Perseverance Does Pay Off

On October 3, 2010, I packed as much of my stuff as I could fit into my 2004 Saturn Ion (just the essentials, mind you) and made the trek from Fayetteville, NC to Atlanta, GA. For several years, my best friend, Robert, had been after me to do it, and I always had some piss poor excuse not to. I guess I had finally just gotten to the point that knowing that Fayetteville had nothing to offer me, career wise, except for crappy retail jobs that even the apprehension of leaving my loved ones just wasn't enough to keep me from taking the gamble of heading to a large metro area and trying to stake a claim on having a career and a life.

My first week in Atlanta I found a job, albeit not one any better than I could have found in Fayetteville. For about six months I hammered away working a part time, minimum wage gig at an office supply store for a control freak of a boss while putting my resume on almost every job site I could find. By Thanksgiving I had had one interview with a place that offered the opportunity to have a “real job” but was told my tech skills weren't strong enough yet. By January 2011 I had made a tentative decision to go back to North Carolina if I didn't have anything better than the retail job I had by the end of March. I even told my boss as much – that either by then I'd be shown that I had a future at the office store, have found something better here in the ATL, or I was going home. At that point I had decided that if I was going to be stuck in a crappy, minimum wage, retail job, I might as well go home and do that and at least then I could be with my fiancée everyday and maybe even see my Gramma, Mom, Sister and Niece on a regular basis.

But it's amazing what friendship can do for you. I have been really blessed in that coming to Atlanta has scored a great group of friends even beyond Robert, who already lived here. So my gaming buddy, Jeff, made me an offer. He needed a new roommate, and I needed to move out of Robert's house (that's a long story that I won't get into here, but it had nothing to do with anything bad between Rob and I – he's still my best friend, and lives less than two miles away from me). Anyway, Jeff offered to get an apartment with me – one which he could afford by himself if needs be, and that he was going to rent regardless of me being his roommate or not. The deal was that I could help out with what I could when I could until I found that “real job” I had been hunting. In fact, I was waiting to hear back from a job I had interviewed for that would have meant I could afford half the bills. So, I decided to stay, and even signed a twelve month lease that began March 1, 2011.

So for a month I continued working at the office store, thinking that maybe I had made a mistake in staying. Then one I day I got a phone call that would set in motion flood of career opportunity. The call came from a staffing agency (aka, temp agency, “head hunter”, whatever you want to call them). It was a chance to work, “temp-to-hire”, for $13 per hour, and it was even in the technology field. Finally, after months of rejection, or just plain no replies, I was being offered a “real job”. I started that job on April 26, went through six weeks of training and, at the risk of being a bit arrogant, had become one of the top two or three members of the customer service specialists on my team. I not only had a job that paid a decent wage but at which I knew I was respected, trusted and likely being groomed for advancement at.

Then the damnedest thing happened. I got a message on Facebook from an acquaintance that I knew through Robert, named Keith. He told me his company was hiring for their Technical Support team. I hesitant at first, for a few reasons. First of all, the place I was already working had already started the proceedings of switching me from being a temporary contract employee to permanent employee. Secondly, I knew I had a future where I was working (I had been directly told by my manager that once permanent I was in the running to be promoted to Tier 2 support). And thirdly, I had interviewed with this other company before, back in 2005, before it had been acquired by a larger company and was told my Unix/Linux skills weren't up to par for them to take the gamble on hiring me. Oh yeah, and they had just laid off Robert back in January because his job was duplicated overseas. So, I was a little apprehensive about even trying. I've been running Linux on my personal computer for a few months now, but still, my skills in Unix/Linux are still pretty rudimentary, in my opinion. Robert said I should go for it, so I said “fuck it” and sent my resume to Keith. I got a phone call from an HR Recruiter and had a preliminary “interview” over the phone a few days later. I figured that's that, and went to work that afternoon. Low and behold, I was called by the recruiter again to set up a phone interview one Friday with the team managers/leads here in Atlanta (Alpharetta, actually, but it's still the Metro-Atlanta area).

