I’ll start of by mentioning that when I say “jobless” it was by choice, not that I was “unemployed” or whatever, I just didn’t want what people technically call a “real job”.

Anyway, why would someone get a job after doing whatever it was they were doing for 3 years? Well to make a long story short, my mom is retiring in less than a week. When I found out, she had also mentioned that she would probably have to get a small part-time job just in case also (she’s a teacher, and has been for like 30+ years or something crazy).

So I thought to myself, “man, that would suck to finally retire after so long, and then have to go right back to working”. I guess I took it upon myself to try and help so she wouldn’t have to do that. Now, i’m not rich (yet!), and my freelance career or whatever it is that i’ve been doing for the past 3 years is enough to cover my own financial needs, but not someone who has actual adult bills and stuff.

Enter a job. The job. It was a job post entitled “Ebay Associate” or something like that, actually it was nothing like that, it basically said “Post stuff on Ebay and help us run our ebay stores.” I was like “Ok, cool, I can do that, I’ve done that before.” I’m very opposed to having to get a job because it’s not what I want to do, and it doesn’t lead me in a direction I’d like to be in the future. But I said said “Fuc* it” and went. The interview was easy, and I guess they thought I’d be a good fit, so they emailed me the next day, or maybe it was the same day, I don’t remember (even though it was only like 3-4 weeks ago hahaha), and gave me my pay rate, (which I don’t care much for, but I’m far more interested in how much time i’d be wasting at this job, because time is more valuable than money at this point to me), and my hours. It was a regular 9-5ish type of job, Mon-Fri, oh and like 4 hours on Sat. (stupid, because it’s only to make up for the mandatory hour lunches they make you take, FUC* LUNCH, I’ll work straight through that SHI*).

At this point I had asked a slew of people what they thought about the whole thing, me getting a job. But before we get to that part, I also had other things in mind for the cash flow coming in from the job. I’d hire a couple of virtual assistants, and have them work 20-40 hours per week on my empirelabz website, driving traffic to my channel and website. Anyway, so I asked all these people about it, I was even able to ask this Economics/Business professor at Philadelphia University who has A PHD in Economics and a masters in business, perfect person to ask! He said “that’s a great idea”. Another person I asked and had stressed to him about how much time i’d be wasting spending 40 hours a week at this job said “40 hours ain’t s***!” I laughed and then proceeded to try and man up and agree with him. I learned he worked 12 hour days and traveled 2 hours each way for work, he has a rather impressive house. So, I got some opinions on it, and came to the decision to accept the job.

The first day, oh man oh man the first day of “work” in 3 years….Was interesting. I got up, got ready as per usual. I kept thinking to myself “Man, I’m about to go to work, that’s dumb.” But I went through with it. I had been working on this rather large client for my business, and they had scheduled a meeting with me with 2 of their directors. This might have been, no actually, it was the largest company I’ve ever had a meeting with, their yearly revenue is just over $1 Billion, and they employ 5,000 people in 25 countries. Woah! I just realized that right now….Interesting..anyway, there was no way I’d let some dumb job get in the way of that meeting. So I got to the new job at the office, and this weird feeling of mundane-ness and a bewilderment of sadness (im exaggerating a bit) fell over me. It was office chairs, desks, computers, NOT EVEN MACS, like old PC’s. I don’t even know how to use a PC! I guess people talk to you at offices and stuff, because the person in the desk next to mine started talking to me. She ended up being the person to “train” me or whatever. She mentioned she had been there for 5 years already….I was completely taken aback by that statement. I was a bit frightened and started to think to myself “What if i end up here for 5 years…”.

