Where do you / want to work

[Damen]

You can't expect to make 500k a month right after you get your degree though... gotta start somewhere.

you're absolutely right, I was hoping to make around 24-25000/year which I don't think that was too unreasonable to expect, especially as hard as the material is. It's not really about the money for me at least, It's just trying to find an employer who's hiring/willing to let you get some experience, even if it's at the cost of a paycut. It's just that after going through 4 years of learning the material I can't even find a job in my field [might end up relocating this summer though]. College's really need to stop feeding their students the crap they do about salaries/jobs and tell them how the real world is imo. I went to college to better myself, and it seems like it's only caused me a lot of debt + a crap job that I could have without a college education.

I'm sure things will get better, I'm still young , but it's like I've always said (especially in the IT/Tech field), you'll learn way more about anything by actually having a job doing it, not by listening to some smuck talk about it in a classroom.

stay in school it's a lot easier than the real world

[Demosthenes]

EB stuff.

See, if we ever treated a customer rudely or whatever we got yelled out so much. Some guy was being a dickface to me once, he asked if we had some racing game, and then said nevermind because I didn't know anything about some racing game because I was a girl, and I got SO pissed off. My manager heard and like yelled at ME to go into the back room before I said anything back to the guy, cause yeah, the customers are always fucking right.

Girls seem to go through that a helluva lot. Nikkei apparently had it sucky when she worked there as well. It's not so bad in the area I live in. Only geeky gaming girls need apply, and everyone knows it.

[Lbelle]

This guy called up once, and I gave h im the normal, "Thanks for calling gamestop where you can buy, sell, trade games, this is Leah how may I help you," schpeel, and he immediately went, "I need to talk to a guy cause I have a question about grand theft auto."

And I just, holy shit I almost threw the phone. But instead I was like ...ok.....and handed it to my manager. It was just one of those frustrating moments, haha.

But yeah I'd never really want to work in retail again. I loved being a waitress a while ago and made a ton of money though.

[Immortaldonut]

I work here ---> http://www.arlingtonschools.org as a middle school teacher. Not a bad job but I don't think I'm a lifer.

haha no shit! i live in new paltz.

i currently work at a grocery store called Stop & Shop. It's under a parent company that owns several grocery store chains and food distributers. i work on the front end as a superviser, run customer service desk, and i do pharmacy. on odd occasions, i end up as a cashier or playing secretary for my manager (who just left the store ). not sure how much longer i'll last at this job because the rest of the managers are pricks.

dream job: anything where i get to wear a slick suit and make lots of money. my tastes are a little too expensive for my wallet, so something that pays a lot is necessary. i could see myself in corporate culture because i can get along well with just about anyone, but i can cut throats if i need to.

[Anyway]

I work here ---> http://www.arlingtonschools.org as a middle school teacher. Not a bad job but I don't think I'm a lifer.

haha no shit! i live in new paltz.

i currently work at a grocery store called Stop & Shop. It's under a parent company that owns several grocery store chains and food distributers. i work on the front end as a superviser, run customer service desk, and i do pharmacy. on odd occasions, i end up as a cashier or playing secretary for my manager (who just left the store ). not sure how much longer i'll last at this job because the rest of the managers are pricks.

dream job: anything where i get to wear a slick suit and make lots of money. my tastes are a little too expensive for my wallet, so something that pays a lot is necessary. i could see myself in corporate culture because i can get along well with just about anyone, but i can cut throats if i need to.

My friend has been working at Stop N Shop for probably over 2 years now. He hates it so much and says he is going to quit every single week. Obviously he doesn't. I think he has the same job as you, from what he described to me.

[Demosthenes]

This guy called up once, and I gave h im the normal, "Thanks for calling gamestop where you can buy, sell, trade games, this is Leah how may I help you," schpeel, and he immediately went, "I need to talk to a guy cause I have a question about grand theft auto."

And I just, holy shit I almost threw the phone. But instead I was like ...ok.....and handed it to my manager. It was just one of those frustrating moments, haha.

But yeah I'd never really want to work in retail again. I loved being a waitress a while ago and made a ton of money though.

Yeah in the end retail fucking sucks. I'll say one thing though. I could never work with food. I mean I don't look down on the people who do it at all, but I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror if I worked at McDs or even some posh resturant.

[Reshasha]

http://www.maxps3.com/wp-content/upl...8/best-buy.gif

[Excalin Garisk]

Im a F-16 Crew Chief for the 187th Fighter Wing (Guard: Traditional)

I also work in the Reliabilty Lab at UAH in Huntsville Alabama as an undergrad (we get to goto Orlando FL for a week this month to persent a engineering paper we wrote...school pays)

When I get done with school hope to get picked up to Fly for my Guard unit and would like to get into aircraft testing with one of the bigger companies. My dad and one of his retired buddies want to start a company for War Gaming with the Military. If that takes off the ground I would be apart of that.

[xingoo]

I want to be a specialist at massage. And be pornstar masseur [women onry]. 8)

[Sadler]

I work for http://www.dynamode.net

http://www.comms-express.com/assets/...amode_logo.jpg.

