I. The Apartment
I mentioned the apartment before, mostly in a negative light. It's gotten better, what with furniture and cable and internet, and such. We painted the dining room lime green, the bedroom light blue, and the living room a light cream (after a poorly thought out coat of "pumpkin 3"). We bought a sofa from Value City Furniture, which was a steal and included an ottoman and FOUR high quality feather pillows (retail $60 - 80). In fact, all things considered, we basically bought the ottoman and pillows and got the couch for free. We got a recliner from Tara's parents, and with our glass-topped coffee and end tables, we have quite a respectable living room. We moved our foosball table from the dining room to storage and replaced it with a nice, wooden dining room table (with chairs!). The bedroom has a dresser, and a bedside table. We even have lamps and candles throughout the apartment.
It has really begun to feel like a home. The furniture was pushed into the center of the room to allow access to the walls for painting for awhile, but we have returned everything to its rightful spot. It stays surprisingly warm, which is wonderful as I recently purchased a pair of shorts. They have become my go-to garb for leisure and relaxation. When I get home from work, I strip out of my button-down shirt and my fancy slacks and throw on my super comfy shorts. It's a nice way to calm down after a horrible day of work. What makes work so bad? Well, that takes us to the next new thing...
II. The Job
Yes, it is true, I have a job. It is the first full-time job I have ever held, it pays more than I have ever made in the past, and it is slowly eating away at my soul. My job title is Credit Counselor, and I work in the Early Stage Collections Department of the Consumer Lending Center. Now, when I applied and interviewed for the job, they built it up. It was an opportunity to help people in need, help them in their times of financial hardship. I would be calling customers who were having trouble making their monthly payments, and I would use mighty powers to make everything better.
Then I got the job. Of course, the training didn't actually begin for another month, so I had plenty of time to be lazy. Then I began my two weeks of training, and the training was relatively enjoyable. It was simple, the woman in charge was fun, and there was a jovial, communal atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, I was annoyed at times. The systems were far too simple for the time we devoted to them, and we ended up wasting a lot of time just sitting around waiting to do things. And not to be completely full of myself, but I was by far the smartest person in the group. Doubt me? One shining example of the caliber of people I was with was when the trainer said to us, "Also, if you're not familiar with it, you may want to practice selecting things and then cutting and pasting them." They gave us a packet of pages on how to log in to the systems, which included signing on to Windows. I was done using it after a day, while others among us continued using it up until we finally left the training and got out on the floor.
As the actual nature of the job became more obvious, I began having some moral qualms. I remembered that Dante Alighieri had a special place in Hell for those who charge interest to lend money, so during a break I looked it up on Wikipedia. When we reconvened, I was proud to be able to recount my findings with the group, explaining that due to our relationship with our new employer, we were destined to find ourselves spending a good portion of eternity in the Inner Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, sitting in a desert of flaming sands as fiery flakes rain down upon us. As I sat there, beaming about the opportunity to enlighten my fellow usurers-by-association, one of my fellow trainees said "Well, I don't know what book or movie it is you're talking about, but I don't see anything wrong with charging interest."
[side note to allow me the opportunity to vent: I have not read The Inferno, although I have started to in the past, and I am familiar with its existence. Most people have heard of "Dante's Inferno" whether they actually understand what it is or not. But to have absolutely no conception? To have never even heard of it? Unbelievable. I already knew that I was the only trainee to have a college degree, but this was coming from someone who had actually spent some time in school. Oh, by the way, if you were wondering how much graduating cum laude with a philosophy degree from one of the top 5 programs in the country helped my ability to get a job, you'll be happy to know if did come up in my interview. The interviewer, towards the end of the interview, asked me point blank "I see you got your degree in philosophy. Can I ask you what kind of job you were hoping to get with that?" Thank you, ma'am, for basically telling me that the past 4 years of my life were wasted on intensive study.]
