Sunday, February 15, 2009

Time's Fun When You're Having Flies

I haven't blogged in a while because of different circumstances that have come up. I was let go from my job at Masco Builder Cabinet group. That's pretty much because the economy sucks and no one is buying houses, which means no one is buying cabinets for those houses. They let go about 15 people in the time span of about 45 minutes one day. I happened to be one of the casualties. It was a bit shocking because I've never really been fired from a job or anything like that. I went home with all my stuff that I took from my cubicle (I'll never need pens again.) and spent the day using my blackberry as a modem to sign up for unemployment and post my resume on career builder so I could find a new job as quick as possible.

I'm not going to get to theological in this blog, but I will say that I was not worried for one minute because I knew that God will constantly be my provider as He has always been. Unlike the last time I was unemployed, which was for six months, I only spent two weeks without a job.

Ok so anywho I don't want to ramble on too much so I'll get straight to the point. I had my resume on career builder and I was looking around trying to find something I could do. I was thinking that I had had my fill of costumer service. After Verizon, AT&T, and Masco, I was ready to get into something different. I searched for tons of different things that seemed like something worth trying out including a photographers position for school pictures in the North Dallas area. I was really wanting to try that one out because I love taking pictures and the whole photography thing. Well I never got around to faxing in the application because who actually has easy access to a fax machine if they aren't working?

I applied for a couple of marketing positions because it seemed like something interesting and new for me. After one unsuccessful and huge time waster of an interview, I had another one with Zephyr International Promotions in Arlington Texas. I went on the first interview, which was very similar to the other marketing job I had interviewed with earlier, about five minutes long. However, Jeremy actually called me back for the second interview.

I had the interview, which was a half day ride along with a beautiful Brazilian girl named Elke. We went to the Walgreens on Great Southwest Pkwy and she set up a table right outside the door and asked people as they walked out if they wanted to buy something from the table to help raise money for a charity that helps locate missing children.

It was cold, I didn't have a good jacket on, and I was standing the whole day. I was not happy and I was thinking, "What on earth am I doing here??"

After the half day ride along thing, we went back to the office and I sat and waited for a good 45 minutes while waiting for Jeremy to get back from whatever it was that he was doing. After that I had a third interview with him where he further explained to me what the job was about and offered it to me. I accepted because it sounded exciting and challenging.

Fast forward two weeks and here I am in Victoria Texas with Jake and Kevin.

At my job I do pretty much the exact same thing that Elke was doing at the Walgreens. We work with different organizations and do event marketing for them. The job is much more than soliciting though. It's a management training program that will eventually teach me to run my own office, and essentially, my own business. So far it's been kicking my butt. I'm working 12 hour days, six days a week, standing on my feet all day, hearing tons of people tell me no and look at me like a pan-handler.

I'm not gonna lie, this is by far the hardest job I've ever had. I'm not a salesman and I hate salesmen. This job is pushing me so far out of my comfort zone that I can barely see it on the horizon. It's not like every other job that I've had where I can just show up and perform subpar and still know that I'm going to get my check in a week. It's commission based, so I actually have to work hard to get good money. I'm still not very good at it because, like I said, it's way out of my comfort zone, but once I get good at it, I'm looking at making very good money.

Back to Victoria.

From time to time the company sends a small group of people to different areas to set up events out of town. Kevin, the leader of this trip, says that in the past couple months he has been pretty much everywhere there is to go in Texas. Beaumont, Austin, Amarillo, Lubbock, to name a few. These road trips are also great opportunities to make a crap load of money, so once another one became available, I quickly jumped on it.

We left Arlington around 1:30 and got here a little bit before 7 tonight. We made a couple stops and a very interesting lady quoted her brother by saying the title of this unintentionally long blog.

I hope to be able to post a little bit more later this week and let everyone know about the most likely inevitable fun times we're sure to have.

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