I basically run there Sister Company http://www.netbit.biz/ which basically are a specialist distributor to the Networking/Installer base.

Pretty boring stuff tbh... but who cares when you get a free Audi, trips over the world and 3% commision lol

[Elesirdur]

Well if we're going to throw out GameStop/EBGames stories here's two of my favorites. I should preface this by saying that during the time of these annecdotes I was effectivly the Assistant Manager. In the 5.5 years I worked there we only had a full-time ASM for roughly 2.75 years, the rest of the time all the ASM duties were split between myself and the other senior associate. I was the top-dog salesman who managed the staff and customers, he handled all the paperwork and we split logistics duties in about half. My manager trusted us with the store and we were pretty much free to make our own decisions on anything except for hiring. Our boss wasn't lazy or anything he just knew that he had two trustworthy, intelligent, and hard-working guys that would help lessen his very heavy work load (anyone who's done retail management will know what I mean) and deal with all the HR-Head Office relations kind of stuff. Anyways, on with the stories.

This one was the most frustrating and infuriating argument I ever got into with a customer. I'm a pretty level-headed and diplomatic person (anyone who's been in a LS with me would know that) but I damn near came to jumping on top of the cash wrap and kicking this fat fucking asshole's face in. What prompted my murderous rage was this middle-aged fatty dipshit and his asspipe son come in and want to get a pre-order deposit back for a game they didn't want anymore. As anyone who's worked or shopped at an EBGames knows whenever money comes out of the store, be it a return refund or store credit from trade-ins, we require a piece of photo id to complete a manual slip where we take down the customer's info. (That was the standing order at EBGames Canada Ltd., can't say anything about US or Int'l stores.) But this dick doesn't want to give us his id or take down his name for fear that we'll sell off his info to satanic porn-mongorers that will come into his house late a night and cornhole his bloated syphilis riddled asshole or some other bs. I remain adamant that to process refunds of any kind, we require photo id to complete a manual slip for accountability purposes and so if we fuck up some how we can contact him and get his money back properly; seriously, that's why they ask for it. He continues to stonewall me even though I tell him that we keep the store copies of manual slips for 3 months and then shred and burn the remains (which we did).

He pulls out his "big guns" with a printed off copy of the Canadian Information Privacy act citing some non-existent statute he thinks says that it would be unlawful for us to demand information from him in this manner. I have a degree in History and Political Science, and one of the things I focused on in my PoliSci classes was constitutional law - I'm pretty good at reading, understanding, and interpreting legal documents, at least for someone who's never been to Law School. Anyways, we argue back and forth for nearly 30 minutes and I'm getting streamed because this guy is calling us cheats and liars and thinking that we're out to fuck him; after his childish and outlandishly paranoid behavior I want to sell his info to every goddamn telemarketer I can find and have him receave 50 kilos of junk mail every fucking day. In any event, he starts shouting and I just lose it and ban him from the store. He storms out of the store yelling down the mall hallway that we're scammers and cheats and such. I run out after him and yell obsceneties down the hallway at him. (Which I fully admit was an extremely stupid thing to do but I have rarely been as angry in my entire life.) Luckily this was around 20h30 on the first Tuesday night we were open for extended Christmas hours so there were probably 100 shoppers in the mall total and the store only had one long-time customer who was actually helping me out in the arguments. One of my junior salesmen was there the entire time and tried his best to back me up and calm us down but god that was a horrible night.

Wondering how much his deposit was for? FIVE DOLLARS He went through all that shit for a measly five dollars which is what got me so angry in the first place. This jerkoff did e-mail my DM through HQ about this incident to which, after speaking to my DM, she sided easily with me and was happy that I kept the $5 for the company. I'm pretty sure I omitted the part where I yelled curses at him down the mall hallway, but I figure I was off store property so I was kind of off the hook anyways


Alright, this is my favorite "don't be a prick to sales people, it'll bite you in the ass" story:
January 18, 2004, three days after our Christmas return policy has ended. The post-Christmas business is still going pretty strong and the staff's pretty much spent from all the XMas lunacy. Shortly after starting my afternoon/evening shift this woman, late-40s, designer track suit, big honking diamond ring and other assorter jewelry which was worth more than my yearly salary, waltzes up to the cash wrap, plops a GameCube system down on the desk and in her most 'I'm rich so give me service you witless half-tard' tone says to me "This is broken, get me a new one...now." From the very instant she finished her sentence I told myself 'no way in hell is this rich cunt getting a new system from me.' Apparently controller ports 2 and 3 were not working properly or some other simple technical fault. She presents her bill and, surprise surprise, she didn't get the extended warranty for this XMas gift. (Aside: Extended Warranties, ESA, etc. are pretty much the only thing we got commission on, 20% as I recall, and we pushed hard on them as salespersons because a) It's extra coin in our pocket, and b) the coverage is really damn good, seriously, it's awesome.)