I have since begun the actual job. It is horrible. I sit in a cubicle, which is great, but I am nothing more than a collections agent, barely a step up from telemarketer. I wear a headset, I use an automatic dialer, and I stare at computer screens of information. As I'm just starting out, I am on outbound calls only. I sit in my chair, ever at the ready, until a beep in my ear signals the beginning of the call. I look to the screen to find out who I'm asking for, who I'm calling from (as we work third party accounts, too), and what I'm calling about. The entire time I'm at work, I am on call. I can't use the internet. My conversations with coworkers are limited, as they're often interrupted by the horrible beep. A decent amount of the people I speak with are polite, but a similar number are rude or at least in a bad mood. I don't like calling people, but I do my best to see it from their point of view. I try to keep the calls short if they seem like they're in the middle of something, but I also let them rant if they're in that sort of mood. The other day I took a call from a man who was in the mood to talk. I'm bad about interrupting, and I usually enjoy the break in the monotony, so I let him go on. The call ended up being 13 minutes long. The desired length for calls is 2 minutes. Despite this lack of concern for time constraints, my numbers are surprisingly good. Every day they post a list of all the collectors and information regarding their calls: number of calls, number of promises to pay, number of promises kept/broken, and amount of money brought in. After the first week, I had more promises than anyone else in my training group, and, with 95% of them kept, I had a better percentage than any of the other trainees. My total amount of money brought in was double that of the next best trainee. I am surprisingly good at my job.
Sadly, the warm feelings I got from knowing that I'm good at my job faded quickly, and it was only a day later that I went back to feeling like Tom Hanks at the beginning of Joe Versus The Volcano. The problems with the job are numerous, but most of them boil down to misrepresentation in the hiring process. I am not a counselor. I do not have the power to help people, beyond deferring one or two months. My job is to collect money. They still hold on to the misnomer though, calling us "couselors" while at the same time offering us incentive bonuses based on how much money we bring in. What kind of counselors do you know who make a commission?
III. The Dog
Rounding out the hat trick of newness is the dog that Tara and I have adopted. For some time, Tara and I have been thinking about getting a pet. In the old apartment, we were bound by the line in my lease which read "Absolutely no pets or overnight guests" (obviously we didn't follow it completely). After getting the new place, we began a search for the perfect pet. We checked out the local pet stores, we checked Craigslist, we checked Petfinder. We thought about getting a cat, and even applied to rescue one that was at a local Petco. We found that we liked the idea of getting a cute Boxer puppy, and played with one at Petland. Here's something to think about, though: to rescue a 5 year old cat that was given up by a family that got a new dog cost $85 and required an application and a home visit, but to adopt a purebred puppy costs $1500 and requires nothing more (plus, the puppy comes with a warranty!). But in the end, we went we neither. We wanted something more lovable and playful than a cat that already had a family, and there was no way we could support the use of the puppy mills that Petland seems to prefer. We kept our eyes open, emailing and calling about puppies and dogs and getting no response.
Then, one day as I sat on my lunch break at work, I scanned the boxer puppies on Petfinder.com and saw the cutest puppies ever. They were from a litter of seven boxer shepherd mix puppies, strays, a mere five weeks old, and being held at a pound in Youngstown, OH. I called about them and spoke with a guy named Keith. I acknowledged my interest for the ones with black and fawn coloring, and found out there were two, one male and one female. Tara desired a female, so I asked him if he could hold it for us. "Well sir, the only thing is that if I hold it for you and other people come in and want her, I have to tell them no. Then, if you don't show up, she may have missed out on her chance of being adopted, and you know what happens then..." His voice trailed off as he avoided acknowledging the sad reality of a kill-shelter. I guaranteed that we would be there by the time they closed at 7pm. He called back later to take down all my information so he could have the paperwork ready for me when I got there. I called Tara and let her know that we were going to be making a road trip. It was at this point that the logistics of our puppy gathering arrangement.
Both of us were getting off of work at 5pm. By the time my bus dropped me off at home and Tara made her homeward commute, it would be 5:30pm. The drive to Youngstown from our place is an hour and a half. Things went as planned and we hit the road. We got to the pound at exactly 7:01pm, just as the last pound employee was getting into his car. We jumped out and said "wait, wait" and explained that we had called about a dog, spoken to Keith and that he said we could pick up our puppy. The guy was cool and let us in. He showed us our new, very small dog. We took her to the counter to pay and he explained "Alright, now I'm sorry, but you can't take her home today because it's too late and the paperwork will take too long..." "No, no, Keith took all my information, he said he would have it all filled out," I interrupted him. He looke
d at me incredulously, then looked for the paperwork, and came back with a surprised look on his face when he found it. A few minutes later, the paperwork was filled out. We handed him $42.50 (well, $42. He pitched in the fifty cents), he handed us our new dog (figuratively, as we already had her in our arms), and we were on our way home.
