Can I interest you in some office supplies?

So I’ve been in Portland for a few weeks now, looking for work. AS you know I’ve been staying with my sister and her boyfriend. They’ve been kind enough to offer up their spare bedroom to me. I’m pretty sure I owe them for life.

Brian and I are stuck in a lease in our apartment in eagle point. Brian has opted to stay there until he can find someone to take over our lease or until the lease is up in November. So once again we are separated.

I’ve been looking for work like a mad woman. I think I mentioned in my last post, I thought for sure this was going to be easy. I have tons of admissions experience and there are tons of schools here. I just knew the first interview I went on would be a done deal. Unfortunately this was not the case.

Last week, out of desperation, I interviewed at a places called Maxis. I had a bad feeling about the place from the get go and I wasn’t surprised to learn that the job was selling office supplies door to door. Like I said, I’m desperate, so I took the job. I had to dress business professional and walk around town from business to business for close to 10 hours a day for commission only. I don’t mind a little exercise but this was ridicules. I'd have bailed the first day but my Trainer was a really awesome guy and I had a lot of fun hanging out with him so I tried to make it work.

Yesterday they told me they wanted to send me to Utah for a week and I’d be leaving Sunday morning. Well, they didn’t really tell me directly, they just mentioned in our morning meeting that they were sending a team to Utah and they rattled off my name on the list of people that were going. At first I sort of thought I’d misunderstood but later that day I asked my trainer if I’m heard correctly and he said, “Yes, aren’t you excited?” Uh, no I’m not excited. I have plans for the weekend and I just started this job. I don’t really want to go to Utah (a place I don’t care much for to begin with) with a bunch of people I don’t know. Especially when so few details have been supplied to me, such as where I’ll be staying, who is paying for this, what I will be doing while I’m there, etc.

To top it all off, the whole place is just a little too cult like for my taste. Every morning we get to the office at 8am and have a little Powwow. We all stand in a circle and one of the team leaders suddenly starts talking and the whole team turns into a bunch of cheerleaders.

The boss says "are you ready for a morning meeting?"
and everyone responds (about 30 people) in unison - AHHH OHHHH!
and they keep going, making this sound, until he makes a motion with his hands to stop
Then he says, "today’s announcements” and they all say BUM BA DA BUM!

Then we break into groups and run drills, practicing our pitches. It’s great fun….not really. Then we hop in our cars and drive to our territories to pound the pavement until 5:30 where we then drive back to the office and have an end of the day Powwow. This consists of everyone getting back into a circle and whoever made their sales goal for the day, goes out to the middle of the circle and grabs a cow bell that they clank the fuck out of while everyone cheers and they run around the circle giving everyone high fives.

This was all just a little too much, even for me. After about 3 days I was over it. Last night after talking to my mom about my concerns, I did some research online about this company I was working for and others like it and I can’t say I was thrilled with anything anyone had to say about the place. I went to bed pretty sure I wouldn’t be returning.