I work for a large At&t retailer at a store in a strip mall. The walls are abrasively orange which can be a problem when coming to work hungover. My main responsibility is to pounce on every customer in the store and twist their arm into purchasing the latest and greatest devices while grinning manically and providing an "extraordinary customer experience."
My selling style is a direct result of the eight years I spent waiting tables through high-school and college. I don't attack customers, I try to charm them and sweet talk them in to opening their wallets. I'm lucky that my boss is pretty relaxed and lets me do my thing. And I meet the goals set by the company so everyone, for the most part, leaves me alone.
I hate my job. I've been there for over two years now and have been steadily losing all hope of finding a real person job. In college, I studied political science and journalism. I imagined a future where I found a job writing for a newspaper, reporting on local stories before "getting noticed" because of my interview skillz and crazed work ethic, churning out more stories a day than most people did in a week! I would have my pick of papers in five years time.
Just over two years ago, I marched in to the Charlotte Observer office, resume and clips in hand, only to be stopped by a security guard. They wouldn't even let me in the building. I left the folder with a sympathetic looking female guard and walked back to the car, feeling ridiculious in my high heels and blazer.
Needless to say I've not heard from them.
Since then I had a freelance job at a small, county paper. It was about an hour out of town and as much as I wanted to write, I couldn't afford the gas or the time on top of my full time job. I've tried every paper thats closer to me. I couldn't even get on their list of freelancers.
So for now, I stick it out at At&t.
When we're slow, and we have done all the housekeeping required, we amuse ourselves in various ways. I'm energetically bored, pacing the floor, building forts in the back out of our expired decorations. I play endless rounds of Tetris on my phone, in between checking Facebook every ten minutes and reading inflammatory Jezebel articles to relay to my coworkers.
My boss, we'll call her Nina, is prim and calm when it's slow. She perches on a stool behind the counter, toes touching the lowest rung, knees together, texting her admirers. Her uniform of choice is a powder blue cardigan with the logo on the left shoulder paired with a curve hugging v-neck tee-shirt and a pencil skirt.
The new guy, also known as my best friend in this town, shall be called: James. James reads Reddit all day and chuckles to himself. He's taken to this job, developing a pitch that customers really seem to respond to. I like working with him, but its been kind of weird for our friendship. There isn't much thats fresh to discuss at the bar after work when you've worked together all day.
Apart from my lovely coworkers, my job is tolerable at best. I know I can't be the only one who graduated college and feel into a deep depression since the dream job didn't happen. I can't be the only person coerced by debt (and a whole bunch of other stuff) in to giving up my hopes and dreams, or at least postponing them indefinitely. But what do you do when you did everything "right" and nothing worked out as you planned?
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