his act together and put something new up? He exists solely for my entertainment!"

And then I quiet down and think, "Oh, right."

So here we are. With nothing to say. But, hey! The upside is, this is new. You haven't seen this before. I like to think of this as "Procrastination Aid". Mmm. Delicious.

So what are you procrastinating from right now? I know you are. You're killing what precious time you have as a living, breathing, thinking, functioning human being reading this instead of doing something meaningful. Or getting something done that you're supposed to have done by tomorrow. Or yesterday.

Let's make this interactive. That's what lazy people do, they tell the viewers to send in stuff and put together next weeks episode so the people who are paid to do that don't have to. They get to have the week off.

Yeah. It's a sham. But I'm in kind of shammy mood. So, do tell, what brings you to The Living Blog? What bit of life are you trying to escape from, or at least, postpone?

P Is For Poetry

Okay, so I graduated in English. And I assume you guys want to see the real stuff. The stuff I actually studied. Well, here's a rough, rough draft of some poetry that I just recently wrote. It'll more than likely see a few revisions in the future.

P

I hear it in both
pain and pleasure.
I keep repeating that playful sound
pounding out of my mouth
made by

that bump
that flag on a flag
pole waving
its hands and arms
with that patriotic dance.

That sound, that
push from the lips.
They, the lips, pucker
press together, voiceless
bilabial plosive
nothing but the sound of air
squeezing through squeezing
lips.

Listen to the sound, the pop
like bottle rockets escaping
from Earth's gravitational pull
and they never make it, they
just explode, sparkle, fizzle
against a purple back drop
then fade
into
ash.

That's the sound
the letter makes
when it finally
speaks.

Full Circle: Dreams From My Childhood May Finally Become Reality. If I Don't Become Distracted First...

I think I figured it out. My calling in life. Where I should take my yet to be established writing career. Science Fiction.

Hack writing? No. There's plenty of Sci-fi writers who are respected not only in the science fiction world but also in the writing world in general. Such as:

Robert Heinlein
Philip K. Dick
Orson Scott Card
Ray Bradbury
L. Ron Hubbard
Isaac Asimov

And...for good measure,
Mr. Douglas Adams.

All of these guys have become well know and well respected. Their books turning into halfway decent to detestable film adaptations (Blade Runner: As timeless and great as the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? from which the story was derived. Battlefield Earth on the other hand...stupid. Very stupid.)

I also believe there's a high market for Science Fiction, even if its mediocre. Nearly 33 years since the release of Star Wars: A New Hope and there's at least 200 different books, by different authors, taking place at every time and place that one could even imagine within the Star Wars universe. There's a Star Wars book with zombies called Death Troopers. I mean, I could totally go and write about ridiculous things like that. And then there's books based off Halo and Mass Effect. Video games are becoming common bases for literature. Or at least cheap Sci-Fi.

Plus, I've always wanted to write Sci-Fi. I had a big plan to when I was a kid. It lasted for a few months, but you know how kids are. They change their minds about what they want to be when they grow up all the time. One week they want the be a fire fighter. The next they want to be a Power Ranger. I wanted to write sci-fi novels when I was about 9 years old. It was right after I figured I wasn't force sensitive enough to be a real Jedi. Couldn't even levitate stuff. And the blade to my light saber was made of plastic instead of hot plasma, or whatever that stuff is made of. Its friggin' hot, I know that. So, when I realized this, I knew it was time for a career change. Suddenly, I liked writing. I wanted to be a writer (which the dumb idea would come back to destroy me only a decade later). I made up a super hero named Galactic Man. Had a trilogy going in my head with world domination and evil robots. It was a darn good story. At the time. But I loved Star Wars, so I loved anything science fiction. That was my plan when I hit the age I'm at now. I even had the hope that my critically acclaimed book series would become full length major motion pictures. I had high dreams. Then, in fourth grade, we had to write essays and stuff. A lot. So my writing career quickly deteriorated. I hated writing for class. At that point, I began to search for my next career path.

But now, after wanting to be a cartoonist, entreprenuer, bass player, animator, and famed poet and novelist, I think I'm going back to my first love: Writing sci-fi. I don't think I'm really going to go through with it, but we'll see. I bought Orson Scott Card's claim to fame, Ender's Game, to get myself back in the mood. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll go into screen writing and write something better than that friggin' Avatar. I can write a movie with an underlying focus of all of America's atrocities from the last 200 years too (with the exception of slavery. Apparently they couldn't shoe horn that in. Or it was just much too far).

Anyway, I should start developing my I, Robot, or Stranger In A Strange Land, or Fahrenheit 451. I have a lot of work to do. If nothing else, by next week I'll decide to be a yoga instructor or tattoo artist. We'll see how things pan out.

Thanks for devoting your hard earned time to reading this. Always remember what you could have done instead of reading this. You're now closer to your death bed, and what do you have to show for it?

Tootles!

In A World Filled With Excitement And Danger

Yeah. My life. Filled with such mesmerizing tales like, "Today, I realized I like my coffee black."

No seriously. This is hot off the presses. Completely new information. Even I'm in utter surprise. I mean, for the last three years I've been addicted to tea. Green tea, white tea, black tea, red tea, blue tea (actually its commonly known as Oolong, but look it up. Seriously, it's considered blue tea. There's nothing blue about it, but that's what I read. In a book). But now the system of things is changing. I'm an adult now, so I like my coffee to be symbolic to my current outlook on my life: Dark and bitter.

...haha. I jest.

Sort of.

I had about 3 giant mug fulls of this Kenyan stuff today. I love it. Dark, steaming, burning every cell of my esophagus. Scarring my tongue. Staining my teeth and making my breath smell dingy. That's how it should of been all along. Instead, I've been dumping spoonfuls of sugar and cups of hazelnut or french vanilla cream into my coffee. What a world I have been unwilling to discover.

I'm addicted now. High on my new drug of choice, caffine. We've been friends for a while, but now we're changing things up. Taking out all the sweetness of our reltionship. No more Monster. No soda. Just that raw flavor. The natural taste of the motor oil colored brew.

I would continue, but the coffee has been processed by the kidneys and...well, you know the rest. Coffee and tea...they tend to go straight through.

More exciting news on the way. Keep reading and discussing my blogs at meals. Get the word out about my genius. If nothing else...it makes for good conversation.