This is a bit of a long-winded post for what was essentially a summer job cut short, but gimme a break – two milestones in one; not only first job ever, but also first getting-asked-to-leave ever!
When everyone was getting transferred out of the MGSM program while I was still stuck in the endless tedium of calling people who would rather give to real charities than a graduate school, espescially because I was the particularly useless one, I got kinda worried.
When I walked into the office and they didn’t even bother giving back my data and gave me somebody else’s instead I knew something was up.
When my team leader asked me to tally up a half hour in advance and then ushered me quietly into a side room for a “talk”, I was like, “LOL BAI GAIZ”.
I feel like I should probably be disappointed or sad or something but everyone at work was really nice and funny and it’s not even as if they just dumped me out on my ass on the pavement – I got escorted outand everything, yo! Probably to make sure I didn’t steal credit card info out of spite from having just been technically fired, but I digress.
I bet you anything though that if they hadn’t put me on the two hardest programs consecutively (you trying to tell me elderly retirees are REALLY going to want to sponsor another child for an additional $50, and CEOs with MBAs under their belt are going to want to commit to regular giving over the phone with no prior research? LULZ) I would’ve actually done kinda okay, and I probably would’ve hit my goal of lasting till uni and saving $1000.
But that’s okay. I turned up to that first interview happy that I’d even managed to secure an interview. (Not even the Mexican place at Liverpool gave me one, you know.) The fact that that interview turned into a job at possibly the least screwed up call centre you could ever find was just icing on the cake, and I mean, I hadn’t even expected to keep it longer than a week let alone a whole month. My first aim had been primarily to see what the formal workplace was like, and I think I achieved that – with a tidy profit at that.
The way I see it, I just finished paid work experience. (Which would technically be an internship but that sounds a bit fancy for the situation I was in.)
I think more than anything I’m kind of looking forward to what I can do the rest of the holidays – I did have goals for my summer break (overcome the “post-traumatic stress” of last January’s near-concussion on my bike, practice Japanese, play video games because I never have time during regular school days) and now I actually have the opportunity to do them. I hadn’t been happy for a while; probably when they put me on MGSM and effectively sucked any self satisfaction I could get out of my job.
As well as that, now I have experience under my belt, and I know how to operate in a workplace. Granted a call centre is probably leaps and bounds different from retail or fast food, but it’s still something to put on my resume even if I can’t supply a reference because I was “asked to leave, as opposed to leaving for private reasons”.
The only sad part is now I have no money. But you know, I got by without it before. I don’t think it’ll be any different now.
