These Are the Things Your Nightmares Are Truly Made Of.
It's crazy that as I look back on the last year, I hardly noticed until a recent conversation, that I haven't had a corporate 9 to 5 job since August 5th of 2016. Most people's first reaction to hearing that is to congratulate me. In fact, among peers that's always the first reaction I get. And then I dive in more into why people actually shouldn't rush to following up with, "Everyone is trying to be like you" or "Man, that's really goals". Sure, I know everyone wants to break the cycle of monotonous working until you're 65, but the truth is, we're simply not taught how to break that cycle, and therefore, tumble into very painful trial and error that most people don't ever survive. Am I lucky? No, I am a product of more errors than trials.
To understand how I've managed to get through the past year, I have to take you back to 2014. When I could already tell that post-graduate life, and entering the work force was nowhere near as cool, fun, and educational as we all had thought it was.
Following my first job out of college, a friend of mine referred me to a job and I was hired on for a night shift. I worked from 3pm to midnight as a Loan Service Representative, but only as a temp through an agency based out of New York. I was promised that within my 90 days with the agency, I'd be reviewed and eligible to work full-time with the company itself. That, unfortunately did not happen. So, I took my weekly pay checks and tried to sit quietly about and continue to work as best I could. The only problem was, the company made sure to let me constantly remember that I was a temp. Temps couldn't eat breakfast at their desks, but full-time employees could. Temps had no grace period for attendance, but full-time employees did. And lest we not forget that constant reminder everyday that "you can get sent home for no reason and lose this job". They didn't see it, but mentally I checked out not because the job was hard or arduous but because simply doing a good job meant nothing, and eventually full-time employees learned this when the company moved on to lay off over 250,000 people worldwide. I jumped ship after 7 months to pursue a sales position with a local Toyota dealership.
I thought to myself, selling cars has to be profitable. I have gift of gab, so I can do my best to sell salt to the snail and make good money. That was until the discovery that auto sales has gone unchanged with the times, and I hope I don't shock you in saying is probably one of the most racist and discriminatory industries there is. From skewing credit reports so customers put more money down, to betting on how long Indian customers (who were good negotiators) would wait for a salesman to return, to the referenced "those guys never buy", and lastly the "Haitians have no money, so don't bother talking to them". Working at Toyota was the most morally painful job I've ever had to date. I could've sold drugs and had a great Christmas, but working at Toyota I was not only getting scammed out of my own money, but had to smile and justify discrimination for 65 hours a week. My last check, held against the draw of profit for 7 cars sold that month, was $118. It was the first of the month.
So I figured that I would take money I had saved up, and LLC GoodKnocking to create GoodKnocking Entertainment Group. My vision was huge. My execution was piss more. Unfortunately, that vision rested on the passion, convictions, and habits of my team of 12, who showed the complete opposite. From September 2014 to January 2015, I hadn't produced a single noteworthy piece of content, but had amassed a debt of close to $3000 between personal bills and business expenses. My team bailed, and I was humbled in thinking one can simply quit their 9 to 5 and become a "boss".
The problem, I deduced, was not that I didn't know what I was doing, but I wasn't creating an environment for myself to succeed. We go through about 20 years of our lives being either handed a schedule or given the stencil of a schedule. True entrepreneurs have to build their schedules based on the lives they're looking to build. I figured this out and began to pound it into my head, as referenced in "The Lenten Sacrifice", which you can hear on The Emblem Project. I simply was wasting a lot of time trying to have fun being a boss, and not taking enough time pounding away at making real ​moves.
I was offered a position at a call center. Entry salary was $17.00 and within the first week out the bucket, I was making enough money to really chip away at my debt. I had to make very personal decisions, even announcing that I was "retiring" from being a personality on GoodKnocking so that I could better manage the business. The team sank, and I completely stopped doing GoodKnocking altogether. It was absolute silence. I was just an employee, who clocked in at 9:00 am and clocked out at 6:00 pm. I listened to The Breakfast Club in the morning, and Google Play Music's best playlists, along with that sermon that inspired "The Lenten Sacrifice". When I eradicated as much of the debt as possible, I was well invested in the company, but would come home with full notepads of game plans. I called it "Project Umbrella" and I plotted and plotted for weeks.
Then Lent. I decided to give up pleasure. No drinking, no smoking, no sex, no masturbation, no sexual thoughts - hell I didn't even cuddle. I would sleep on the floor of my man cave after long nights working on websites, plans, designs, and branding. For 40 days and nights, I was just trying to become more of a disciplined person. That was when and why GoodKnocking underwent a total rebrand. The logo changed, the site changed, and GoodKnocking Radio was born.
But my job not only sucked, but was sucking the life out of me.
Corporations try to fancy themselves the hub for hip and new-age thinking, but when deadlines approach and run rates are below average, they loom the threat of termination over everyone up top, and that trickles down to your every day employee. I had received two raises, and was now making $19.00/hr. I would come home mentally and emotionally exhausted. They flickered lights to "motivate" people. Those actions only became stimuli for people to have anxiety attacks, asthma attacks, bleeding stomach ulcers, and even vomiting. People's 15-minute breaks were spent, not inhaling - but digesting whole packs of cigarettes, blunts, black and milds - everything! When they extended the raise to go up to $20/hr, I declined. "I know that I don't want to be here, and I also know I'll never see $20/hr again, so I don't want it." The boy had grown up.
Just three weeks after turning down the raise (and an incident where a security guard on the complex threated to shoot me), I left the company. No two-week notice, I just left. My good friend referred me to his job, and seeing my work experience, they hired me instantly. They were different. It was chill. Quiet. I could think clearly, and breathe. The company was more liberal, much more transparent, and everyone was there to help. Advice I received was, "do well, but don't do too well. They'll never let you leave".
Long story short, on August 5th, 2016 I was sent home under the guise of "Suspended Pending Investigation". Over the course of close to a year, the company made shifts, problems arose, and the worst things got at work, the better they got at home. I was sitting on an orbiting planet, waiting for the next planet to come close enough to jump. Five days later, they called me to inform me of my termination. I was caught being distracted on a Friday afternoon at 4:30pm (we were off at 5pm). Sure, I wasn't on task. Looking back, who cares. Anyone whose ever been in call center settings knows once you're written off, you're bitten off. So, whether I was pulled aside that day or not, my departure was going to be initiated by the company before it was initiated by me.
Far more fearless, with better judgment, and with ingenuity being an absolute necessity, I scrapped my entire resume and developed one that showed what I really wanted to do. Since August 5, 2016, I haven't stepped foot in a corporate setting since.
In my new blog series, Corporate American Horror Story, I'll be laying out lessons about being an entrepreneur and being on the outside. I'll be using examples from my own life, and telling very vivid tales of what it's like to be humbled, to shape up, and to have what it takes to fall 7 times and rise 8.
Another subject that I'll be discussing is how to manage what many call "Post-Graduate Depression" and more very painful experiences and how younger individuals can see themselves through this. Be sure to subscribe to Written By Mistah Marvel for more to come!
1 Comment
|
AuthorFrom Personal testimonies to gadget reviews, I'd like to give you a little bit of everything in between. Archives
September 2018
Categories
All
|