This recording was made in 2012 and the principles still hold true today. The paradox of unemployed workers trying to get a job and employers not being able to fill positions. People say they won't accept the job because they're making more on unemployment. Yes, at some point, having a job is better than none, but in some cases, taking a lesser job just to fill the space can make it difficult to attend interviews. Most of these jobs won't just let you leave or take time off to interview for the better jobs. I completely understand not taking a job because unemployment pays more, but only if you're actively looking for the next career move that will pay at least equal to or better than unemployment benefits.
Those unemployment payments don't last forever! If your time is running out it's probably good to get something decent at least. I agree that it's foolish to just "wait it out" and again, people need to know that unemployment expires. It doesn't go on forever. People aren't paid to permanently sit at home if they want to. Some states even require active job search and resume building workshops to help you get your new job. I've experienced it personally. Some critics will say people need to just move to lower cost of living areas or places with more jobs and better jobs. Ok, I get the logic and maybe it's a good plan for some, but people don't want to move away or can't move away because either they rely on others for support, others rely on them, or they just can't afford to relocate somewhere new and take risks without support. The video interviewed young people who didn't want to work in factories or machine shops either because they saw their parents struggle in those jobs. They either didn't make enough money or they were laid off at every economic downturn. One person in this video quoted, "Many just won't take hard jobs at modest pay." Why should they? The job itself and the pay sucks. There are better alternatives. Why do people always call it modest, competitive, or good pay when the jobs don't even pay enough to live on independently? You will still have to live with roommates to help cover the costs of living. One case they highlighted was a guy out of prison that started out putting up cable wire for $200/week. Must've been part-time because that math doesn't add up to full-time minimum wage laws; then, suddenly, a short two and a half years later he's a manager making almost 6 figures!? Something is missing here. It's DEFINITELY an outlier and he's EXTREMELY lucky or there's a connection of some kind that was disclosed. They kept asking employers, especially those typically working with immigrants, if they thought American workers are "entitled." Never mind the fact that employers are the one's acting "entitled" to having people do hard labor for slave wages. Pay better wages and be competitive if you want people to work for you. Again, pay better wages, offer better working conditions, offer good perks and benefits and be competitive if you want people to work for you. You are not entitled to cheap labor. People not wanting to work hard or low paying jobs doesn't mean their entitled, it means they know they deserve better and are finding better alternatives. Make it worthwhile to work with you. In 2022 our economy is hurting because the costs of everything have been going up extraordinarily fast, but the quality of service has been dropping because everything is short staffed. We're all paying more and having to wait longer and get worse service. In the words of Butt-Head, "This sucks!"
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Yeah I kind of worked for someone like this once, for a year and a half. The boss/owner of the small company was a high energy individual that wanted to be fun. Sometimes it was good for morale, but mostly I just wanted to get my work done, get paid, minimize problems, and go home. This kind of attitude my boss had made me feel like he was just there to have fun and "play" with his business instead of actually work. This is because no one really knew what he actually did. His work was a mystery, but he was usually there in his own office. All the real work was hired out for me and my coworkers to do.
Here is where I first came across this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinkedInLunatics/comments/ty6zyy/one_way_i_boosted_my_morale_today_was_by_watching/ The comments are fun to read through and see how different personalities react to this in the workplace. Some people commented on this being an atmosphere of toxic positivity, where problems are often shoved under the rug and not discussed as adults trying to make things better. It's where everyone needs to constantly be in a great, upbeat mood and bubbly personality. It's exhausting. In my experience. Problems that kept coming up were never actually discussed. The owner kept dismissing things and reciting the same anecdotes that weren't really applicable. He was more interested in how to make more money than how to actually improve and solve problems. Some people in the reddit thread commented that this type of atmosphere is the places where everyone gets paid crap, but the "benefits" are a fun work environment they love to advertise. One person made a joke about how the boss in this video wanted to chat with the employees, play foosball, and go on fun outings, but the employees in reality are probably like, "Hey, I've actually gotta get this sent out today and I just want to go home or hang out with friends instead of play around here." Some others mentioned their dislike of public music being turned up at work as one person commented, "Listening to music I don't like through shitty, tiny speakers in a wooden echo chamber when I need to concentrate on something or be on the phone is going to boost my blood pressure." Anyways, in case you missed it, these are the 5 ways to boost workplace morale according to the video: 1) Get the vibe going, turn the music on 2) Get your energy levels up. walk around, grab a coffee 3) Challenge people, encourage personal growth & development 4) Break up the day, have fun with your team 5) Get outside, change the environment, have a walking meeting, mix it up a little bit. I wanted to publish something to get more specific about the motives for the creation of Invested Alternative and its goals. There are six experiences and ideas that went into its creation.
