Tag: careers

On new habits

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

article-2421505-1AA2E1E3000005DC-504_964x740First of all, I have no idea where this image came from.  I can reconstruct the original Google search but I sort of fell down a rabbit hole after that and I can’t be held responsible for pictures of dogs climbing on elephants.  I just can’t.

I completed my final act of outstanding customer service this morning, which required an hour-long drive up to Michigan to return the now-repaired piece of furniture I had picked up last week.  Everything went fine; the piece was fixed to my and their satisfaction, the drive was pleasant, everyone was happy,  and the hell-rain that filled up the entire afternoon didn’t start until after I got home.

I spent most of the drive up there listening to podcasts.  I’ve got a handful that I’m pretty fond of now, meaning that pretty much any time I have time to listen to them there are going to be a handful of new episodes on my phone.  A few notables:

  • Pod Save the People
  • Lore
  • Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities
  • Nightlight: The Black Horror Podcast
  • Feminist Frequency Radio
  • Females in Fantasy
  • Mass for Shut-Ins

And just today I noticed one called Subliminally Correct, which I haven’t actually listened to yet but it’s a couple of psychologists talking about subconscious messaging and propaganda in politics, which definitely sounds up my alley.

It hit me on the way home that starting in a couple of weeks I will have no time to listen to any of these, ever, unless I radically change how I interact with podcasts.  Because podcasts are for the car, and what with my drive to work having been cut down by about 90% I’m just not going to be spending any time in the car any longer.

It’s interesting, right?  You think of a new job as just a change of job, but in this case there are all these ancillary lifestyle changes that are coming with it– and, really, it’s not unfair to say that the lifestyle changes were a huge part of I wanted the new job in the first place.  My wife and I were sitting on the couch yesterday evening after she got home from work, each of us trying to get the other one to commit to some sort of plan for dinner, when she looked at me and said “This is what our lives are going to be forever, now.”  It hit me that in a real sort of way, after two years of me working every weekend and until 8 three nights a week, there’s going to be a real element of my wife and I having to relearn how to live together again.  And to be clear, I am not not not complaining about that, and I’m looking way forward to it, because it’s what I want.  But there’s no reason to pretend it’s not going to be a thing.  I haven’t cooked dinner in a while!  Maybe I’ll start cooking again!  I mean, we’ll have to, right, what with being home together for dinner for– gulp– seven nights a week.

Crazytown.

Well, that’s enough of that

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments

As if today wasn’t enough of an unalloyed shitstorm already (those last two posts were both after midnight) I am pretty sure that I am now back on the job market.  No, I haven’t quit– and I won’t until I have a new job– but I’m back to looking.  I don’t even have the energy to go into why right now.  Maybe sometime this weekend.

Until then, and on a happier note, if you haven’t watched Stranger Things yet, it’s worth paying for Netflix all by itself.

Upon the One-Month Anniversary of My Tenure as a Salesman of Fine Furniture: A Reflection

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work3 Comments
ashley-furniture-sales-111413.jpg
Pictured: George Stephanopoulos, me

Short version: I ain’t dead yet.

As of today, I’ve served four weeks on the sales floor, plus two weeks of pure training, and am personally responsible for the sale of nearly fifty thousand dollars of furniture and furniture-related goods and services to the discerning and tasteful residents of northern Indiana and southern Michigan.

I was hoping it would be over fifty thousand, and missed that mark by a few hundred bucks, mostly because this week was sllllooooow.  I’m aiming for sixty next month; we’ll see what happens.  During that time, I have walked (conservatively, and not joking) a hundred and sixty miles.  It’s probably higher than that.  I’m still getting used to the schedule; three eleven-hour days a week where I’m there from open to close, a half day on Wednesdays, and a short day on Sunday.  I deliberately did not report to OtherJob this week, pleading the need for two consecutive days off, and spent my Friday thusly:

7:45 AM: Arise from slumber.  Rouse boy.
8:30 AM: Deliver boy to day care.
9:15 AM: Return home.  Go back to bed.
3:45 PM: Get out of bed, grab Sonic for lunch, collect boy from day care.
5:00 PM: Get home.  Spend rest of day lazing about.

I regret nothing, people.

I enjoy the work.  I’m even getting to not completely hate Tuesdays, which involve unloading enormous trucks full of heavy furniture and then hours of time on the phone with people who don’t understand that no, we don’t send a truck to your little piss-ant town five days a week, and yes, that means that if Friday’s truck is full you’re going to have to wait until next Friday.  Yes, I know you spent a thousand dollars.  So did everyone else.  We’re doing our damn best over here.

But anyway.  Yeah: I like the work, I like the people I’m working with, I like the idea that this is a skill I need to sharpen and get better at.  I’m not hugely fond of the schedule, mostly because I’m missing out on daddy time, and my body is weary, but that’s getting better.  The gripes are minor, especially compared to anything I went through teaching.  I have to find a way to carve out more writing time, too, but as the exhaustion lessens that’ll get better.  And I beat my training pay this week, by a decent margin.  That’s all sorts of good.

So, yeah.  As mid-life career changes go?  Right now, this could be a hell of a lot worse.

So this just arrived

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work8 Comments

…I am starting to think that listing my resume on CareerBuilder.com was perhaps not the brightest decision I ever made.  This showed up in my mailbox today; the only alterations I have made are the italics and to change my real name to Luther’s:

Respected Luther M. Siler,

Our Company New-W. would like to congratulate you on your selection for the position of Logistics Supervisor. New-W. is a reputed company dealing in logistics of delivery of goods purchased from USA & Canada online retailers to customers all over the Globe. Our company gives you the perfect opportunity to get experience in the field of logistics with field work and provides the best of career growth to hardworking candidates

To confirm your acceptance, please send the following to us:
•       Your Name & Surname
•       Your Cell Number

As a logistics supervisor you duties will include the following
•       Receipt and dispatch of packages to clients Worldwide
•       Coordinate the logistics of delivery process with other members of the team
•       Control to admin panel on daily basis

SALARY & PERKS
For the 1st month which probationary, you salary will be in the range of 2400-3500$. After successful completion of this period, you will be eligible to receive bonuses depending on your performance.
We look forward for a fruitful association with you.

