CDW – Sales (21-23)

Due to an unfortunate fake ID incident near the end of college I was sans driving privileges on my first day of work.  How did I get there you ask?  My Mom drove me… yes, that’s right, I arrived at my first day of work after college the exact way I got at school my first day of middle school.  CDW is made up of about a 1000 21-30 year-olds making 120-150 calls a day to try to pimp technology.  It was sweatshop filled with recent college graduates – if I were 12 years old and in Vietnam we would have been stitching soccer balls instead.  It was magnificent in its effectiveness and organization but utterly soul crushing to be an employee there.  My only real satisfaction was aggravating my boss.  I derived so much pleasure from covertly undermining him.  I once called him into a private meeting to tell him that one of the other guys that my boss loved  in the office was making gay advances on me and I wanted to make him aware of it.  I will never forget the face the guy made when I told him that… it was like I just killed his puppy.  After two years of him being an asshole to me and me passive aggressively messing with him I called it quits and headed for greener pastures in Southern California.

Career Lesson – If you don’t like someone at work then just avoid them, no matter how tempting it is to fuck with them, it is not worth it.

SOMC – Call Center Manager – (23)

I was moving to a new city… that is my only excuse for taking this job.  What an eye opener.  I was a call center manager in a run down office filled with people dialing-for-dollars by selling children’s software.  It was so shady. Most sales were made to old people who were so grateful that someone was talking to them that they would happily give out their credit card number for a few more minutes of human contact. The employees ranged from college students to recovering drug addicts.  There was a bus that took people from the halfway house directly to the office (not kidding).  I realized working there that I would never be able to make it in prison.  I had to fire an employee and halfway through the process he gave me a look like he was going to “shank” me.  After losing a few members of my team because they went back on meth I thought I should probably start looking for a new gig.  Eventually I got settled and met enough people not involved in the drug trade to help me land a new job.

Career Lesson – If you ever think you will get “shanked” by an employee you should probably quit.

The Salt Mine – Sales (23-24)

This career move shifted me from a shit job that paid nothing to a shit job that paid me far more than it should have.  I took inbound calls from people looking to sign up for Direct TV and it was my job to up-sell them and charge them as much as I could for the service.  It was easy and initially it paid a ton of money.  It was so brainless that I could read a book and sell at the same time.  Unlike CDW this office was filled with mid 30′s divorcee’s and guys who knocked up their girlfriends and had to do something to make ends meet.  It would have been a great job if it wasn’t for 2 things: 1 – It was pure commission and 2 – They looked for any reason to fire people.  It was like we were on Survivor except there was no million dollar prize and you were voted off the island if you were 2 (yes, 2) minutes late for your shift or the manager didn’t like you.  After a while they fucked with the quota structure and I went from making $40 and hour to about $20 and hour.  This is the main reason why sales sucks – you can go from making 80K a year to 40K a year in an afternoon.  Fuck that… time to bail.

Career Lesson – Commission only is no bueno…

GPC – Sales (24-25)

Working for a small company is a new adventure every day.  Not the fun Indiana Jones type of adventure but rather the kind of adventure where the company goes bankrupt and you lose out on thousands of dollars when they let me go.  It was a fun ride for a while, the owner was a great salesman and an excellent entrepreneur (except for the going bankrupt part.)  The first interview I had was over lunch.  I walked in and met a few different people in the office and the owner said he wanted to use my car to drive to lunch.  I was fine with that but he said that is a way that he eliminates candidates if they refuse or their car is a mess he ends the interview right there.  It is interesting to see what organizations with less resources do to vet employees.  I was pissed when they went under but it actually worked out for me in the end – I ended up landing a spot at my current job (I guess everything happens for a reason…)

Career Lesson – Make sure you don’t have a dead hooker in your back seat when you go to an interview.

Current Job – Sales (26-30)

Everything is WONDERFUL here!  No really… *looks over shoulder*

Career Lesson – People get fired for what they write on their blogs…

Do you have any post graduation job stories?