I honestly thought I had blown that phone interview. I started off pretty strong, but then they started asking about things that I was only vaguely familiar with and really couldn't answer the questions specifically, Again I thought “well, that's that” and went back to work on my next scheduled day. Imagine my surprise when I got a call that following Monday telling me that they wanted to do an on-site interview! Cool. I'll go and let them meet me face-to-face, I thought. I'll show them what I do know and hope it's enough, but I had a feeling they'd, once again, tell me that they needed someone with more Unix knowledge and experience than I had and really didn't have the time and resources to train and teach me. So, on a Friday morning, I got up at 6am, showered, shaved and put on my favorite suit and drove from Decatur to Alpharetta (it was the Friday before Labor Day in fact, so I ended up being way early because I had overestimated how bad traffic would be that morning). I met with four different people, two at at time, for a little over an hour. We talked about basic Unix commands, networking, I was even asked to view a couple of log files to test my ability to read them. Personality wise, I got along great with everyone I spoke with, but again I thought, on the technology portion of the interview I had fumbled. So I drove back to Decatur, changed clothes and proceeded to go about my normal Friday errands and such (Friday being one of my regular days off from the current job). Two hours later, my phone rang – it was the HR Recruiter. Naturally I thought, “Well, if this was good news, they wouldn't be calling me only two hours later.” I was WRONG! She was calling to offer me the job! Holy Shit! I couldn't believe it! It was all I could do to contain myself lest I wreck my car, since I was pulling out of a McDonald's drive through at the time.

So here I am, almost a year after coming down here, preparing to start a job that pays substantially more than I was making tomorrow morning. Leaving the job I was at was bitter-sweat. I really liked and respected my manager. I really got along with my team, and pretty much everyone did their job and we all worked really well together and, as I said before, I knew I was in line for moving up the ladder there. But when you get an offer for a job that's in a field you've been hoping to break into as long as I have, and it pays more per year than you're already making, you don't say “no”.

It's been a crazy twelve months, but it's obviously paid off. I've fallen in love with this city and all the awesome things there are to see and do here. I've found a great core group of friends. And now I finally have landed in the career that I've been hoping for for years. The only thing left is to move my beloved down here with me, and that will happen soon.

So if you're feeling down or like life's dumping on you, just hang in there. It may not be tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even next year, but good things really do happen to those who don't give up.

"Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." - James 1:12 NASB

"Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill, (29 October 1941)

~ JC

The 20 Yard Commute

You may have noticed I didn't post a blog last Sunday. For those three or four of you who actually read this blog, I apologize for that, but I was out of town and really didn't want to use the computer I had access to to write my blog since it wasn't mine. My reason for being out of town is actually more or less what I want to write about today. I spent, along with my beloved fiancée, house and dog sitting for my aunt and her husband (who is also my employer) the entire week from July 5 through July 11. It's sad that that was the closest thing to a vacation that Roxanne and I will likely have this year, but we got paid for it and it was nice to be out of Fayetteville for an entire week. But I digress.

House sitting for my boss did allow me to experience, albeit for only four days, what it is like to work from home. Since the shop is in the backyard of the house, I only had to walk out of the side door of the house, through the gate into the backyard and voila! I was at work. I whopping twenty yards or so. Compared to my normal 65ish miles that takes around an hour from Fayetteville to Garner¹, it was a nice change of pace. The only bad thing, and it really wasn't all that bad of a thing, is that I found myself still waking up when I normally would have when at home. Considering that I was also watching two pit bull-terriers, it was helpful to have that extra time, but I still ended up getting tired of watching the same news stories loop on 'Morning Express with Robin Meade' and would end up getting dressed and heading out the shop at 9:30 instead of 10:00. Like I said, not really a bad thing, just a slightly annoying thing I guess.

