I never expected to be in this position, counting down the days until starting a new position in automotive sales. My degree is in agricultural sciences, my working background has taken me traipsing across industries: milking cows, selling cheese, bartending, managing a liquor store, and selling booze to liquor stores. For someone whose intended career path was to be a lab rat for a food manufacturer, doing R&D and QA testing, I didn't expect my working life to go the way it did.
The last 12 years of my life were spent struggling. I graduated from college during the great recession. Degree in hand, I searched through my university's job placement board, just to be met with rejection. The only place that called me back was a billionaire's estate farm, seeking a cow milker for $15/hour. $86,000 in debt, starting immediately. $15/hour was all I could get.
From there, I became a cheesemonger in Manhattan, taking a pay cut just to get out of rural Pennsylvania. I worked as a closing manager, affineur (cave manager), and started an education program, all for $11/hour. I then opened a bar, hired to plan their menu and kept on to be the first bartender. Tips were tight, and roughly 70% of my income went to rent and MTA passes. I lived paycheck to paycheck, subsisting on cheap pasta and Genesee tallboys, for five years.
I moved to Denver, hoping to get out of the alcoholic rush of Big Apple bartending life, but stayed in the industry. I managed the liquor department at a massive store--for $15. I was poached to drive 70 miles a day, begging backwater liquor stores to buy my wares--for a 10% commission. I never broke the $50K mark.
I'm now 33. I spent the pandemic working closing shifts at a small wine shop. The customers, as expected in this liberal enclave, were diligent about masking. Six foot distancing, though, is more difficult when your store is 20 feet wide. Working nights and weekends destroyed my social life as restrictions began to lift. I wanted a change. I wanted a career.
I quit. I started studying for the CompTIA A+ certification, hearing tales from friends and family about people who stumbled into tech and were rewarded handsomely for it. I wanted that for myself. Of course, with unemployment, my bank balance started ticking down dramatically, and I began applying for jobs, anything I was remotely qualified for. Helpdesk, cabling, IT support. "They'll hire anyone with a pulse," I was advised by well-intentioned friends. "Start there and work your way into something."
Friends: they do not hire anyone with a pulse. For the approximately 40-50 applications I sent out for entry-level tech positions, only about 10 got back to me with a "thank you for applying, but..." form letter. Not a single bite. Not a single interview.
I applied to entry-level positions in my field of study as well; lab assistant positions, even lowball internships, much to the same result. Out of desperation, I applied for anything, knowing that I only had a few months worth of savings remaining.
Then, I got a call from a chain of used car dealerships. I will not name them in this blog, I will simply refer to them as "The Company." They were seeking a "customer experience manager," a glorified title for a salesperson. $50K salary plus bonuses, full benefits, 16 days PTO plus 8 paid holidays. It wasn't what I'd expected to end up doing, but also...they were offering more than I've ever made in my life.
Three interviews of escalating difficulty followed. They grilled me on my work experience, my sales techniques, problem solving skills, and questioned why someone with my background would be interested in automotive sales. By the third, I was assuming I'd blown it, and it'd be back to Linkedin to continue the hunt.
Then, one morning, I was woken up by an email notification. "Congratulations," it began, "your application has been selected for the position of Customer Experience Manager." I blinked the sleep out of my eyes, sent off a hasty reply.
"I'm excited to be a part of The Company team. Please contact me with any further details regarding the onboarding process." I shuffled to the kitchen, poured myself a cup of coffee, and gazed out the window, wondering how the hell I'd ended up here.