And now we have a puppy. She's super cute, and growing up fast. She's already twice as big as when we got her three weeks ago. She even has a name, after being referred to as "puppy" for the first week and a half. We were lazily brainstorming names and Tara tossed out the name "Abby". It was cute, it fit the dog, and it was similar enough to "Puppy" that all of our early training would not be in vain. Then Tara said she needed a middle name, too, and proposed we name our puppy "Abby Winters". It had a nice ring to it, and for some reason it sounded vaguely familiar to both of us. I googled it and we realized where we (or at least I) knew it from [nsfw].
And there you have it, the past month or two of my life in a nutshell.
II. The Job
Yes, it is true, I have a job. It is the first full-time job I have ever held, it pays more than I have ever made in the past, and it is slowly eating away at my soul. My job title is Credit Counselor, and I work in the Early Stage Collections Department of the Consumer Lending Center. Now, when I applied and interviewed for the job, they built it up. It was an opportunity to help people in need, help them in their times of financial hardship. I would be calling customers who were having trouble making their monthly payments, and I would use mighty powers to make everything better.
Then I got the job. Of course, the training didn't actually begin for another month, so I had plenty of time to be lazy. Then I began my two weeks of training, and the training was relatively enjoyable. It was simple, the woman in charge was fun, and there was a jovial, communal atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, I was annoyed at times. The systems were far too simple for the time we devoted to them, and we ended up wasting a lot of time just sitting around waiting to do things. And not to be completely full of myself, but I was by far the smartest person in the group. Doubt me? One shining example of the caliber of people I was with was when the trainer said to us, "Also, if you're not familiar with it, you may want to practice selecting things and then cutting and pasting them." They gave us a packet of pages on how to log in to the systems, which included signing on to Windows. I was done using it after a day, while others among us continued using it up until we finally left the training and got out on the floor.
As the actual nature of the job became more obvious, I began having some moral qualms. I remembered that Dante Alighieri had a special place in Hell for those who charge interest to lend money, so during a break I looked it up on Wikipedia. When we reconvened, I was proud to be able to recount my findings with the group, explaining that due to our relationship with our new employer, we were destined to find ourselves spending a good portion of eternity in the Inner Ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell, sitting in a desert of flaming sands as fiery flakes rain down upon us. As I sat there, beaming about the opportunity to enlighten my fellow usurers-by-association, one of my fellow trainees said "Well, I don't know what book or movie it is you're talking about, but I don't see anything wrong with charging interest."
[side note to allow me the opportunity to vent: I have not read The Inferno, although I have started to in the past, and I am familiar with its existence. Most people have heard of "Dante's Inferno" whether they actually understand what it is or not. But to have absolutely no conception? To have never even heard of it? Unbelievable. I already knew that I was the only trainee to have a college degree, but this was coming from someone who had actually spent some time in school. Oh, by the way, if you were wondering how much graduating cum laude with a philosophy degree from one of the top 5 programs in the country helped my ability to get a job, you'll be happy to know if did come up in my interview. The interviewer, towards the end of the interview, asked me point blank "I see you got your degree in philosophy. Can I ask you what kind of job you were hoping to get with that?" Thank you, ma'am, for basically telling me that the past 4 years of my life were wasted on intensive study.]
I have since begun the actual job. It is horrible. I sit in a cubicle, which is great, but I am nothing more than a collections agent, barely a step up from telemarketer. I wear a headset, I use an automatic dialer, and I stare at computer screens of information. As I'm just starting out, I am on outbound calls only. I sit in my chair, ever at the ready, until a beep in my ear signals the beginning of the call. I look to the screen to find out who I'm asking for, who I'm calling from (as we work third party accounts, too), and what I'm calling about. The entire time I'm at work, I am on call. I can't use the internet. My conversations with coworkers are limited, as they're often interrupted by the horrible beep. A decent amount of the people I speak with are polite, but a similar number are rude or at least in a bad mood. I don't like calling people, but I do my best to see it from their point of view. I try to keep the calls short if they seem like they're in the middle of something, but I also let them rant if they're in that sort of mood. The other day I took a call from a man who was in the mood to talk. I'm bad about interrupting, and I usually enjoy the break in the monotony, so I let him go on. The call ended up being 13 minutes long. The desired length for calls is 2 minutes. Despite this lack of concern for time constraints, my numbers are surprisingly good. Every day they post a list of all the collectors and information regarding their calls: number of calls, number of promises to pay, number of promises kept/broken, and amount of money brought in. After the first week, I had more promises than anyone else in my training group, and, with 95% of them kept, I had a better percentage than any of the other trainees. My total amount of money brought in was double that of the next best trainee. I am surprisingly good at my job.
