My Hole in the Floor

One thing I haven't brought up yet that I'd like to share is my job. I work for a company called Wireless Communication Broker that deals exclusively with Sprint PCS products and services. Now that I've given you our press release, the company is truely only about 10 people. My boss and the founder of the company, Joe G, graduated high school and went into the army. When he got back he wanted to make some money, so he started selling cell phones. He did so well that he started hiring his friends to help him out, the company grew, and then I come into the picture. I put my resume up on careerbuilder.com over the summer after I wasn't paid for the last three games of the 2004 season (I'll explain later) and realized after a check from my team bounced for the second time that I probably should get a job so I can keep paying the bills. I came accross a company called Manhatten Trading that called me out of the blue on a Wednesday afternoon and told me that there was "a management position available where you will be in charge of a sales team of 6. You will be in total control of their day to day activities and you will receive commission from every sale they make. Our company works to promote new products into the community and has sealed deals with major corporations such as the NFL and Disney." So I agreed to come in on Friday for an interview all excited that I might actually find the perfect job on my first interview. I didn't think to buy a suit up to this point and the last suit I owned was for my first communion in 2nd grade, so I was off to Men's Warehouse. They do in store tailoring, so I had plenty of time to pick out a suit and have it tailored. The problem was that with my size and lack of time I had to buy a $600 suit. I was broke, so I opened up a mens warehouse credit card and bought the suit. I went to the interview and luckily for me, the AC was busted and because I was early I had to sit for 2 hours in a room that couldn't have been much cooler than the core of the sun in a suit that made me feel super uncomfortable. By the time I got to speak with John A (the owner of the company) I was a soaking wet mess. He had a stack of resumes 5 inches thick on his desk and I was the last guy he was interviewing. I was nervous and a real stiff during the whole interview and really left feeling stupid and worthless. Amazingly, I got a call back to start training on Monday! I was so excited that I picked out my best clothes and was ready to rock and roll. I was going out for my "day of O" which was "a day to shadow one of our top guys and see what it takes to climb the corporate ladder." I called everyone I knew to tell them about my awesome new job. My grandmother was so proud of me that I could almost hear her beaming on the other end of the phone. I go in, and what do I do first? Go into a corner office and meet up with my mentor? Do I get a package outlining our company's mission statement and what we do in the community? Do I get a welcome letter on Manhatten Trading's official letter head? No, I grab a box full of cheap asian watches and load them into the back of a guy's 89 chevy wagon and hop in. I decided I'd have an open mind and see what this was all about, but from the moment I loaded up that box I knew something was wrong. My mentor, Johnny Mac, was in his 50s with grey hair and was wearing a light blue shirt, a tie, and a set of tan pants that looked like they had been purchased from a bin of reduced casual wear at KMart and put though a few too many spin cycles. It was only 8AM, but it was already reaching up towards the low 90s. I sweat more than any man alive, so I knew that if we didn't get into some AC quick I'd be finished. I was wearing the single best outfit I could put together. I had my hundred dollar pants, my dark blue longsleeve shirt, and my favorite tie on for good luck. Needless to say, the day was aweful. 90% of the day was walking around loading docks and kitchens of restaurants peddling 3 differnt items to the workers who could barely speak english. Our first item was a Swat Tactical gift set that included a black watch and a matching butane lighter and flashlight. Our second gem was called the "barber in a box" which was a hair buzzer, some scisors, and a comb. The third item was an radio controlled car. I had hit rock bottom. The looks on people's faces as Johnny Mac tried to get them to hold the flashlight and try it out as they threw our asses out faster than I could sweat made me sick. For one day I was the lowest form of life on earth. We were annoying telemarketers that knocked on your door. The management part of the job was that once you've been there for a while, you trained new people and they were now under you. See Avon or Cutco Knives. What a fucking scam.

The good part was that we walked into an office building clearly marked "No Soliciting" and ran into an office, barber in a boxes a blazing. Turns out it was a Sprint PCS store and the owner offered us jobs. Why, I can't even imagine. I was covered with a thick slime of sweat that had barely had a chance to dry before it was sweated right back up again, and Johnny Mac was drenched. His whole shirt was soaked right down to his gut. You could see the sweat working it's way below his belt and making a ring around the top of his pants. He was red faced, burned by the sun, and weary from climbing stairs and running all over town on foot. Joe G said that he was looking for salesmen and that we would make $450 a day selling phones. Johnny Mac was so lost in the pyramid scheme of Manhatten Trading that he turned it down for his $50 a day he had to kill himself for, but I took his card and promised him I'd call the second I got off work. A few days later I came in for an interview that lasted all of 2 hours and I was in.

I started working back in August doing account management, moved on to wholesaling in September, and tomorrow, I open my own store. I have proven myself to be loyal and trustworthy and with my western New Jersey living araingments I am close to where Joe G wanted to open a store, so I was named store manager and WCB's western regional mangager for all of western Jersey and PA (if you knew New Jersey, the people who grow up in the north east think that the western boarder is the wild west. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. To them I am Wild Bill taming the unknown). I'm excited and nervous because if it works out, then I'm not moving back to morris county like I had hoped, but I'll be loaded. If it doesn't, then I'm out a job. I just can't stand being a failure and I know that if I failed I couldn't come back and face everyone and go back to doing what I was doing before the store opened. When I say store, I mean little box in the middle of the mall where I'll stand and watch people go by and hopefully sell some phones.

My thanks go out to Heather for explaining to me how to work Flickr to get better looking pics up on my blog!

This is my glorious hole in the floor that will hopefully one day be a successful and awesome store.

Tomorrow morning the 19 packages containing the 2800lb box I will be living in is going to be dropped off at the Stroud Mall between 10 and 1. I plan on spending the rest of the day putting it together and making sure everything is accounted for. I will hopefully remember to take pictures so you can all see the progression, but I can almost guarantee I'll only take a picture or two before I get sweapt up in the build and forget to bust out the ol' sanyo picture phone.