1) I went to church growing up and they'd ask for tithe donations, as they all do, but I was very disturbed when I found out later in life how little they actually gave back to the community compared to what they brought in. Then there's those megachurches and tv evangelists that are fabulously wealthy, acquiring a net worth of tens or hundreds of millions from tithed donations! How much are they actually giving back to their supporters and people in need? My wife likes to listen to Christian music stations sometimes and one station we were listening to was doing a fundraiser as well as a giveaway of free gas for a year. The fundraiser was to help fund the station and fund the giveaways. It was nice to hear the message of people willing to donate to help others that share the common interest in this religious channel. How would you like to be a part of a community that does that to help their own? For a monthly subscription of $4 or $5 a month, which is not a lot compared to any other subscription and donations I usually pay out, a group of a thousand people can give a thousand dollars collectively each week to help one of their own. Some people may feel more generous to contribute more too. To avoid legal and financial security issues with running a type of lottery, we instead randomly choose a member as a weekly winner and all participants donate to them directly. However, we do run a membership option too. Income gained from membership fees, website ad revenue, and other income sources are pooled to fund an endowment fund. This fund buys investments and the income from those investments pay the administrative fees for Invested Alternative and pays for more giving opportunities to give gifts exclusively to members. I created Invested Alternative with the idea of creating a type of community where people can pool money together to pay off each others debts, pay for a month of groceries or gas, and give to each other in other ways. That's what basically all charities are though, right? People pooling money together for a specific cause? So what makes Invested Alternative different? 2) Look at the model of university endowment funds. These endowment funds at universities are used to provide scholarships and help fund school programs. People donate to these funds for the managers to buy investments and the income from those investments continue to bring in money to continuously fund their scholarships and programs. Invested Alternative is doing the same thing, but instead uses the income from investments to help people pay for college after-the-fact by helping to pay off student loans. It doesn't stop there either. Invested Alternative has a goal to help reduce medical debt and give in other ways as well. 3) Every election cycle and campaign season, we hear about the millions of dollars being sent to candidate campaigns. People hope these candidates will enact and support policies that will benefit their interests. Many are left unsatisfied though. It's especially a shame for people that donated to candidates that lose. Supporters lost their money and their candidate didn't win. Ouch! Politics are important and have a strong influence, but what if all this money could be sent to solving problems directly, instead of politicians that will argue with each other about how to solve the problems, and usually end up not even addressing it? I read a quote recently regarding the debate on whether or not to cancel student loan debts. It read, "Politicians have no problem giving billions to countries who don't even pay taxes here and we don't ask them to pay it back, but somehow using the money to help Americans in debt is wrong?" This is a topic to debate another time, but Invested Alternative does give money to help Americans in debt! How about donating to a cause that alleviates people's problems, then later getting your money back to donate to your political cause of choice? You can do both with Invested Alternative. 4) I have worked for some good employers and some bad employers. The difference is huge! Employees that are treated well and respected will almost always stay much longer and perform better because they are also invested in the well being of the business. Many business owners are just more concerned about making their profit. Employees are expendable tools to reach their goal. I am a big fan of company profit sharing. Employees that worked to make those profits, deserve a fair bonus beyond the standard wage. As Invested Alternative grows, a portion of the growth is dedicated to increasing the prize amounts and giving out more of them. When we do better, everyone else enjoys the benefit too. The lions share of the growth continues to be given out to help people through our giveaways. 