"I am not a dime-a-dozen, I AM WILLY LOMAN!!!"
As much as I would looove to write about Arlin Specter becoming a Democrat today I think I had my fill of talking politics for a while, so I’m going to concentrate on what’s really important: jobs. Where to get them, how to find them and how to fend off all of the naysayers out there who want to denigrate our quest for their own selfish reasons. To that end…
The good news is there is a Job Fair happening yesterday and today at Expo Idaho, which is where the Western Idaho Fair is held every August. The bad news is the kind of jobs that are being offered. Here is the article I found this morning in my local fishwrap:
A job fair in Boise, yes, but nonsales jobs are few
Want to sell ionized sanitary napkins on commission? There’s a booth you can visit.
BY BRAD TALBUTT - btalbutt@idahostatesman.com
Published: 04/29/09It’s called a fair, but it isn’t any fun.
No carousel, no cotton candy, no carnival midway.
And there were few wage-paying jobs available Tuesday at the Idaho Job And Career Fair at Expo Idaho.
The fair, which continues Wednesday, has 56 booths, 15 more than the last career fair in January, said Beth Schmidt of the Idaho Business League, a business that sponsored the fair.
“But there are fewer W-2 type jobs here this time,” she said. “Lots of commission sales.”
Most of the booths arrayed in the front third of the south expo hall were occupied by insurance companies and financial services firms looking for commission-only sales people, or by multilevel marketing companies pitching opportunities in cosmetics and kitchen gadgets.
Among them was a ground-floor opportunity selling ionized, bio-degradable, feminine napkins to friends and neighbors.
Janice Zuber and Kira Blackman of Boise are the only Idaho distributors of Love Moon Anion Sanitary Napkins from Winalite, a Chinese company. They set up their booth hoping to recruit new distributors into their nascent network.
The pads incorporate a felt-like strip that contains health-inducing negative ions, say the two.
“This is the miracle,” says Zuber, holding up one of the green anion strips. “They can help reduce fatigue, kill bacteria, eliminate odor, help with mood swings and cut a woman’s cycle in half.”
An investment of $90 buys an inventory of 122 packages. The company will start making biodegradable, ionized diapers soon too, Blackman said.
New York Life was among the more tried-and-true companies looking for talent.
Recruiter Alayna Ellis said the company will hire 21 people in the area this year, but the positions are commission-driven and not for 9-to-5 types.
She said hires would get three years of training in financial services and could make $50,000 their first year, but it won’t be easy. There is a huge amount of information to master before selling life insurance, annuities, or 401(k)s, she said. “It’s a lot like trying to drink water from a fire hose.”
Of the W-2 type employers, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s booth had a consistent crowd of job seekers asking questions.
So did the Wyoming Department of Corrections, which is hiring 200 or more people to staff a new medium-security prison in Torrington, a farming town on the windswept Nebraska border.
“It would be a great place to raise a family,” said Teresa Canjar, an executive assistant with the department.
Corrections officers need a GED or high school diploma and will make between $15 and $18 an hour.
Despite being out of work for six months, former Micron employee Hyatt Heavirland isn’t ready to relocate yet.
The 33-year-old spent seven years working his way up from operator to electronics technician in Micron’s clean rooms before being laid off in October.
“I’m still looking for a decent job,” he said. “But if I’m still looking in six months, I’ll be looking for any job at all.”
Now let me say this first: I’ve already done commission-only sales and I’ve already discovered that I suck at it. People have been asking me why I don’t try it again and I tell them of my bad experiences only to get the response: “Well you just didn’t work hard enough then, did you?” Followed by a: “Heeeey I’m just kidding, just kidding.” Bullshit, they’re not kidding because they don’t know how to kid – which is what I tell them right before I say that I’m glad that the fact that I haven’t been able to get a job yet amuses them so much. This has led to a lot of people telling me “well no wonder your out of work if you have that attitude!” As if they were completely justified in putting me down.