So, in my best smarmy and diplomatic voice I calmly inform this woman that, because she did not purchase the extended warranty and it is now 3 days past the return date, that she cannot do a defective exchange through us; she has to go to Nintendo to take up their 6-month warranty. Of course, she insists that I swap the system out immediately and, to no surprise, pullls out the old "I'll never shop here again" threat. I pull out the GC manual and begin to read the legalese of the Nintendo Manufacturers Warranty and compare it with our own return policy, kindly printed on the back of the receipts. She of course becomes infuriated that a 20-year old has bested this rich skank in a duel of wits and begins to complain loudly. I profusely apologize for the inconvenience our policy has caused and remind her that, had she purchased the extended warranty for a measly $15, she would have had a brand-new system in he hands within five minutes and been on her way home. Furthermore, I also provide the details of how she can ship her system to Nintendo of Canada and that S&H plus any incidental repair costs shouldn't come to more than $50. She has had enough and storms out of the store in a huff, loudly proclaiming that she will indeed never shop with us again. As any good salesman does, I cheerily remind her that we welcome her back any time and to bring her old games to trade too!

The entire time my ASM Dave, a super guy and long time retail vet, is just chocking down laughter as he does inventory counts behind the cash wrap at the way I handled this. I even told my manager about this when he popped in later that day to look out for this woman and her eventual complaining. Had this woman just been kind, hell even just not such a high-and mighty cunt, I would have made an exception and exchanged the system in a second - or maybe had her buy an ESA to sweeten the deal for me. In the end, another EB in our city did the replacement from her and, to no great surprise, I saw her in my store not 3 months later picking up a scad of games for her spoiled brat of a sun. It's people like her that burned me out of retail. I tried to be kind, friendly, courteous, fair and above all, respectful, to every customer who came through my doors. But, if you're not going to respect the most basic common courtesies the don't expect any from me. I don't give two shits how many credit cards you have or how big your income is, you don't respect me, don't ever expect anything from me. Show me some respect and a modocom of kindness, you'll get the best damn service you've ever had.


Anyways, I ended up quitting EB after Christmas of 2005. I had just too much of the stress and a summer job, sitting in an office, drinking coffee, playing Risk with my mates in the office, and surfing the internet earning $17.50/hr then coming back to a 60% pay cut for 1000x the stress was just not worth it. I still keep in touch with the guys at my old store and chat with them when I can. There were some days that job at EB was just a lot of fun, but others - man it was just hell for so many reasons. Great life experience, but just remember to treat your salesperson with some respect and patience wherever you are.


PS: Yes I'm aware this is an epic "Wall 'o Text" and a good tl;dr candidate but hey, I though I would share.

[RakEx]

You can't expect to make 500k a month right after you get your degree though... gotta start somewhere.

you're absolutely right, I was hoping to make around 24-25000/year which I don't think that was too unreasonable to expect, especially as hard as the material is. It's not really about the money for me at least, It's just trying to find an employer who's hiring/willing to let you get some experience, even if it's at the cost of a paycut. It's just that after going through 4 years of learning the material I can't even find a job in my field [might end up relocating this summer though]. College's really need to stop feeding their students the crap they do about salaries/jobs and tell them how the real world is imo. I went to college to better myself, and it seems like it's only caused me a lot of debt + a crap job that I could have without a college education.

I'm sure things will get better, I'm still young , but it's like I've always said (especially in the IT/Tech field), you'll learn way more about anything by actually having a job doing it, not by listening to some smuck talk about it in a classroom.

stay in school it's a lot easier than the real world

It took me a little over a year, almost 1.5 years to land my first real job after graduating with an MIS degree. I'm getting paid more than I would have expected, working for a large insurance company in Hartford. Just keep at it and keep applying and make sure those Monster resumes and things like that look good and sound good. You'll find something.

Also, the base pay for my job was a bit higher than what i was offered when i first started. They were able to do this because I had no real job experience. Then once i proved myself, i started dropping hints to let them know that i wasn't very pleased about making less than the base salary for the job. They figured out that they should give me a raise before i began to look for a job elsewhere.

Good Luck.

[Vertabreaker]

I currently work for the state of NJ as a WebSphere admin and basically spend most of my time writing Jacl and Jython scripts.

Dream job would be a pro snowboarder. Not like Shawn White or Danny Kass in competitions all the time, but like Dave Downing. Just get to ride everyday and get all the new equips when they come out.

[Xiona]

i currently work as a lazy mother fucker who specializes in hitting f5 on various forums and message boards. i also excell at flipping between CSI and Law and Order.

i do play MMOs and some what a connisoure of mac and cheeses.

did i mention im really a college student who gets a free ride so for once in my life i dont have to work lol

Oh and the job i want is what im going to school for. 1 of 2 possibilities, psychiatrist/psychologist or college professor.

[Demosthenes]

tl;dr

But I have hoped over the counter at someone before, when they made idle threats at me. They chickened out and left the store.

[Raylinn]

Currently programming at a small company that sells an automobile dealer management system. Mostly trying to fix up code that is older than I am, and writing a few new modules here and there.

Hoping to go back to school and finish up my compsci degree, and either continue life as a coder, or possibly go into education.