Work Rejection

Are you in a job you don’t enjoy currently? Have you ever worked for a company that made your skin crawl to go to work everyday? Have you ever been interviewed for a position and watched them shred your file upon interview? Well, take a seat reader, because I’m about to make you feel a whole lot better about whatever it is you have guilt on.

As far back as I can remember, I have had a job. When you grow up in a house with a family of six, someone has got to stand up at the top of the stairs and scream in a non coherent fashion while shunting dirty clothes down to the bottom of the basement. After all, those ramen noodle encrusted bowls aint gonna rinse themselves, but also there is always the babysitting gig isn’t there? I think babysitting is better now than it was back in the day. When I have Lizzy come over to babysit I definitely pay her 10, 11, 12 dollars an hour. Is this appropriate you guys? Message me if I am underpaying Lizzy, but when I was 12, I got my first babysitting job for the neighbors kids. I went over at 5 and this was before the time of cell phones or any kind of boy interest in me, so it was just me and those kids. There were two of them and the one was interested in Star Wars and the other was interested in hating me. It was a real uphill battle. I just tried to keep them alive. When their parents got home at midnight they handed me a five dollar bill. 5 dollars? For ensuring these Steven King characters stay alive? Yeah, thanks for the mentos I guesss…. I decided babysitting wasn’t very profitable, at least in that area. I then moved on to selling Avon which I royally sucked at before begging my Dad if I could work in his office in high school. He reluctantly agreed. The thing about working in construction as a teenager, well how do I put this and this is not true for all staff members, but sometimes you will be answering the phone and you will say Hello McGee Construction and you sound super professional right? You have your power tank top on, your hair is straightened, there is a computer off to your right that doesn’t even really connect to the internet, but you are working, there is a paycheck with YOUR name on it and you answer the phone and you may or may not hear “is Roda there” . Your innocent naive self will respond “Roda who?” I’m not upset with you, innocent, naive younger self. It’s not your fault the truck driver, or paving foreman, or concrete man had a moment of perversion. But yes you will answer “Roda who?” and that person on the other end of the line will say “Roda all night”. They will laugh hysterically, while you sit bemused as to why that is funny for a couple seconds, hang up the phone and then try to turn on the computer that doesn’t work. Ahhhh, the working life.

I next set my sights on a new enterprise that had just established itself in good Ol’ Gardiner Maine. This was before one of these was on the corner in every town every two feet. Yes I’m talking about Dunkin Donuts. I grabbed an application, filled that sucker out. I was definitely over qualified. After all I could scrub ramen bowls, I had babysat that one time, sold two perfumes from Avon, and told a few truck drivers to kindly go f themselves, so yeah I was pretty much prime for the coffee distribution. So then I put on my best button up, showed up to my interview ten minutes early. I blacked out on some of the interview, but what I do remember is she never once made eye contact with me not once. I kept trying to ensure her of my coffee pouring abilities, my awesome customer service, my pristine work ethic. You guys, she never called me back. Joe loves to tease me about my failed interview. He has worked at 68 places and been hired on the spot for all of them. So he finds it hilarious the rejection I feel against Dunkin Donuts, but hey it made me stronger right?

When I went to UMF I quickly learned you can’t eat thirty dollars of Chinese food every Thursday night without a paycheck, so I interviewed at American Eagle. It was a group interview, some kind of weird social experiment, like who’s answer would suck the hardest. I guess I answered semi well because they hired me. I was so exhilerated at the time. 40 Percent off discount everyone! Did you hear me correctly? I made 7 dollars an hour to then give all of it back and then some to buy clothes for the place that employed me. But it was 40 freakin percent and I left no camisole unturned. I REALLY enjoyed working retail for some reason, although I’m not very good at sales. What I am good with is people and I think that is all that saved me. We had to wear these head sets and my manager would say into my ear, now Taryn, let them know panties are on sale 5 for 20 dollars? Ummmm I’m good. I feel like if someone wants panties, they are going to the panties. Am I right readers? So instead I would say things like how are you today? Just real generic, nice and friendly questions. Needless, to say I worked the fitting room a lot. The fitting room is nice 20 percent of the time except for when it isn’t which is to say most of the time. People treat you like a rotten bag of garbage and say things like, get me a size 2 in these jeans. When the jeans don’t fit because they have been sucking on Dunkin Donut coolatas five times a day (take that rejection), they begin to yell at you about how the jeans are terrible. Thats right, you, the one that is earning minimum wage, not selling panties correctly. They yell at that you. As much as they put me in the fitting room, they also loved to have me train people at the cash register. I’m not really sure why this is. I think I am super patient with people, I can be insulted all day long and still kill someone with kindness. I guess this is preferred when you are behind the register. I am also SOOOO good when someone’s credit card isn’t working. I think this is mostly because my credit card has been declined for a Frosty at Wendy’s a time or two, so I’m not too proud ya know? Instead of saying, your card was declined and looking at my nails. I really liked to say oh my goodness, our machine is on the fritz today, do you have another form of payment? Do you see how this eliminates the shame of the decline everyone? The buyer doesn’t feel shamed, I don’t have to embarrass them. I think Michael Scott calls this a win, win , win.

During my time at American Eagle, I was student teaching and I was lucky enough to get a long term sub position when my mentor had her baby. I was approached at said time that a first grade position was being offered. I took this to mean that that position was definitely, absolutely for me. Ohhhh innocence. I went into the position so confident, there was a table of people, I said what I thought they wanted to hear and then no call backs. I was terrified that there were zero callbacks. I had been told there would BE A POSITION. Here I am for said position, but alas it wasn’t mean to be and that is because a few weeks later a K position opened up and lucky for me that administrator took a chance on a gal fresh out of college, even if she still had some learning to do. And the rest is history. Does my journey to greatness surprise you or cement what you already thought of me? We all have to take a few bumps on our way to the top.