I should explain at least a little about my personality. I have been a slacker since about 4th grade. Blame it on my parents’ divorce, on my father’s genetics, or just on the fact that I would rather have fun than do work. In any case I have always done the least amount of work possible in order to get by. That statement alone is the best explanation of how I got to this point.
It’s probably a good idea to provide a little background. I’m a dick but I’m not so cruel that I would start all the way back at the beginning. Also dredging up too much history would involve a bit of introspection and possibly some self discovery. Ugh, I’m bored just talking about it. So I’ll only go back 17 years.
For those who are good at math (or at least those who can do simple arithmetic), that means this story begins in 1994 which was the year I graduated from high school. After high school I went to Guilford College. I chose Guilford for several reasons. When I went for the admissions interview, the people were friendly and there were posters promoting gay rights in the lobby of the student center. I’m not gay but I am a strong believer in equal rights and privileges for ALL people so it meant a lot to me that these posters were displayed prominently in a public space. Also, my other choice was UNCG and the Residential College there required like three extra essays so…. The decision was pretty much made for me.
At Guilford I continued my “fun good, work bad” philosophy and saw no reason to stop doing the least work possible to get by. This resulted in changing my major from art to political science at the end of my freshman year. As a political science major I managed to “earn” a 2.2 GPA in my major and, I’m not kidding here, a 2.02 overall GPA. The only real surprise for me was that on my official transcript I was not worst in my class! Someone had a worse GPA than me, and I still wish I knew who it was so I could send them a present of some sort.
The result is that I graduated with a useless degree, a bad GPA, no work ethic, and a hangover. The natural move for me out of college, then, was customer service! Customer service is that great pool of jobs that is available to anyone with a high threshold for pain. Plus you generally get preference if you have a college degree. As you can imagine I do not stick with any one job for very long. In my great succession on customer service jobs I made a very important discovery – I don’t actually like other people. I had always suspected this was the case but I now know absolutely that it is true. I mean, I like humanity. I believe in helping people who cannot help themselves, and in the powerful need for equality among all people. I just like humanity when they are not yelling in my ear about the injustice of a $0.85 increase in their cable bill.
For the past 5 years I have been working with truck drivers as a dispatcher. It doesn’t sound like customer service but that’s mostly what it is. Although it often feels more like babysitting, the general principle is to keep the customer happy – only the customer in this case is the shipper and the driver. It occurred to me while my wife was in graduate school that I “chose” a career path that will almost certainly involve me being on the phone most of the day, no matter what company I work for. With that realization I knew I had to start over.
Now you know my no-so-short-but-incredibly-abbreviated history. The question that presents itself is: “What the hell is going to be different this time around?” I hope the answer is A LOT. I’m not interested in writing about the aforementioned introspection and self discovery because I do think it’s boring. That doesn’t mean I haven’t done a fair bit of it anyway. The primary (applicable) realization is this - If I tried to accomplish something and failed it meant I was a failure; if I didn’t try and failed then I had an excuse. Now that I’ve got a few years behind me I know that I’ll have to put forth an effort if I want to reap a reward. I also have motivation that I didn’t have the first time around. My reward for hard work is being able to have a job that I like and hopefully one where I feel like I am helping people. I just won’t be helping them directly any more, and absolutely never EVER on the phone.
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