5) There were a few points early in my career where I had to work two jobs to help us get by. We were able to scrape by paycheck to paycheck originally, but getting the second job is what allowed us to pay off debt and upgrade our lives with new clothes, appliances, maybe a vehicle, tools, etc. The extra income could also help us afford a few other luxuries, vacations, and save. Surviving and living paycheck to paycheck is one thing, but too many people are falling short of that next step of being able to save, upgrade their lives, and enjoy some luxuries and leisure. There's also that issue of people living relatively paycheck to paycheck, even with big incomes, but that's because they fill it up with things like expensive private schools, vacations, power sport toys and other things. That's a different issue entirely. In my immediate community there are neighborhoods of wealthy people and neighborhoods of poor just one or two streets away from each other. The poor neighborhoods suffer from their lack of capital to "play" with. They cannot invest anything meaningful to have their money work for them. They might have too much debt, not enough income, or some combination of both. Not enough resources to save and upgrade their lives. Invested Alternative works to remedy that to some degree. We can't make everyone rich, but we can work to ease some burdens that will benefit the poor, upgrading their lives to put them in better positions and strengthening the whole community! To recap, Invested Alternative is like the following: 1) A church that gives to its community and members instead of its own leaders and organization, a redistribution of wealth where the principal amount can be returned to donors. 2) An endowment fund for the alumni of life's rat race to help those still learning, struggling, and starting out. 3) A political campaign with contributions sponsoring people and solving problems instead of sponsoring candidates that might not even win or solve any issues. 4) A business that shares profits and growth with its employees. As we grow, you grow. 5) A 2nd income to help a poor community pay off debt and make important life upgrades. There is a popular reddit forum titled "antiwork" that describes itself as "A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles." It's been kind of a controversial sub because of the name and political goals, but there was a big deal made in the end of January 2022 when one of the moderators of the antiwork sub did a bad interview with Fox News and embarrassed many in that community. In the fallout of that interview, there was a lot of drama and infighting in the sub which led to moderators locking it down so no new content could be posted. It was closed temporarily. A new subreddit was created titled, "Work Reform" which describes itself as "a movement fighting for a good quality of life for everyone who sells their labor." I captured one of the early comments on this sub, which I believe does a good job capturing the motive for the movement, why there was a split from antiwork, and explains the frustrations people face in the workforce: "The antiwork subreddit logo was a stick figure laying down, symbolizing laziness. How many of you talked about how great the antiwork sub was to someone, only to immediately have to clarify, 'Oh it's not actually about quitting your job and not working. It's about pushing for basic workers' rights and calling out bad employers'? The biggest appeal of antiwork to a lot of us was that far too many of us have had similar personal experiences with shitty/illegal work practices that you only tolerated for survival purposes such as: -Wage theft: the most common form of theft in the United States, which increased during the pandemic. Commonly done via timecard manipulation and skimming tips. Did you fellow Americans know that if you're a tipped employee and your hourly wage + tips is less than the standard employee federal minimum wage (or more in some states), then your boss is supposed to pay you the difference (Https:/www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/wagestips) -Hourly employee hell: Deliberately low hours per week so your employer doesn't have to pay benefits and/or overtime, despite having the money and ability to do so. So then you work multiple jobs, none of which will give in to the other over scheduling conflicts or even pay attention to your requested days on or off. One may finally offer more hours for you to quit the other one and increase your availability, only to never do it after you uphold your end of the deal. Or worse, you agree but then they manipulate your timesheets. And of course, there's always shitty customers that managers will side with no matter what, thus encouraging said shitty behavior to continue and grow even worse. -Low-mid salaried employee hell: So you escaped hourly hell. It may not be a huge salary, but at least you don't have to predict your paycheck amount when deciding what groceries to buy. Welcome to a different hell now. No mandatory overtime pay means you're going way over 40 hours a week. You're now doing the work of 3+ employees so that the owner gets their money's worth out of you. Your boss also doesn't comprehend the difference between free time and availability, so you better be able to come in 24/7/365. Say goodbye to your holidays, because your boss wants them off more than he wants you to have them off. Hope you're not married with a kid, because you now get home after they're asleep and leave for work before they wake up. Every employees fuck up is also magically your fault too because 'you should have known better' -Job application hell: r/recruitinghell already exists, because the concept is already normalized and joked about. Uploading and sending your resume just to have to type it all in again. Needing 4+ years prior experience for entry level jobs. Needing 10+ years experience and all sorts of certs for an office job when half of the current employees don't even meet the requirements themselves according to LinkedIn. Internships not counting as work experience when you