So, this is what that experience showed me. Working from home is pretty awesome, but it can also be distracting. You would think I would have worked more hours since I was just right there and was not as anxious about having to drive home on I-40 and I-95. Interesting thing is, it's much easier to end up taking an hour for lunch instead of only thirty minutes when all you have to do is walk from the shop to the kitchen in the house and sit with your fiancee. You also end up realizing, hey, the TV, computer, whatever-book-I'm-reading, et cetera is just right there in the house and not an hour away and I'd much rather watch TV, read a book or play on the computer than make belts or dye, finish and wax holsters. So, in that respect, working from home can be a bit of a distraction too. Having pets and working from home is also a distraction because you find yourself thinking more about if they need to go outside or if they're tearing up stuff inside more when you're right there where you can take care of it.

Sure, it saved on gas and I really didn't have to get up as early (I did manage to sleep in a whole thirty minutes extra a couple of mornings), but I'm not sure I could pull off working from home everyday. I think I'd be to likely to constantly think of things that needed to be done like laundry or painting all of those pesky Warhammer models to be very productive with my work if I did work from home; out of sight, out of mind so they say. At any rate, while I certainly would not mind having a job that allowed me to work from home (aka, telecommute), I cannot guarantee I'd be as productive doing so as I would in a shop or office away from all the hobbies and things at home that could distract me from working.²

~ JC

1. That would be Fayetteville, NC USA to Garner, NC USA in case anyone was wondering or confused. Sometimes I do actually get the random reader who doesn't know me grin.

2. Now that I think about it, the fact that I wasn't actually working from home, but someone else's home is probably why I still got my work done that week. I didn't have all my stuff with me to distract me as much. LOL

Reflections on the Future

So, I was reading a post by my buddy Jimmy over at the Jabberwocky Asylum called “My Life Changes: Everything Old is New Again!” this morning and it got me thinking and put me in a blogging mood. As you may have read in my last post, I was fired from my job at RadioShack. Day one afterwards was like having a day off. Day two was like a mini-vacation. By day four, I was about to go stir crazy from boredom despite having a couple dozen books to catch up on reading and my World of Warcraft addiction to keep my occupied. Thankfully, yesterday I got a call from my aunt's husband, who owns Wild Bill's Concealment, which makes holsters and belts and such for folks who are licensed for carry and concealment of handguns. In other words, he's a leather smith, and he offered me a job. Now, I know jack about leather working, but it seems like it'd be fun to learn a skill like that, plus it's an income while I decide what I want to be when I grow up (for the record, I'm 37). So, I'll enjoy the remainder of this week and I'll start working for Wild Bill on Monday.

Over this past week couple of weeks, both before and after my exodus from RadioShack, I've thought about a lot of things. I've watched my friend Rob go through the loss of his aunt to cancer. I've dealt with being unemployed (albeit for a very brief period) and what to do about finding an income and possibly returning to school in some capacity. Reading Jimmy's blog this morning was, well, eye opening to a degree. For starters, it made me realize that I'm not the only one who worries about what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, or if past choices were right or wrong. This whole past couple of weeks has made me rethink my beliefs, spiritually speaking, my mortality, my career (or rather, the lack thereof).

Truth be told told, I have no frakkin' idea what the future holds. Who does? I also have no plan (but, hey, it's only been a week since I lost my retail job). I do know, and still hold to my conviction that losing my job at RadioShack was decidedly not a bad thing. It needs to serve as a catalyst to propel me forward and light the proverbial fire under my ass to start living and seek my bliss and my true calling and career. And, no, I don't think my calling is to make leather holsters for the rest of my life (but, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't be open to it if it turns out that I really love doing it). I've always toyed with the idea of working in the computer field in some way. Years ago I started a programming degree, but never finished it. I've attempted to start my own computer repair business with some friends, but we floundered on it shortly after. I've interviewed with a company in Atlanta to be an IT guy, but at the time lacked the necessary skills to get the job. I've researched various certification programs at local community colleges, but never had the balls to go for it. So now is the time. Get busy living or get busy dying, as Andy said to Red in “The Shawshank Redemption.” Either I'll end up loving leather working and use that as a catalyst to doing my own thing with a crafting skill, or I'll end up back in school for IT and/or networking certification and finally get that high paying gig in the computer industry that I say I've always wanted. One thing is for sure, I'm not even the least bit interested in ever working in retail again! I've had enough of having my soul drained by corporate greed and asshole customers.

