Back with a story that's a fresh one, so let's get the muthafuckin' session goin'!

Sorry, I've been listening to N.W.A. lately.

So do you think I wrote all that other stuff because I'm stuck in the past? No! I wrote it because the past is the father of the future!

Well, who needed the radio stations and newspapers anyhow? Here I was at an entry-level job with one of the largest wireless companies in the world. Newspapers were already dwindling after TV, radio and the Internet, and now radio stations were hot on the trail to irrelevance with the advent MP3 players and so on. So maybe the wireless business was the right place to be.

After about a year an opportunity came up to become a trainer. Trainers only got to train for a year before they went back on the phones, but I'd have something on my resume that was more in line with what I liked to do, talk to crowds, and maybe this could lead me to a great job. So I applied.

When you were put in the pot to be considered as a trainer they did something called a "matrix" on you, which is a composite score where they factor in your attendance, observation scores and other statistics. My matrix was good enough for to be considered. However, in private my supervisor told me that this other guy in our group, an El Salvadoran, was also in contention. His matrix score was .75 lower than mine BUT...because he was bilingual they were giving him a point! So he was getting the chance to "audition" with a presentation and I wasn't, I was just getting blown off the same at this crap job as I did in the media biz.

We have seperate Spanish call centers in Miami and Los Angeles, no one he was training would speak Spanish-only, so why being bilingual was important I have no idea. Either way my streak of being passed over continued.

The El Salvador guy and myself were in a traning class for something, and one day we went to lunch together. He saw a box in my car that had a bunch of jam band CD's and asked about them. I told him that I sometimes I had done reviews for the AJC, Creative Loafing, etc. He said, "Why didn't you say that in class?" We had gone around the room talking about what we did outside of work, and all I said was I played guitar. I never bring up my radio, magazine and newspaper exploits to anyone. It all added up to nothing, so who cares? Everyone's a actor, a rock star, a novelist, a film director outside of work. Unless you're on the cover of People there's no reason to bring it up to anyone.

Back in class he was talking about how he had to audition for the Trainer position, and what topic he'd been given to cover. As I always do I started spouting ideas. "Yeah, what you should do is look up blah blah blah, include something on so-and-so..." He seemed impressed at the ideas I was spewing. I caught myself and clammed up. Why was I perpetually a nice guy? Time to indulge my smaller, less magnanimous self for a change.

Later another idea occured to me: he should do a Power Point presentation and e-mail it to whoever was going to be judging his presentation so they could follow along. Get this -- he didn't know what Power Point was! I had to show him! Then this black guy, who actually should have had the opportunity over either of us, gave him the idea to make a title page. When I saw what he came up with his fonts changed size with every page and were often off-center, but I figured I'd given far more help than I should have already.

So...his Power Point presentation paid off. He got the job. Then he quit it six months later, only to be promoted to the Fraud department, another job I would be blown off for the next year.

What did that career coach say? "Create your own reality!" Thanks, Space Bitch!

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