Sincerely,
Alfreda Hall
New-W. Company

I note also that the return email does not appear to be affiliated with “New-W. Company,” which somehow fails to surprise me.

Jobhunting!

Primal scream (don’t read)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work2 Comments

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News on the job front!  I have, once again, had someone contact me with a job offer!  And it pays $37 an hour!  That’s a lot of money!  And it’s a real job this time and not a scam!

A real job that will have unpredictable hours from week to week, have a lot of travel, and end in October!

Okay, there’s a possibility of coming on full-time once the specific project I’ll be training people for is over, but hours will still vary widely from week to week, which challenges my notion of what “full time” means, and the job will still be mostly travel!

GODDAMMIT.

Exclamation point!

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.

Oh and also the job is literally working for the literal devil.  That’s not a joke.

In which the good news isn’t

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work7 Comments

36004771.jpgSo, in theory, I got offered a job last Wednesday, which ought to be good news.  I had a company contact me out of the blue regarding a resume that I had posted on a job site and asking for me to come in and do an interview.  The actual job itself wasn’t something I might have gone for on my own– sales, generically– but I suspected I could be good at it, and screw it, job.

Two interviews and some new clothes later, I actually got offered a position, asked for a couple of days to discuss it with my wife, and then found myself in the odd position of realizing that I need to have my scam filters up while interviewing for a job.  Long story short: the position pays on pure commission, which is bad enough (I have had one commission job in my life, which I quit after my second shift by simply not showing up for my third) but the way the commissions are determined is… we’ll say shifty.

When the guy interviewing you says, during the second interview, “It’s like a pyramid.  Not a pyramid scheme, but a pyramid!” it should throw up some red flags.  And it did, but they didn’t really fully register until I got home and my wife looked up the company on some web job boards.  And at that point… yeah.  No.

So I gotta email this guy tonight or tomorrow and turn down an at-least-in-theory paying job when I haven’t been to work since October, which chaps my ass something fierce to have to do, but I should never have to use the phrase “at least in theory” when referring to the paying part of a job, and for this job I kinda do.

So, yeah.  Still doing this: anybody wanna hire me?  I’m good at stuff!

On that job hunt

On By Luther M. SilerIn Work7 Comments

derbs.png.jpegA few months ago I sent out a flurry of applications for work-from-home, set-your-own-schedule types of jobs.  One of them was doing background checks on people who are trying to get security clearance to work for the federal government.  It didn’t look like something that would be super fulfilling as a life goal, but my mentality at the time was basically fuck it, apply anyway.

Forward to the end of January, yesterday specifically, and I get an email from these people, informing me that I’ve passed the first stage of screening (which apparently just involved reading my resume and cover letter) and need to take a couple of online tests as the next stage.

Tests?  ‘Kay.  Sure, why not, and I was stuck on the manuscript anyway so I needed something else to do.  The tests turned out to be childishly easy once I figured out what was actually going on; the first was a Flash replica of a Windows desktop and they asked me to perform several basic tasks like “attach this to an email,” “delete this file,” “rename this file,” and things like that.  They allotted fifteen minutes, I was done in five. You get to make one mistake on each question before you fail it, and I made a mistake on the very first question because I didn’t quite get what was going on (if they want you to open the Start menu to open a program, and you click anywhere other than the Start menu, that’s an error) but I was perfect from then on.

The second test was literally “write these three emails.”  The first was explaining a policy to an employee, the second was giving directions to a place to a job seeker, and the third was informing the staff of a mandatory meeting.  In each case they gave me a bunch of details they wanted me to include but otherwise let me write the message as I saw fit.

I resisted the urge to make the second email dude, here’s our address, if you can’t figure out a way to get directions in 2016 other than bothering me for them you don’t get the job.

I got another email late last night informing me that I had passed Stage Two and asking me to email them several times in the next few weeks where I would be available for a 30-minute phone interview.  Included in that email was a description of the training process for the job.

Which is three months long, full-time, mostly out of town, and unpaid.  And, furthermore, if I were to complete the three-month unpaid training and not spend a year in the job,(*) I would have to pay them for the training.

They will not be receiving a list of times to call.

The really sad thing is, that entire story legitimately represents the closest thing to good news on the job front I’ve gotten lately.  Whee!

(*) And if you thought to yourself I bet they haven’t said how much the job pays, you get a cookie, because no, they didn’t.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: Relevant

On By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

(10 minutes later)

I actually wasn’t going to comment on this initially, but something just hit me: there are a ton of sales jobs available in the area, and I’ve applied for none of them despite a suspicion that I might actually be pretty good at such work.  I just accidentally figured out why: after fifteen years of teaching and twelve years of NCLB, one thing I really want is a job where, as much as possible, my evaluation as an employee is based on what I do and not on what other people do.  Teachers are probably the best example of that, where just about all that matters to our evaluations now is how people who are not us and who we have no real control over do on tests that we can’t see beforehand and didn’t write.  But sales is not far behind– if somebody doesn’t have the money to buy something, chances are that person just isn’t gonna buy it, and talking them into buying it anyway is unethical as hell.  Sales is also a little too beholden to the vagaries of the economy than I’d prefer.  I hadn’t really made that connection prior to putting this video up, but that’s definitely part of my reticence here.