Oh, and with so many things running through my head these days, this blog will probably be reborn as well. I've never had designs on writing professionally, but I do enjoy writing. So even if no one reads it, I'll still write it.

~ Carlisle

Random Rantings of a Retail Sales Clerk

I work retail, ergo, I hate people. No, seriously. I hate people. Ever seen the movie Clerks? Remember the tag line? “Just because they server you, doesn't mean they like you.” Well, it's freakin' true! We really don't like you. Ever wonder why so many retail clerks seem to have attitude problems? Well, it's because we've had to deal with dozens of assholes before you arrived and our ability to filter our emotions has worn to a nub and now everyone gets on our last nerve and every question is a “stupid question.” Seriously, who decided that it was acceptable social behavior to treat sales clerks and customer service people like they're total pieces of shit? We're there to help you, we've been trained in the product(s), we know what we do and don't have in our store. Note: OUR STORE, not the fucking Wal-mart down the street, so stop asking, “Does Wal-mart have it cheaper?” I don't know, and I don't fucking care and it's rude of you to ask. If you want to know what another store has, go bother them and stop wasting my time. Oh, and on that note, don't expect me to help you figure out how to use something or activate a pre-paid cellphone or bluetooth headset that you didn't buy from me. Why should I help you? You didn't put any money in my pocket by purchasing it from someone else, and are, in fact, potentially taking money out of my pocket by wasting time that I could've spent actually making a commission sale to that person that just walked out of my store because they were tired of waiting for me to finish answering your stupid questions.

The people I hate the most are assholes with cellphones. Yeah, I own one, but I took the time to read the owner's manual and figure it out on my own and I also don't walk into a store talking (loudly) and still expect to be given the undivided attention of the clerk even though I'm not giving them mine. You get the idea I hope? SHUT UP AND CONDUCT YOUR BUSINESS. Do you know how easily I could cheat people just because they're so tied up in their self-absorbed cellphone conversation that they're not even really paying attention to what's going on at the register? I could so short change someone or add a bunch of crap to their ticket, and they'd probably never realize it. Good thing for them I was raised to act with integrity and honor, huh?

Other cellphone annoyances include things like people yelling at me or my co-workers because of their bill. I don't work for the carrier dumb-ass! Call their customer service and ask them why your bill is so high. Don't call me complaining that the payment you just made hasn't posted yet, either. If you handed me the wrong “PreCash” card or told me the wrong phone number, that's your fault, not mine!

So, in short, don't' be an asshole, and maybe you won't get attitude from the sales clerk. Now, I'm not saying that's always going to be true, because frankly there are sales clerks out there who should be fired. But most of us work to hard, and get paid to little, to be treated the way a lot of people treat us. And remember, the clerk doesn't make the rules/policies for their respective company; they're just expected to follow them or risk being fired. So, if you don't like it, that's fine, but don't take it out on the person behind the counter; they're just doing their job.

~ JC

PS. To those of you out there who try to be polite to sales clerks, thank you! I wholeheartedly mean that. It's easy to tell those customers who themselves work or have worked retail and know what it's like to be on my side of the counter.

PPS. This rant doesn't just apply to retail, by the way. It applies to anyone in a service related industry, such as the folks a the ticket booth or concession stand at the movie theater or local sports arena, the people at the bank (although, they could stand to use some lessons in being faster, in my humble opinion), and even those folks whose job it is to answer the phone for whatever customer service hotline for whatever company.