interned at the same company you're applying for. Job postings that lie about pay. Job postings that hide the pay and then get mad at you for making sure you're not about to relocate for a pay cut. Interviewers asking you about your weekends and your 5 year plans, when in reality they want to see if you go to church or if you may become pregnant in the near future. Jobs that say "we'll be in touch" only to never contact you again and leave the job position unfilled. Fake job postings to try to trick you into a cashier check scam or an MLM ( hence why r/antimlm exists too). Fake job postings that were meant to support an internal promotion the entire time. You apply nonstop, yet somehow it's entirely your fault for not finding something every single time. -Work conditions hell: As if long hours, shitty pay, and shitty people weren't bad enough, a lack of basic regard for your health and safety is also prevalent. You think being sick means that you can go home and avoid infecting others? You think scheduling a day off for a doctor's appointment months in advance means you're actually getting that day off? You think your workplace fire suppression systems and eye wash stations are properly inspected and will actually work if needed? You think that your company getting fined for a hazard was the same moment that they became aware of the safety issue? Just like how OSHA exists because people couldn't do the right thing the first time, Unions are similar in that regard. I've seen both good and bad unions, but to many it's their only hope for change. Don't want to worry about your subordinates unionizing? Rather than paying hundreds per person per day to a company to spread anti-union propaganda, have a decent enough work environment so your employees won't feel a need to fight for their rights by unionizing in the first place. And that BARELY scratches the surface on any of the bullshit. Then there's also gig economy hell, internship hell, legal ways to pay sub-minimum wage to minors and disabled workers, legal ways to discriminate with hiring practices, corporations against Work From Home solely for power/real estate purposes, lack of overall accountability on issues, and so much more. According to FRED, (fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE) peak unemployment in 2019 before the pandemic was 4%, and as of December 2021 it was 3.9%. If your workplace is still struggling to find employees then that's your workplace's fault. Saying 'NoBoDy WaNtS To WoRk AnYmOrE' or 'ThE GoVeRnMeNt Is PaYiNg PeOpLe To StAy HoMe' is a pathetic cop out of an excuse used to preach to the people who have outsourced their critical thinking skills in order to support what they wanted to believe in the first place. Take a wild guess which types of jobs are less likely to be eligible for unemployment benefits in the first place. These are the sorts of issues that antiwork meant to me and to many others. We now have a new sub with a more mature and more accurate name, and I'm embracing it because way too fucking many of you will read this one day and say to yourself 'I've had one/all of these hypothetical examples happen to me, and also have other examples that many seem to relate to as well.'" Things I don't like about the antiwork sub is some of the extreme positions which are very dramatic and unrealistic, or irrelevant to the cause. Some posts describe things that employers are doing which are blatantly illegal in a "what should I do" scenario or other instances that are too obvious like, of course you should call police or you have an easy legal action case, duh. However, I do understand that in many cases there are circumstances where people are being abused at work and they can't really fight against it in legal action because they don't have the time or means to pursue that course. Many employers get away with bad behaviors because of this. In some instances, a labor board is a free option that can blow the whistle on illegal practices and fine employers. What I do like about this sub is the spotlight it shines on shared, negative experiences and how we should change, how we can do better in our society. Many posts have valid concerns and points about work life struggles. For example, this post is an example of what people want and what many Americans want from European "socialism." It's titled, "I moved from the U.S. to Denmark and wow." The author then writes, "It legitimately feels like every single job I'm applying for is a union job. The average salaries offered are far higher (Also I looked it up and found that the minimum wage is $44,252.00 per year). About 40% of income is taken out as taxes, but at the end of the day my family and I get free healthcare, my children will GET PAID to go to college, I'm guaranteed 52 weeks of parental leave (32 of which are fully paid), and five weeks of paid vacation every year. The new American Dream is to leave America." Most people actually do want to work fulfilling jobs, but they want to be compensated well with good wages and benefits and overall just treated fairly and respectfully. People want an overall better quality of life than we're currently dealt and see this as an example that we can do better. Here's an interesting round that was started from this post about how practically every job requires a college degree these days. The post read: Employers, Quit requiring candidates to have a college degree when: a) you pay $14.00 an hour with no benefits b) the skills for the job can easily be taught c) you're not invested in their advancement or future Sincerely, Everyone and their mother. Juan C. responded to this post saying: "While I agree to a certain extent, how do you make sure that candidates have a certain level of interpersonal skills, verbal skills, and educational skills that may make the candidate fit for the position? Example: a receptionist, just for the sake of the conversation. How do you ensure that candidate knows how to represent the company values and uses the right verbal communications at work? The reason why those requirements are in place is to make a recruiter's life easier. Unless you know the person who is the candidate, it's tough to get a feeling while screening them. I've been screened and have screened people. Most of the time recruiters spend little to no time before redirecting to companies. This is my opinion, good for thought." Jordan responded to Juan and said, "I don’t think a college degree determines whether or not a person knows the right verbal communications. