Friday, November 19, 2010

three very different jobs

My last post was exactly a month ago! I have so much new news!

I went to a temp agency because I was starting to get desperate for work, and about three weeks ago, they got me a temporary job at this company called W i r e l e s s W a t c h d o g s. They said it was only going to be a two day data entry job. Turns out, it was over three weeks long, and the job was half on the phone, half data entry. I didn't mind it and it wasn't stressful. Basically, big companies hire out this company to manage their phones. So, my job was copying and pasting numbers into a website and spreadsheet to "swap" or "flip-flop" the SIM cards on phones. All day. This involved me calling a phone company all day long, because some of it we couldn't do online. This is really hard to explain (and probably extremely boring to listen to), but, for some reason, for every "swap" or "flip-flop," I had to call the phone number twice. I couldn't have the rep just do what I needed them to do on the first call--I was strictly supposed to hang up, and call right back for each "swap" or "flip-flop" (with hundreds of these to do). So, as you can probably guess, the reps got used to me really quick. Furthermore, if I got the same rep on the second call, I wasn't allowed to do the "swap" or "flip-flop." I was told to tell them that I had accidentally called the wrong number. That answer got old really fast, so if I got the same rep on the second call, I would just ask them for some information that I didn't need, and then hang up and call back again. I was strictly not allowed to ask to speak to a different rep (I got in trouble for this! lol!).

Ugh, this is taking up my whole blog. Anyway, a particular rep got particularly annoyed with me, and threatened that her supervisor told her that I need to stop calling so often or she would complain to my supervisor! I told the person who was training me, and she reported the lady to her supervisor. Then over the next few days, I was reported by a rep or reps who claimed I put them on hold for up to 3 minutes (not true) and that I had been calling for over a month, (it had only been two weeks at that point). Anyway, after that, I was no longer allowed to call the phone company, and was only supposed to do the "swaps" and "flip-flops" online. Yay! Does this sound like a wacky job yet? Oh, I forgot to mention that I was commuting 1.5 hours (LA traffic) each way every day to do this. The actual people I worked with in the office were really fun, and I liked them, but this job was wearing on me. I would leave at 7:30am and not get home until 7:30pm at night.

Just before I got this job, a family contacted me through my Care.com profile, asking if I could walk their dogs a few times a week. I agreed, and once I got the phone job, they let Paul walk them with me after work, paying us $50 an hour about 4-6 days a week! This dog-walking job alone is coming close to paying our rent every month, and all I can say is that God provides in very mysterious ways!

But with the dog walking job, I had no free time during the week. I had put up a Craigslist ad on the weekend for ESL tutoring, and now have three students! I decided to quit the phone job on Wednesday, because it wasn't looking like I was going to get my hours changed (so that I could avoid traffic), and after making some calculations, I realized if I got a few more ESL students, I wouldn't even need the job!

Ahh, so now I finally have my life back. My family is coming to visit us on Wednesday and we are going to my aunt's house, who lives about 4 hours away, for Thanksgiving. I am so excited!

I am really enjoying teaching English. My first student was Indonesian, and now I have a Korean, and a Chinese student. I am going to put up ads on the bulletin boards around campus today. There are a lot of Koreans on campus that may be interested. It would be so cool if I could do this, and not have to get a "real" job! I just really like the idea of working for myself. I've always had that entrepreneurial spirit. We will see...!

Love & Peace to you all.