---

Upcoming (possible) Topics: I'm debating whether or not to comment on the situation involving the Fayetteville (NC) Dogwood Festival and a local church (which, for now, will remain nameless); “Wasting Time on the InterWeb”; commentary on so-called Reward Programs; credit card applications; “The Wit and Wisdom of Randall Graves”. To many things run through my brain on a daily basis for me to decide right now :-)

Workbrain Needs a Lobotomy

lo·bot·o·my :surgical severance of nerve fibers connecting the frontal lobes to the thalamus performed especially formerly for the relief of some mental disorders

Ah, Sunday morning. Listening to music on Rhapsody. Drinking coffee. Waiting for Roxanne to wake up so we can decide what, if anything, we want to do today. I'm actually off today, on a Sunday. The last Sunday I had off was January 6. By my count, that's eleven straight Sundays, including Easter Sunday, which we normally would've been closed on, but corporate greed decided we needed to be open on the holiday. It's about 10:40 am as I write this. Normally, I'd be scrambling to get a shower, get breakfast and get dressed to be at work by 12:30. But not today! I'm off today. And why am I off? Because I had to bloody request it, that's why. And for the record, I'm scheduled to work next Sunday that I know of, which will probably start another stretch of a dozen Sundays until I request one off. My manager said that she now is expected to work at least two Sundays a month, so maybe I won't have to work every Sunday, but I'll believe that when I see it.

You see, the company I work for uses a piece of software called 'Workbrain.' Sounds cool, eh? Well it f---ing sucks! This, presumably expensive, software program is supposed to create a balanced schedule based on sales projections, store hours, and, of course, the individual's productivity based on their sales. Balanced, my left nut! How's it balanced for one person to work every Sunday? The stupid program thinks I'm the only key-holder available on Sunday! Sure, my manager's tried to fix it, but the information won't take for some reason, and so I get stuck with working every Sunday. But that's not the only thing this great and wonderful software does that makes no sense. Let me give you a typical schedule of mine for a given week; in fact, I'll give you two weeks so you can see that it's a constant, not just a fluke (keep in mind, our pay week runs from Saturday through Friday):

March 22 – 28
Saturday 11:30am – 9:00pm
Sunday 12:30pm – 6:00pm
Monday OFF
Tuesday 9:00am – 1:00pm
Wednesday OFF
Thursday 8:30am – 11:30am (what was the f---ing point of even going in?)
Friday 11:15am – 9:00pm

March 29 – April 4
Saturday 9:00am – 1:15pm
Sunday OFF (remember, I requested this one)
Monday 8:30am – 1:30pm (and the next person comes in at 11:30am, so I'll be opening alone)
Tuesday 8:30am – 9:00pm (yep, 12 ½ hour day because the manager's on vacation and the other key-holder needs a day off too)
Wednesday OFF (the other key-holder gets to do the 12 ½ hour routine)
Thursday 8:30am – 6:15pm
Friday 8:30am – 1:30pm

And then, on the following Saturday, April 5, I don't got in until 5:00pm and have a schedule in which I do nothing but close every night, occasionally going in as early as 11:15am or as late as 5:00pm. Sure, that makes sense, right?

Now, you'd think that the manager would have some control over all this. NOPE. The district manager has basically forbidden the store managers from making edits to the schedule; it is to be worked as Workbrain did it, because Workbrain did it that way for a reason. Yeah, the reason is the programmer was a moron! The schedule makes no sense when on one day I'll work a 10 hour shift, only to have a three or four hour shift on a couple of other days; please, for the love of Mike just give me five, six-to-eight hour shifts like a normal person and rotate the freakin' weekends! That's the problem with allowing a computer program to do the scheduling instead of a person; there's no sense of fairness or balance. The machine just sees numbers and tries to predict who needs to be where and when. But, it can't even do that right, not when it schedules a mere two people on a Saturday night, but will have three working until an hour before closing on a mid-week day. Please, someone give Workbrain a programming lobotomy – it has a mental disorder!

~ JC

Upcoming: The results for the poll at the Blogger version of my blog will be posted on Tuesday (possibly not until late, if you happened to notice my schedule above for that day). You still have Sunday and Monday to vote. So far, “Tweak the layout and content, but keep it” has the lead at 50%, while the smart asses that actually chose “42” are at 30%, and the simple answer of “Keep it” is at 20%.