I got drunk tonight to celebrate because I’m not going to work tomorrow.
I’m not going to work tomorrow because I was forced to call 50 people today and pretend I was returning a call they never made in the first place. All day long, I had people screaming at me and hanging up. They said it was sleazy and insulting, and they wouldn’t deal with a company like this. They had a point.
“Why do I have to do this?” I asked my new boss.
He said it was a “pattern interrupt” to keep them from terminating the call once they realized it was a sales call. And yet, they kept terminating the calls! Go figure. (My boss said I “wasn’t credible enough” when I lied.)
Uh huh. Finally, for the 50th call, I said, “Hi, we’re a company that does sales training and consulting. How are you handling that now?” The owner opened up, told me everything that was a problem and I made an appointment – by ignoring everything my boss said to do. Hah.
Then my boss told me “by the way,” he had another salesperson starting Thursday – “but he’s not an employee like you. I just want to see how he does.”
In other words, I’d be competing for my own job. Nice.
My best friend took me out to a nice restaurant after work to celebrate my new job. “So what, exactly, are we celebrating again?” I said.
“I can’t see myself doing this fucking awful job for another twenty years. This is our Independence Day,” she said. We’ve been talking about starting a business together, and tonight we decided it was time to go for it. We set a deadline.
Once at Drinking Liberally, I decided to drink heavily, especially after everyone started ribbing me about my work clothes. And after a few gin & tonics, I knew just what to do.
“I’m not going to work tomorrow,” I announced. “That’s it, I quit.” Clarity.
Are you serious? people asked, admiring.
Oh yeah, I said. And then I talked to a prominent local blogger (not the sweaty one) about working for him until I lined something up. He said he’d email me.
Then Somegirl and Jim Capozzola joined me in singing show tunes at the sidewalk tables. We covered most of “The Sound of Music,” “West Side Story,” and a few selections from “Hair” and “Company.” I felt a lot better.High on the hill was a lonely goatherd, lay ee oh a lay ee oh a lay hee HOE.Or: A boy like that wants one thing only And when he gets it He leaves you lonely One of your own kind Stick to your own kind.
So that’s it. Of course, I still have to return the phone calls I got from my mother and sister, congratulating me on my wonderful new job. But what the hell, life is short and why waste any more time than you have to, letting a soulless suit suck out your soul?
I’d rather stock shelves.
