Another Job Slump

So, it was 2001, and we'd successfully moved into a house. While we didn't own it, the guy had mentioned the possibility of a rent to own situation after the lease was up in a year. It was somewhat encouraging, so that maybe we wouldn't just be throwing money away completely. 

That summer, the Queen did her teacher outings and such. She had gone through her first year, but the (insert unkind word) of a principal she had gave her a heck of a hard time that year. We're not sure why this was, since the Queen took her suggestions, and then she retracted her suggestions to make some different ones. No kidding. It was a very frustrating time for her.

As the Queen got more pregnant through the summer, we hit the end of another job for me. Suncraft decided that they wanted someone in the office who could do more stuff. I had seen this woman come in and talk to the boss for a little while one day, and I could feel that something was going on that I was kept out of. Later that day, I was told that they were going to let me go, not because I'd done a bad job, but because this other person could do more.

Now let me iterate here that they hadn't actually asked me to do anything else, nor did they indicate that anything more needed to be done. I basically wasn't given a chance to learn anything additional or do anything else before they judged that someone else would be more capable. They simply knew who this other person was, and rather than chance whether I could do the same thing, they got rid of the temp and hired her on to do my job and whatever else they needed. They did this on a Thursday, and the boss did graciously tell me that he would pay me for Friday as well. That was kind of him.

I returned to the temp service, but nothing else of this nature was available, so I was on my own. It was high time for another mistake, so while job hunting, I came across a vacuum cleaner sales place that did in home demonstrations of vacuum cleaners to sell them to individuals. I should have walked out, but the pay rate per sale was incredible. I thought that if I could pull off selling these things, we'd do pretty well. Besides, if you did a minimum number of demonstrations, they'd pay a decent wage.

Then I learned the reality. These overpriced vacuums were impossible to sell. Sure, they were cool beyond words, but at a whopping $2600 per unit, no one was willing to buy them. They were too expensive. I found some on eBay later for half that or less. The demonstration minimum was also impossible to hit. After all, you had to have somewhere to go, and though they promised that they had a small cold calling center that set up appointments with good leads, there weren't often enough appointments to justify the 2 per business day minimum to achieve the minimum wage requirement. Even if you did have 2 appointments, actually making them both would be hard enough, and if someone didn't qualify once you got in the door (i.e. general feeling, the decision maker wasn't there), that one didn't count. 

I tried. I really did. I tried for 3 months, but ended up with bupkas for my efforts. The Queen was supporting us solely over that time, and she was getting a bit fed up that I wasn't bringing anything home. She let me try the cleaner thing, but after so long without progress, she was done. I was too. I finally gave back my demo model and I was out. That was a hard time for us, and probably the most stressful. It's about as close as we ever came to losing each other. It was our two year hump (though more like two and a half years), and it was hard.

She was our sole provider, pregnant, and I was turning into a deadbeat, no matter if I was trying or not. We had a baby coming within a month and struggling to make our payments. Something had to give.

Darth Vader at the time was working for a teleservices company, and it was a company I'd applied to work at right after RadioShack, but I'd turned it down because I didn't want to work nights. It was $9 an hour, though, and that was as much as I'd made before. I also knew they hired in at 30 hours, but it had been four months since I'd had any income and anything is always better than nothing.

And so began my time in customer service. I went to work for a cell phone provider called Cricket in their customer service area. It was the beginning of a whole new career path for me, since customer service pays more than I'd done before, and all the customers come to me to solve problems. For a Geek, problem solving is second nature, so it was destined to work out fine.