But once again, I digress…
A lot of people are under the false assumption that it is easy to sell things – it’s not! It wasn’t easy even before the economy went into the tank, can you imagine what it must be like now? I don’t envy the people who are trying to make a living at that game under these circumstances when no one wants to spend any money because they don’t know if they are going to have a job the next day or not. It’s even worse for those who have to sell door-to-door or sell by appointment, you know, you get called up and are informed that you won something and while the prize is being delivered we ask that you take a look at this item and give us your opinion on it?
That’s what we did down at the office I used to work at a couple of years ago. People would sign up for this big prize and then we would call those people using that pitch. A lot of times people would tell me “no” and that they were not interested. Sometimes they would tell me “sure, how’s Monday night?”
Then the hard part would begin.
I would have to go to their house that night to show them what a $2,000.00 cleaning system could do for them in terms of not only cleaning but how much money it would save them in the long run. That’s assuming they were home. Sometimes I would have to travel an hour one way only to knock on the door and have no one answer it. There was one nightmarish Saturday when the office sent me to five different addresses for appointments that had been set up – and not one of them was home. Think about how much gas I wasted driving to each house! Eventually the office stopped sending me out and I was unable to get appointments of my own, what made it even worse was that the people I did go to see refused to give me any leads. See one of the things I had to do to stay in business was to get the people I went to see to recommend me to their friends and family. A lot of times they would not give me anyplace new to go, so what it boils down to is I was fired from that sales gig by the people of Idaho.
That experience solidified something for me that I had long suspected – people hate salesmen. It doesn’t matter if they are calling you during dinner or if they are on a used car lot – people generally hate them and consider them to be five steps below Porn Star on the evolutionary ladder.
So the fact that there are mostly sales gigs at this Job Fair and in the local fishwrap is discouraging to say the least. What is really frustrating is that the people who do the recruiting assume that anyone can sell if they simply “applied themselves.” Uh uh, wrong! Not everyone is cut out to be a salesman. I don’t care how many Zig Zigler videos you have somebody watch, some people are just not cut out for it, and I have found out through hard experience that I happen to be one of them!
So why is it that they only calls I seem to get anymore are ones from recruiters for Insurance Companies and the like, saying that I can make a six-figure income selling Life Insurance to people who can’t afford it?
Look I know that there are people out there who are good at selling and are very happy doing it. I think that’s wonderful for them and I’m happy that they have found a vocation that brings them fulfillment – it just isn’t for me is all I’m saying.
Over at Unemploymentality there’s a post about what jobs you wouldn’t do, you know, where do you draw the line. I had said that Telemarketing, Outside Sales and Retail were the ones that I would never do again, but after reading what I did in the article above I have to add a couple others to that list:
Corrections officer – noooooo thanks. I have a cousin who is a corrections officer and I’ve heard enough stories about life on the inside. I don’t need my own personal version of “Oz” thank you.
Selling ionized, bio-degradable, feminine napkins to friends and neighbors – Now it’s bad enough if you’re a woman and have to try to do this, but come on – I’M A GUY!!! Ladies – would you buy an ionized, bio-degradable, feminine napkin from a guy who went 0 for High School?!?!? Come on!!!!! I’m not even going to go into the “Ick factor” on my part so I can imagine how uncomfortable it would be for you!!! It was bad enough having to try to justify a sale of a $2,000.00 cleaning system to someone, imagine my trying to sell feminine hygiene products door-to-door!!! Somehow I think that the phrase “not guilty, your honor” might someday have to be uttered from my piehole!!!
Look, I know that there are a few jobs out there now, but the problem is that many of them are the wrong kinds of jobs for a great majority of people. A lot of us don’t have money to spend so that we can go back to school, or buy our way into a “once in a lifetime opportunity”, or even to get some kind of training for a Health care license or a Transportation qualification. We have to try to get the jobs that we know we are qualified to do. In my case that would either be office work or retail and unfortunately neither is hiring at the moment. When you wade through all of the scams that are out there and find there is very little left for you it’s no wonder that people think that I have a “bad attitude.”
I’m just trying to be realistic!
See, I did it! I was able to get through one post without saying how the GOP is slowly killing itself by exiling the moderates from the party and turning them into Democrats and Independents…
D’OH!!!!!!
