Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Paying My Own Way
This post has been a little difficult for me to figure out how to start. See, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my current job and jobs in general. Having this job has taught me quite a bit but not in job related skills necessarily, although I sure as hell am gaining some serious “inter-personal” skills, (big buzz word you’ll find when looking at job requirements out there). This job has taught me a lot about pride and how pride can get in the way.
I have talked a little bit in the past about my job and even my adventures in looking for a job and I have definitely changed my attitude about jobs in general since I started working where I am employed now. Earlier today, I was talking to a friend of mine about jobs and what I might be looking for in addition to reading a comment on this site and it is both of these forms of communication that has prompted this entry.
There are a lot of people out there claiming, “There are no jobs!”, “I can’t find a job!”, “I’ve been looking for a year now and still nothing!” Let’s just halt that crap right now. That is all bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. There ARE jobs out there. As the commenter and my friend both said, open up any given newspaper and you will see a plethora of jobs available out there.
I’m not being a hypocrite. As I said, I have definitely changed my attitude about jobs in general. See, just last year I was one of those pissing and whining that there weren’t enough jobs. No. That was also a load of crap. You see, the problem wasn’t that there weren’t enough jobs, the problem was me being too damn picky about where I would work. Plain and simple. Oh, I applied all over the place. I applied for so many fricken jobs that looking for a job was a full time fricken job. But I didn’t learn when I lived in Seattle. I was still too stuck up to work at any job I deemed, “beneath me” even though I had worked a lot, and I mean a LOT of shit jobs when I was younger.
What happened was I bought into the crap that because I was a certain age, that meant I had to have certain jobs and that there was, “no way in hell” I’d “ever work there!” even if it meant going through my savings. For what reason? Pride.
I even pulled that crap when I first moved here to TX. I spent about two months when I first got here applying all over town and going to a few interviews. As the clock kept ticking and nobody called me up to start working, I realized that the pride needed to get the hell out of my way. The thing is, too many people want that job that you want and when you go to apply or interview, you are competing against 100+ other people who may or may not be more qualified than you, or know someone there, or lied really well on their resume. You never know. What you do know is that the competition is stiff for the better paying jobs. However, those are not the only jobs in America.
So I went and got a “lowly” job. The job paid low wages, we had to pay to even use the breakroom...yes, we were not allowed to even sit in the breakroom on our breaks unless we had paid the $9 a week for the free pop. See, the pop dispenser sat in the break room and the company didn’t trust any of us enough to allow us to just use a couch unless we had paid because they assumed we would steal their precious pop. Anyway, the job was ok, it wasn’t hard and I thought that maybe over time I could work my way into a different dept. Over the course of my employment and after talking to people in that dept., I realized, I didn’t want to work in that field anymore.
So I found a new job. Funny thing is, the new job paid more but my status in society’s eyes plummeted merely because of the job I held. Additionally, I had a hard time getting over the fact that I was working where I was working because I, too, felt the same way that the rest of society did about people who worked in the field I worked in.
What I’ve learned, however, is that this job is NOT easy, it’s very demanding, it takes a LOT of organizational skills, memory and you do have to know how to interact with people. Interacting with people is a skill that a lot of people simply do not possess. Period. But I’m good with customer service. Yah I bitch about rude patrons on here...but that prevents me from doing it to their face. That makes me have the ability to continue with customer service especially when the customer gets bent out of shape because I can’t read their minds.
Last Friday was a turning point for me. I had been at work a total of two hours and the customers were the all time rudest I have ever witnessed in any job at any given time. It was one jackass right after the other. This weekend I have thought about almost nothing else but finding another job and how to deal with the one I have right now. And in talking to my friend and reading that comment it hit me.
You know what? I don’t give a damn what those customers think about me personally, I don’t give a damn what any of my friends think about my job, I don’t give a damn what any blogger might think about my job and I don’t give a damn what society in general thinks about my job or about me because I have that job.
What matters is that I am not lying around on the couch, pissing and moaning that I can’t find a job. I’m not mooching off my friends or society to pay my way. I’m not expecting anyone to hand me a damn thing.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to cut/paste a comment from someone else’s site so I’m going to do my best to paraphrase what someone wrote on the above linked site.
Again, it’s not that there aren’t jobs out there, it’s that people are picking and choosing which jobs they will apply for and disregarding the rest. They are not carving out their own paths. They are waiting for someone to make the path for them.
Additionally, the next time you see someone working in a job you think only idiots work in, or the next time you want to make a comment or post about jobs and make a flippant joke about this menial job or that, remember, there ARE people out there who have these jobs WHILE they are continuing their search for a better job. It doesn’t make that person less valuable, stupid or lazy. The fact that they got off their ass, took any job they could find and refused to be baby-sat by everyone else out there who is working should be enough for people to look at them levelly and not down their noses at them.
And I’ve seen a fair share of people doing it in real life and here in Blogland whether it be in posts or comments. I used to do it too. But let me remind you, it doesn’t get to be both ways. Either the person “does what they have to do to get by until things get better” or “they are stupid and that’s why they work there”. It’s one or the other. People need to make up their minds what it is they want. There are completely incompetent people in every job out there but to tell someone they are nothing because of where they work and then turning around and bitching about all those lazy, unemployed bums out there is talking out both sides of your mouth.
In almost every single case with my fellow employees, it’s them doing what they have to do to get by until things get better. Those people, who are “in between good paying jobs” or are putting themselves through school or are taking on an extra job to make ends meet, are working their butts off so that they can get out of there.
Yes, the job sucks but it doesn’t mean the people do. Because at least they have a fucking job. And the next time a customer wants to get rude with me, I’m going to remember that I’m making my own way and for all I know, they could be one of the moochers. I’m also going to listen carefully when my friends start talking negatively about certain jobs and the people who work those jobs because I do not wish to be associated with anyone who would think like that. As I said, I used to think like that and it’s utter bullshit.
You do what you gotta do until you find something that makes things better. It doesn’t make me or anyone else less worthy of respect.
