Jul 6th, 2003, 11:08 PM
The worst job and interview ever.
A few days ago, I applied for a job and had an interview for it. The main reason was because they were offering $1000 scholarships to college students. I did a write-up of that horrible day because I plan to turn it into a column when the next semester starts. It's pretty long and I figure it's only half finished. There's still a bunch of stuff I have to add, but I'll post it here later. For example, why the scholarship was a rip-off.
However, the important part of this is the products I was trying to sell. They were LOL evil. Just try to enjoy this, I dare you.
The first interview I went to lasted less than five minutes. I spent more time in the waiting room watching Wimbeldon and thinking how freaking boring tennis is than I did talking to the man who was apparently the boss, who was wearing a suit that looked so big on him that he appeared to be a small child wearing an adult's suit.
From the description of job, it sounded like telemarketing, but in person. The boss man told me that the company sets up booths and tables at stores and festivals to do promotions and advertising for clients.
That sounded fine to me; it didn't sound very pleasant, but I was looking for work. I wasn't expecting to lay on soft, fluffy clouds made up of children's dreams and prayers, eat delicious candy and have black tar heroine injected directly into my heart. I was expecting to do a job that sucks. Hell, considering it was already July, I would have eaten bees had they paid me.
I was a little surprised, however, when this man told me that I was "invited" to come back for a second interview, which would be a day of observation that would last nine hours. I would come in, not get paid, observe what the company does, not get paid, help out with an established employee, not get paid, and not get paid. Did I mention that I would work nine hours and not get paid?
So, like the idiot I am, I said "sure, ok!" The next day I came in to the same building and saw four other people in the waiting room. I was given a form to sign saying that I know I won't be paid for the day (sigh), and if I died during the day it would be my own fault so my grieving relatives wouldn't be able to sue.
After a few minutes, the boss came in and told one of the four other people in the waiting room "Hi, great to see you again! I've got someone I want you meet!" After a few more minutes he came out and said the exact same thing to another person. And then a few more minutes later he did it again. And then again. And then again. And then me.
I was introduced to an employee I would be working with. Together, we would go out to a location and forcibly whore our product unto the unsuspecting public. The first thing we did was go to a bingo supply store and buy balloon animals. Right there I knew I was screwed.
We went to an Osco drug. You might have heard of Jewel Osco, which is the merger between Jewel, a grocery store, and Osco, a drugstore. We weren't at Jewel Osco. We were at regular Osco. Regular Osco is like Walgreens except nobody goes there. Seriously, that store couldn't have had less customers if the entire parking lot was completely covered in sewage.
We were selling products for a for-profit company that makes ID cards for children that, supposedly, will help the child if the child ever becomes missing. For a paltry fifteen dollars, parents can buy ID cards for their children.
Now, I've never been a bastion of morality, but even I can see how evil it is for a company to make money by preying on the fears of parents by saying that their children will be disappearing, and that somehow the child having an ID card on them will help the child be found again. But I don't have a problem with that. I'd sell crack to infants if they paid enough for it. But not even I could tolerate the kids DNA bags.
For $10, parents could buy a kit to store their children's DNA. The "kit" was four Ziploc sandwich bags and two Q-tips. Also, it contained a small card explaining what DNA is (it's a genetic fingerprint! Hooray!). Four sandwich bags and two Q-tips would usually cost around, well let me think, nothing. So I do believe that $10 might be a bit of a rip-off.
But I can't even understand what benefits would come with having samples of your child's DNA on hand. Assuming your child does go and get his or her fool self missing, having their DNA isn't going to help. The police aren't going to capture every single child in the country and take fingernail samples to see if any of them match-up with the fingernail you've been keeping in a sandwich bag just because you were a big enough dumbass to buy the stupid DNA kit.
If you believe a DNA kit would be a good bargain, than you don't deserve your money anyway so you might as well waste it.
The hook we used to get parents to stop by was the offer that we would fingerprint their children for free, so that the parents could have a record of the child's fingerprints. Seriously. I know, I wish I was joking.
Once again, I might be missing the point, but if your child goes missing, I can't imagine that a badly smudged sheet showing what your child's fingers would look like if they were covered in ink would be a fraction as effective in finding them as a picture would be. But at least it was free.
The crappy products we tried to sell were one reason why I would rather drink motor oil than ever do that job again. We were set up about three inches away from the only entrance to the store. People coming into the store couldn't avoid us unless they saw us from their cars and said "screw that! I'll just go across the street to Walgreens," which is a reaction I imagine many people had.
We pitched our sinister childcare products to every single person who came into the store. The only people who bought anything were senior citizens who were obviously desperately lonely and easily fooled mothers. A few people stopped but obviously had no intention of buying anything; they stopped even though they didn't want anything because they felt too guilty to just say "no thank you."
The job wasn't hard. In fact, I wouldn't consider anything I did during that day as work. I sat there, wandered around an Osco Classic store that was completely empty, and stared into space while asking myself "why?"
However, the fact that the job was easy doesn't mean it was a good job. For example, it was completely communist. Really. My salary would be based on commission, but not just based on the products I would sell; it was based on the sales made by the entire office.
There are two things wrong with that. First, I don't ever, ever want my wages to be based on how my DNA kits and children's ID cards get sold, by me or by anybody. And second, I wouldn't put anything above a company that willingly sells sandwich bags and claims that they're child protection products.
I don't want to be the idiot who sells twice as many DNA kits as everyone else, and than gets told, for 12 consecutive weeks, that the office had record lows this week so I won't be getting paid. I'll let somebody else be that idiot. I'll just continue to be the regular kind of idiot.
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) and then she would blow another $10 on a new handful.
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