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a teacher use the wrong form of there/they’re/their....it makes me cringe." Juan: "Very true. Hence, that's the reason why I said it makes it easier to the recruiter. If that's with a college degree, I can only imagine the ones without. There are exceptions to all cases but it's one way to filter candidates without effort." Tawonda now jumps in and responds, "Juan, the disadvantage to hiring over qualified/college graduates for lower paying/lower level positions is that they typically leave as soon as a better position becomes available. Ultimately the company loses by paying expensive talent acquisition costs repeatedly." Brianna now adds in as well saying, "You interview them! If your job is to hire people and find candidates then you should know how to discern a candidate without having to rely heavily on whatever their background says on paper. You should be good enough at your job that you are able to read a candidates acumen for a certain role." Robert finishes off by saying, "What? I read this and the pay rate is $14/hr and some employers want a college degree? That is insane. Not sure why anyone would want to work for an employer that pays so little for a degreed person. Does this same employer want years of experience also? Walk away from these companies." Yes, Robert. This is one of the several reasons why there is a "Great Resignation" movement. People deserve better. I'm going to conclude this post with a few snippets from a fantastic post titled, "What radicalized you to the anti-work movement?" The comments are well worth a read to get an idea of what this is about and why the sub boomed in popularity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/s2y3cy/what_radicalized_you/ "I've been sympathetic for a long time because so much of what I see here is really just a call for basic human dignity and respect. The thing that radicalized me is becoming friends with Thomas through my church's homeless outreach; he has three jobs but can't afford an apartment. I cannot support such a cruel system." "I’m a social worker/therapist and I would say that the common thread tying all of us together is how the capitalist system routinely and by design completely fucks 99% of people. There are individuals struggling with depression/anxiety, even PTSD, not because of some childhood trauma - it’s the lack of hope and helplessness people are facing every day, working to barely survive with no long-term benefit." "After I turned 26 and had to get off my parents health insurance I applied for it at the office I had worked at for five years. The owner of the company told me that providing health insurance for employees was 'a huge burden on the company.' My team had performed so well that year that the owning family rewarded themselves with new cars paid for with company money. The employees received, and I shit you not, a bag of chips and a candle. I realized then that employers are NEVER your friend. They will climb over your dead body to make a nickel of profit." "Working in bankruptcy law during the 08 crash. I saw people losing everything who had done 'everything right' but got sick or lost their job due to the crash and their whole lives were falling apart. It made me suddenly realize that there was no 'middle class' safety like I’d been raised to believe. It was all a house of cards." "Got into the same industry my father raised me in. He was able to afford multiple houses, cars, and raised three kids. I make the same as he did 40 years ago, accounting for inflation, and can’t even afford rent." "When I realized my boss was pulling in almost 500k/yr for a store that I was running while he sat on his arse. Paid me 13$/hr. No benefits. No time off. I worked 6 days a week, open-close every day for 4 years. No vacations or time off in 4 years. Told me he couldn’t give me a raise last year cause my performance was suffering; shocker I was pregnant! Then magically was going to offer me a week paid vacation and 2$/hr raise when I found a job that offered me 17$/hr for much less stress and easier on my body." Some of the stories actually sound like people that don't know any better got taken advantage of. Some people just don't know they are capable and qualified for better jobs out there. Changing jobs can be a scary thing because it's a big part of our lives to uproot and change. There are several stories of people that have dealt with poor wages and bad jobs/abusive managers for far longer than they should've. I also wanted to share my thoughts on business investor owners, meaning people that make money from the business they own, but do very little or nothing at all to work for and support the business - all the management and work is hired out. I am fine with this as a way for people to invest and make money, but I have a problem with the ones that abuse it by paying poor wages and little to no benefits to all their staff while taking in large sums of the