Sadly, the warm feelings I got from knowing that I'm good at my job faded quickly, and it was only a day later that I went back to feeling like Tom Hanks at the beginning of Joe Versus The Volcano. The problems with the job are numerous, but most of them boil down to misrepresentation in the hiring process. I am not a counselor. I do not have the power to help people, beyond deferring one or two months. My job is to collect money. They still hold on to the misnomer though, calling us "couselors" while at the same time offering us incentive bonuses based on how much money we bring in. What kind of counselors do you know who make a commission?
III. The Dog
Rounding out the hat trick of newness is the dog that Tara and I have adopted. For some time, Tara and I have been thinking about getting a pet. In the old apartment, we were bound by the line in my lease which read "Absolutely no pets or overnight guests" (obviously we didn't follow it completely). After getting the new place, we began a search for the perfect pet. We checked out the local pet stores, we checked Craigslist, we checked Petfinder. We thought about getting a cat, and even applied to rescue one that was at a local Petco. We found that we liked the idea of getting a cute Boxer puppy, and played with one at Petland. Here's something to think about, though: to rescue a 5 year old cat that was given up by a family that got a new dog cost $85 and required an application and a home visit, but to adopt a purebred puppy costs $1500 and requires nothing more (plus, the puppy comes with a warranty!). But in the end, we went we neither. We wanted something more lovable and playful than a cat that already had a family, and there was no way we could support the use of the puppy mills that Petland seems to prefer. We kept our eyes open, emailing and calling about puppies and dogs and getting no response.
Then, one day as I sat on my lunch break at work, I scanned the boxer puppies on Petfinder.com and saw the cutest puppies ever. They were from a litter of seven boxer shepherd mix puppies, strays, a mere five weeks old, and being held at a pound in Youngstown, OH. I called about them and spoke with a guy named Keith. I acknowledged my interest for the ones with black and fawn coloring, and found out there were two, one male and one female. Tara desired a female, so I asked him if he could hold it for us. "Well sir, the only thing is that if I hold it for you and other people come in and want her, I have to tell them no. Then, if you don't show up, she may have missed out on her chance of being adopted, and you know what happens then..." His voice trailed off as he avoided acknowledging the sad reality of a kill-shelter. I guaranteed that we would be there by the time they closed at 7pm. He called back later to take down all my information so he could have the paperwork ready for me when I got there. I called Tara and let her know that we were going to be making a road trip. It was at this point that the logistics of our puppy gathering arrangement.
Both of us were getting off of work at 5pm. By the time my bus dropped me off at home and Tara made her homeward commute, it would be 5:30pm. The drive to Youngstown from our place is an hour and a half. Things went as planned and we hit the road. We got to the pound at exactly 7:01pm, just as the last pound employee was getting into his car. We jumped out and said "wait, wait" and explained that we had called about a dog, spoken to Keith and that he said we could pick up our puppy. The guy was cool and let us in. He showed us our new, very small dog. We took her to the counter to pay and he explained "Alright, now I'm sorry, but you can't take her home today because it's too late and the paperwork will take too long..." "No, no, Keith took all my information, he said he would have it all filled out," I interrupted him. He looke
d at me incredulously, then looked for the paperwork, and came back with a surprised look on his face when he found it. A few minutes later, the paperwork was filled out. We handed him $42.50 (well, $42. He pitched in the fifty cents), he handed us our new dog (figuratively, as we already had her in our arms), and we were on our way home.And now we have a puppy. She's super cute, and growing up fast. She's already twice as big as when we got her three weeks ago. She even has a name, after being referred to as "puppy" for the first week and a half. We were lazily brainstorming names and Tara tossed out the name "Abby". It was cute, it fit the dog, and it was similar enough to "Puppy" that all of our early training would not be in vain. Then Tara said she needed a middle name, too, and proposed we name our puppy "Abby Winters". It had a nice ring to it, and for some reason it sounded vaguely familiar to both of us. I googled it and we realized where we (or at least I) knew it from [nsfw].
And there you have it, the past month or two of my life in a nutshell.