If you had encountered me between the ages of five and 25 and asked what I was going to do, I would have said something creative. I liked writing, I liked playing guitar and I liked speaking in front of crowds. Many said I was better at these things than most, and I knew I wasn't too great at anything else, so I had to be some kind of entertainer/artiste.

Now I have been sitting in the call center over three years. My overtures to the marketing department have turned up nada. My Yahoo! inbox shows I've Cc'd myself on over 700 resumes since 2003. Somethin' ain't workin'. So I decided to enlist outside help.

Local consumer reporter Clark Howard did a special a few months ago about finding your dream job. On the tape were a couple of "career coaches". Maybe these ladies were what I needed? So I looked them up and called.

The first one I talked to asked me what I would be willing to do to be in the field I wanted to be in. In effect she was recommending I look at emptying trash cans and moving boxes around -- stuff I did in abundance when I was 21-25 and feel I should be well past at 36. I told her about the job that offered $30,000 initially and then backpedalled and offered $28,000. "Oh, but see, you would have been in your field." Then she advised me that for extended sessions of this kind of great insight she charged $999, but there was an economy pack for $650. Pay someone $650 to tell me to go take a shit job? No thanks!

It began to dawn on me what "coaching" meant: the stuff I've seen on a show my mom used to watch called Starting Over. Some woman with crystals in her hair tells you to write a letter to your inner child with your left hand, then skip rope while chanting, "I can fly like an eagle!," then you hand them your paycheck. Basically people get in a hard spot and don't know where to turn, so one of these charlatans shows up with a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to rip off their last dollar.

However, I decided to try one more witch doctor, after all the initial phone chat is free. So today I had an appointment to chat with the second one today. I was really dreading it and wanted to spend more time playing guitar, but I dialed.

First of all she was eating and licking her lips the whole time we talked, which any professional should know sounds like shit. Then she said, "Art, do you believe we create our own reality?"

SLIP! The glove goes off. "If I was into reading Maya Angelou books and believing whatever it says in What Color is My Parachute? I might. As a matter of fact when I was in college in a management class we had to take a test on where our locus of control was, and mine was firmly centered in me. However, you think that when you're 24. Now I know better.

"For instance in your situation: if someone else didn't buy your services, you'd be in a different line of work! If Donald Trump gets billions from investors and then no one rents his apartments, he's suddenly going to be like the rest of us! So no, you don't create your own reality. Everything very much depends on other people."

She said she was sure based on my answer she was not the coach for me, but she recommended some other guy, who I'm not going to call. His Web site has some sorta Tony Robbins wanna-be title, and you have to work with him on his 90-day "program," which probably involves yoga and beating a pillow while screaming, some sort of `70's EST therapy (I'm guessing).

After hanging up another analogy came to me: how about people in Africa? Do you think they sat down on a sand dune and said, "We have a vision of starving, having bloated bellies and flies bouncing off our faces, slowly dying of AIDS while burning in 100-degree heat." You think they just dreamed that up one lazy afternoon? No. It's the situation they're born into, and they just walk around in it doing the best they can, which isn't much.

Thanks to the Internet and the call center job I've talked to other guys around my age in the same boat. Both of the guys have served eight years in the military, then did four years of college. One guy around Chicago said he graduated college with honors and was a technical writer and office manager, then got laid off. He thought he was doing the right thing when he took a job driving a van, but he said now he thinks he may as well have "convicted murderer" on his resume because he sends out resume after resume and gets no response. Another guy here in Atlanta was in the Marines, then went to college, then when 9/11 happened he re-enlisted in the Army and did some time in Iraq. Now he telemarkets credit cards. "My mom says I should get a Master's degree and I tell her I'm working with people with Master's degrees!"

I recommended they both read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, do a little yoga and aroma therapy, and try again.

2 Comments:

 Anonymous said...

Some people respond well to coaching, others don't. The notion that you can invent or reinvent yourself is a powerful one in a relatively free society like America's. If you are doing a responsible job of digging white collar ditches where you are, you could probably choose to do it for half the rate somewhere else on your own schedule, and take the second half of the day to be in the guitar business.

But you would have to step off that train you're on, Art.

8:44 AM, May 20, 2007  

 Art said...

I do not understand the point that is being made here, but because it is coming from Rankin' Rob it whiffs of some kind of wisdom. I'll decipher the cryptic poetic meanings hidden within to find enlightenment. "White collar ditches...half the rate...the train you're on." ?

11:36 AM, May 20, 2007  

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