profit. Please offer meaningful, equitable profit sharing to employees on a monthly or quarterly basis at least. I wish all employers would do this at least. Many people would like to see more of a political movement grow from the popularity of these threads, with the goals of better pay, maybe less hours with the same pay, better benefits such as increased paid time off, profit sharing/bonuses, and more. I support this cause, but in the meantime, Invested Alternative still provides a way for people in a movement like this to pool resources together into investments which help pay off debts and other donations to help and being able to make money in the process. In 2013 I finished a job at a temp. agency and had still two and a half months before I moved away for another year of college. Scrolling through the craigslist job ads, I came across one on Monday that talked about a new office opening up that needed staffing. Not a whole lot of information. No business name listed, no address, not specific on anything really. It did say they were offering a $1700 salary. I called the number listed, scheduled an interview, and went in the next day after they gave me the address. The interview was very short and I still didn't get any information really. I was told to call back that evening from which I was informed I made the job. I was very excited to land another job just 4 days after leaving my last job, but was still wondering what exactly the company was and what I'll be doing. Since going to the interview at the business location I had the name of the company, but couldn't find any information about it online.
Wednesday was the first day of orientation. I walk in to see that they hired about 25 people all about my age between 18 and 25 or so - first flag of suspicion. I'm looking at the white board full of writing and information and the phrase that stood out to me was "advertising techniques." That's when I put it all together. Based on the mannerisms and attitude of the interviewer and now orientation instructor guy, the withholding of details, the kind of people they hired, and the "advertising techniques," I figured this was a sales job. I still wasn't 100% sure what kind of sales it was and what I would be doing though. I never wanted anything to do with sales. I hate the job and usually dislike salespeople - not them as a person (usually), but because of my experiences with them trying to hustle me for a sale. It's annoying! Also, several have been known to do some shady things do to get a sale. Anyways, I thought I'd at least give it a try and keep an open mind before immediately walking out then and there. Maybe I could be good at it (later in life I learned I'm not. I'm a terrible sales person). By the end of the first day of orientation I still wasn't even sure what I'd be doing exactly besides working with Kirby vacuum machines and getting them sold. I didn't know what a typical day on the job would be like and the pay systems or much of anything. Much of the first day of orientation was just talking about how much money we can make if we work hard. Money, money, money. Being rich, owning fancy cars, houses, boats, bling, going on lavish vacations, winning fantastic prizes, and all this jabber about vanity, possessions, wealth, and all the vain things people covet to show off how they're better than the people that went to school for a good job and have to pay off student loans. Yeah this is great to dream about, since a vast majority of people in the room are uneducated, probably have some debts to pay, and just struggle for any money really. Doing the math with figures they presented, I saw that even if all is going well, you're only making thirty to sixty thousand a year. That sounds good for anyone at our point in life, but how much of a future is there in this? Surely you can't be doing this kind of sales forever unless you switch to some other kind of sales or become a part of the business management/corporate office type work. Most of the money earned, will be spent leaving you in the same place you were at the start. My instructor seemed to be doing well for now, but I respect that he admitted that outside of this company he's only worth 9, 10, or 11 dollars an hour. Giving it thought, it's the money that motivates people because sales jobs typically suck, but it's worth it if you do get the money. During the second day of orientation I got a better idea of what's going on. People are offered a free service like carpet cleaning, but it’s really just an invitation to a lengthy sales demonstration in which the carpets are cleaned in the process of the demonstration. I would be the guy that goes into houses to do the demonstration and also have to find people occasionally to make appointments with. By the way, that $1700 salary that was “guaranteed,” isn’t. Someone asked about it and the instructor wasn’t very straight-forward about the pay. The salary is only paid if you perform a set amount of demonstrations. For example if it was 60 demonstrations that had to be met, he said that you easily do 80 or so demonstrations. It’s not a problem. Performing under 60 demonstrations is working part-time, so no salary. I wasn’t willing to make that gamble on my pay even with the good odds. It’s still more of a gamble than I prefer. Reflecting back on that now I know it was a lie or misleading at best. The whole thing was pretty scuzzy. I mean, do the math. It might've been less than 60 demonstrations as the requirement, but how many do you really expect to be doing each day or week? The money made would only come from selling the very expensive machines. You have to sell A LOT to make anything meaningful. So after the second day of orientation I was giving myself a