This Girl Talk Thursday, we’re ranting about our jobs.

I’ve only worked one job that I absolutely hated from the moment I took it until the moment I quit:

GutterHelmet Sales Rep.

Yeah, GutterHelmet, that thingie that attaches to your gutters and keeps the leaves and sticks from getting in so your lazy ass doesn’t have to climb up a ladder and clean the debris out yourself.  I applied for and accepted this job because I thought it would be more money, and I was excited about the idea of traveling for work.

In reality, since I worked in the Flint/Saginaw area of Michigan (aka America’s dirty anus), I was trying to sell fancy gutters to people who couldn’t afford the payments on the house I was trying to sell them upgrades for.  In four weeks, I did not make a single sale, but neither did I walk into a single household with 1) a new / recent model car or 2) a pleasant-smelling interior or 3) someone who I genuinely believed could afford to purchase this upgrade.  And I’m sorry, I don’t care whether I’m supposed to be a heartless salesperson or not, but I can’t morally justify selling someone a frivolity but representing it as a necessity.  I can’t.  That’s not who I am.

Every Monday at 9am, we had a sales meeting at the head office… on the other side of the state.  This was about a two and a half hour drive — and I always had to work afterward — so I’d be on the road at 6:30am on Monday morning, drive to this meeting, drive back to my home area, and work from 2pm til 7pm.

I was driving a shitty little pick-up truck that belonged to my boyfriend’s father.  It huffed and grumbled and rattled when I drove, and since it had neither a cover for the cab nor a second row of seats, the front seat was always crowded.  You see, I had to buy a TV & VCR combo to lug around with me to every home for my sales demonstration, and of course I needed my portfolio, and lunch, and my purse, and in the winter a change of shoes and my heavy jacket.  I had many customers comment on my vehicle’s sorry state of being.  But I couldn’t afford to buy a new one.

Because I wasn’t making sales, they apprenticed me to a more experienced saleswoman.  She was the first person I ever met who was on the Atkins diet, and this meant that for lunch she would eat meat and cheese curds which really?  Gross.  She was a sweet woman, really kind to me and all, but she confided in me one day as we drove up to one of my sales calls: “We shouldn’t be visiting these people.  They can’t afford this stuff.”

And in all the time she was with me?  You guessed it.  Not a single sale.  She couldn’t sell this stuff to these people either.

Eventually, I was fired because I didn’t fax them a copy of my social security card.   I refused to fax it.  I suppose this was something that somehow was too crucial for HR to wait for me to deliver it by hand at the weekly meeting three days later, because when I arrived at the meeting I was escorted to HR and kindly told I was being let go.

They totally lost money by hiring me.

I winked at my boss on the way out.

Sucka!