The actual work wasn’t too bad for the first day. But there was still this important meeting to tend to, and I had to figure out a way to get there for at least 30 min (I figured I could wrap the meeting up in that timespan). I found out you can take a lunch whenever you want (almost). My meeting was at 3 p.m. People started to take lunch at noon. My boss asked “What time are you going to lunch?” I just mentioned I had a big breakfast and wasn’t hungry. My idea was to try and get my lunch at 2:45. She asked again around 1:30, I said the same. By 2:15 she “made” me go to lunch. I’m not a fan of people to tell me when I can or can’t go somewhere….But I went. I flew out the door, sped down the street to the meeting, and was ready to sell the crap out myself in that meeting. The meeting ended up going well, so well they asked if I could go with them to check out their other 3 company buildings which weren’t too far ( at least a 30 min car ride). I was pretty excited about how well the meeting was going. We get back to the main building, and It had been at least an hour and fifteen minutes since I left the office….Our lunches were only 1 hour. I raced back (not really, because I didn’t care much at that point), and made it back 30 minutes late from lunch on my first day of work. Yesssssssss! I received some negative comments from my boss as one should expect, but I was ready to say “I had a far more important meeting than this job, deal with it”….Lol not really but close. It was almost 5 and one of the employees started to throw everyone’s’ trash bins. This is so stupid, there are 8-10 employees at the office in this one semi-large room, and each of them has their own trash bin. So an employee has to go to each individual trash bin, and empty it into a larger bin, then take the larger bin outside to the dumpster. WHAT THE FUC*! Why not just make people get out of their chairs and throw their trash in one big trash can. Some manager would say “It’s all about keeping the employees productive” or some corporate crap like that. ANYWAY…..

The end of the day came, and I left. I had lots of other work to do, and was a little mad I wasted 8 hours of the day at that place. The second day came, and I they had me doing the same miniscule task that I would outsource overseas for less than half of their US employees salary. I was fed up with it by 10 A.M. I started trying to disrupt and break down the process and try and make it more effective and efficient than the way they did it. They didn’t like that one bit, at all. They would just tell me “We’ve been doing this for a long time” I would just say ok, but in my mind, I would just want to tell them that technology has advanced so far since “ a long time ago” that it’d be like using a corded telephone because “you’ve been doing it like that for a long time:. Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh.

By then they had sensed I was becoming extremely bored and sent me to the actual retail store to shoot photos of products. It was a change of pace, I guess, wasn’t as bad as the other tasks at the office. I ended up staying there until almost closing time.

By the third day I must have created some chaos within the workplace because my “trainer” talked to the boss about me and they made me take a private meeting with them. Haha, my third day on the job, already disrupting. They were mad because I always had my headphones on, and because I was trying to change their process. I blatantly told them I wear my headphones because I didn’t want to listen to all the “office talk”, people talking about normal crap I don’t care anything about and I don’t want any part of. They kind of understood, but were still mad about the changing of their process. They said I need to get with the program or I might be gone.

I had this plan, to go directly to the owners of the company and pitch them that I should run their social media and marketing campaigns because they weren’t doing a great job at the moment. Only thing is, they were out of town the week I was at the job.

The end of the workweek came, and I was still mad that i wasted 40 hours there. Sunday came and I had to re-evaluate my situation there. I decided to not go back to work. I got a paycheck like a month later, for $309.52. For an entire weeks worth of work. $300 fuc*ing dollars. I hadn’t gotten a paycheck in 3 years. Man, it’s crazy to think that’s how much I would get paid if I stayed there. It’s not the money that messes with me, it’s the fact that I have to spend so much time there. 40 hours every week is a long time. It takes away from my business. I think I should just get a part-time job. So that’s what i’m trying to do now. H&M just opened up here in my town, and it’s cool there, I like their stores. So I submitted an application a few days ago. I also found out Starbucks will pay for your entire Junior & Senior year of college at ASU online. Which is very interesting because I’ve been contemplating going back to school, and that was one of the places I was interested in. Starbucks is now a great candidate for me. I haven’t applied yet, but I really want to. ASU online is like $15,000 per year. I’m so down to do that.

Working at that place taught me one thing I already knew, that I value my time much more than money, and you can’t pay me what YOU want for MY time. I’d rather get paid what I ask.