headache trying to decide if I was willing to go through with this and give it a try, or walk out now before any more time is wasted. They did make the appearance of people finding success in this, but ultimately, I decided to not show up the next day for orientation. I quit this scam and started looking for a real job elsewhere. I’m sure sales works for some people and some think they’re all scams. I personally will never work sales. One of the analogies used in the presentation was that most people would be willing to scrub toilets for $1,000 a week, so why not do this job for $1,000 a week? The idea is that scrubbing toilets is looked at with contempt. It’s a gross, terrible job. If you’d do a job of that kind because of great pay, then sales shouldn’t be beneath you. I don’t know if I fully understand that analogy or not, but it’s not that I think sales is below me. I just don’t want to do it no matter. I hate trying to keep people’s attention for something I don’t think they really need, I don’t like feeling or knowing I’m wasting their time, and I just don’t like doing any kind of door-to-door or cold calling. I’m not above it or think it’s all a deceiving practice. I just don’t want to do it, it’s a job I wouldn’t enjoy doing, and I know I'm terrible at it when I try sell stuff on craigslist or facebook marketplace. Another observation I made during the orientation/training process, is that they either tell the stories of successful people, or they bring in the successful person to give a little speech about how it’s possible to become rich in this business. What it looked like to me was that only a few people make it big through sales somehow. As a side note again - unless that money is invested, saved, and managed correctly, they will lose those hundreds of thousands and start all over again. It’s not a consistent, steady job. These successful sales people have become more of a use as inspirational speakers to get the lower-end people motivated. It’s not that loads of people are getting wealthy through sales, but a few have and are just circulated around as examples. For my last point, when someone is successful at sales, is it really hard work, or were they just lucky getting the right customers, or are they really talented salespeople, or a combination of both? They preach about the harder you work, the more money you make, but I will have to disagree – to a point. In sales, you can’t simply earn more money by putting in more time and effort. You only make money if people are buying from you. You can work two days a week and make 10 sales, or you can work 7 days a week and make only 3 sales. Putting more time in or “hard work” only increases the probability of getting sales and earning commission/bonus. It doesn’t correlate to immediate pay for the time worked. Though you increase the probability, it’s still just probability – chance or luck that you meet with the right customers. Think about what it means to be a good salesperson. You’re good at convincing someone to buy something. If the product is really that good, it shouldn’t need much convincing. People generally don’t like salespeople because it’s basically their job to trick, manipulate, and convince you to buy from them. This, of course, is being said by someone (me) bitter about the subject and had bad experiences. This wasn't my only experience with these sales job "recruitment rallies" I'll call them. In fact, the very next year I kept hearing a coworker talk about some financial stuff he was getting into and it was interesting to me since I was taking finance classes at college. I like the subject. He invited me to an event to learn more, which I attended one evening and was annoyed to be met with a similar experience: room full of people in their late teens to mid twenties, current pop music hits playing, flashy presentation about sticking it to the normal people getting normal jobs when you can be rich from doing this and "helping people." It was Primerica. Primerica insurance sales stuff. They tried to get me to sign up a the end of the meeting, right then and there and it would cost $100! Definitely not. They tried giving me all the "why not" scenarios and tried coaxing me into giving it a try and I just wouldn't budge. I'm not wasting a hundred bucks on this. I'm not doing this. I don't want any part in it. One more time in 2017 I got tricked into one of these is when I struck up conversation with a random person I met at the grocery store. I don't even remember what we talked about anymore, but we talked about some business stuff that I was already a little familiar with in the realm of online businesses and affiliate marketing. I agreed to meet them somewhere to meet this business partner and hear more, but was actually upset to see, once again, the same demographics and same scene being set up; but this time, They were all professionally dressed in suits. The people here were weird though. A few people made similar statements to me about being "accountable," hard working, and other nonsense.that's like, well yeah I'm not a lazy loser or something whatever the alternative is to what you're asking. I just said I wasn't interested and left after that, never contacting them again. This one was Amway's Worldwide Group. This might be a good plug for being anti MLM, but I don't want to go there right now. I've had an interest in the world of rental properties for a long time. How great is it to be able to just pay a down payment and then have renters pay your mortgage, expenses, and profit with their rent! Huge bonus profit too if there's no mortgage to pay. As you make more money you can just use the money to buy more properties and your real estate empire grows and grows! You can even hire a property