Graduation Frustrations

3:18 PM Marcellino DAmbrosio 7 Comments

So I’m sure many of you are very…. interested in hearing about my first experience working a nine to five job. Instead of telling this story several times over, I thought I’d just write it up on the ol’ blog.

            When I got home, I immediately (and by immediately, I mean after a week of straight Starcraft 2 ownage), I wrote up a kick ass resume for event planning. Then after running it by most trusted advisors, I threw that one away and made a new one.

Resume #1.

I sent it out to about 20 different event planning company’s and got three offers. Concerning those of you who are in collage or have not yet entered the work force, there are two words that you need to fear more than any other. Those words are “Internship” and “Entry Level.” If the former is slave labor, then the latter is “share cropping.” In other words, if you are in collage now or just graduating, you = this guy:

You are looking at either working for free, or if you are lucky, for $11 per hour. “But it’s good work experience,” you say “you have to be trained in your field!” I’ll refrain from pointing out the obvious pun.

Pictured Above: Valuable work experience.

So you are probably wondering if I was pouring coffee for free or for $14 an hour. The answer is neither. I lifting boxes in a warehouse which lacked air conditioning for somewhere in between “free” and “peanuts.” When all was said and done, had I worked for more than a week, I would have been making about enough to pay for the gas bill it took to make the hour and fifteen minute commute into Fort Worth. If you are bad at math, I’ll help you out. $0 = not enough to move out of my house.

The College Graduate’s future bedroom.

“Well even if you are driving two and a half hours a day to do manual labor in a warehouse without air conditioning and living at your parents house, it’s just a stepping stone, right? The career of your dreams is probably waiting for you somewhere on the other side of the rainbow!”  OR IS IT MY OPTIMISTIC FRIEND? HOW MUCH DO YOU LIKE YOUR BOSS!

Ehm. Sorry. I got a little carried away there. But seriously, how many of you really wanted to have a boss when you were five years old? My ideal career is one in which I am the boss. Would you agree? But there is always a “but,” here it comes….

 “But Marcellino, it’s time to grow up and face reality, everyone has to work for a boss.”

Mr. Strawman sir, I have a question for you. Where did your job come from? What I mean is, someone somewhere actually owns the business you work at. Someone somewhere signed the lease on your office building, hired your boss’s boss, and right now is probably sailing his yacht to the Bahamas.

With a Tennis Court

So no, not everyone has a boss. But anyway, back to my story. I worked at Bella Events for a boss named Bambi and her husband who everyone called “Hefe.” I was employed for one week total. After working in the warehouse alongside several 200 lb, six foot tall blue collar type guys, I was moved into the office to train under Tiff, a cute sorority girl with about as much personality as a rock. She had absolutely no interest in training me, as that would take some effort, so I sat in the office watching her do work for two days strait.

Commence Twiddling!

Third day roles around and Tiff is nowhere to be found. She up and quit, leaving me totally untrained. Hefe, the boss man, brings me into his office as soon has he gets in, sits me down, and drops the following pile of bullshit: “From what I’ve heard, Marcellino, it’s not looking so good for you. Everyone says that you just aren’t doing anything, that you are too laid back, just lounging around. If a racehorse is gonna run, he’s gonna run.”

Indeed.

I told him what I thought about that statement in the most tactful voice possible. Of course I didn’t look like I was working! You told me to sit down and watch Tiff do her thing. Either way, Tiff was gone. This meant that I was now actually being trained by Maggi, the woman in charge of rentals. I really started to learn, and by the end of the day, I thought I had a pretty good handle on it all. That was on Wednesday. On Thursday, I came in and worked my ass off. I was slow, but I was getting it. I was asking five million questions every five minutes, taking notes, and now I didn’t really even need Maggi. I was on a role. Friday came around, and I finished all of the work that needed to be done and hour and a half early. Keep in mind, my friends, that Hefe and Bambi were both around all week long. Here comes the kicker. Turns out, Bambi had sent me an email on Wednesday afternoon letting me know that I was fired. I forgot to check my email until Saturday. I worked two days after I was already fired, and NO ONE SAID A DAMNED THING.