management company to take care of all the dirty work for you. Pay 10% or so of your rental income to have 100% of your time. Sit back and enjoy the payments coming in while occasionally throwing in an approval for big maintenance expenses. Lucky for me, I got to experience the property management side of the real estate industry first-hand when I worked for two different property management companies. During my time working in property management I also learned a lot about people and their attitudes and outlook on life, entitlement personalities, and the amount of responsibilities they want to take. I got to interact with various types of landlord and tenant personalities. I learned about and experienced the effects of the housing market on an economy, the pros and cons of having rental properties, and a lot more of what goes on behind the scenes for housing managers and landlords altogether.
In October 2015, I delivered a presentation for a university internship I was working at and afterwards, while walking back to my car I stopped in the student union building to get a drink and use the bathroom. I took a peak at a community board and saw a job offer that caught my eye. A local company was looking for a new couple to hire as resident managers. Rent, utilities, and a stipend all included as compensation if you live on site to manage their apartment community. What a deal! I've heard of these kinds of opportunities and my wife and I were interested in learning how to manage rental properties, so what luck that I just happened to stroll in to see this posting. After excitedly telling my wife about it, she called and had a brief phone interview. We went to an in-person interview together a few days later and met with our future boss at the location we would be managing. Our future boss let us tour the apartment we would inhabit if hired and we really weren't impressed by it actually. If it weren't for the perks of the job, we most likely never would've chosen to live there. It was a two-bed, 1 bathroom unit with the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs and the kitchen downstairs with a closet under the stairs. There was no washer/dryer. Instead, we had to take our laundry to the small community laundry room at the center of the property and pay $1.25 for a washer cycle, and $0.25 for every 15 minutes in a dryer. There was only wall unit air conditioners and electric baseboard heaters, no central air. The unit itself was very small and awkward to position furniture because of the wall units and heaters. It was very clean, just very small and cramped. It was all worth it for the job though. Plus, it also came with a good-sized garage close by. We were extremely excited to get hired soon after our initial interview and couldn't believe our luck! We were also lucky to be on a month-month contract with our previous apartment, so it was easy for us to get out and move to this new community. We were given a VERY brief training to learn some basics and followed the example of how previous leases were filled out. The rest we had to figure out on our own and learn as we go. This lack of training became a problem and it didn't take long before we experienced rudeness from our manager. We were asking her too many questions and/or filling out forms wrong. I took a deposit from a new tenant that was going to move in three weeks later and she, our boss, got upset and rudely said, "Clearly you guys aren't understanding this yet," so she scheduled to come out for more training the next morning. I don't remember what she said in that training, but my wife and I were still confused because she kind of rambled on tangents that wasn't actually a training or answering our questions. At the end I had to ask her a question, again, which was the whole reason she came out and didn't even answer it, so I asked again, "How long do deposits hold for? How soon does a new tenant have to start paying rent after paying a deposit?" The answer was one week. That's all I needed! All we needed was some answers to questions. We were completely new to this, so we had a lot of questions that a simple text or phone call could've answered. Lousy training has bothered me throughout my life. Too many people are really bad at training and/or get frustrated too easily. It's hard for people that have been doing something for many years to imagine knowing nothing about the job or subject and start explaining things from the absolute basics. Yes, some people learn faster than others, but bad training annoys me. There's a difference between a person being bad at their job versus not being trained well to know how to do a job properly. The next level is when I've learned something well and train a new person, and then they now look better than me because they picked up faster by having a real teacher. Yes, because I TRAINED THEM AND ACTUALLY DID A GOOD JOB OF IT, UNLIKE THE WAY I HAD TO LEARN! So on that tone, there are people in this world that are far too easily upset and they let their emotions effect their work and the people around them. When things go wrong or work is busy, they get stressed and they get mean. That's always bothered me my whole life because I have always been a pretty timid person that "freezes up" around confrontation and feel completely caught off guard. I hate that I do that. The problem in this story is that whenever something went wrong, our manager would get upset and look for things to blame, especially in other people specifically. Someone didn't pay rent on time? Our fault. Someone moved out and the place was very dirty? Our fault. Maintenance or other vendor didn't get there on time or do a good enough job? Somehow still our fault - or at least she sure made it feel that way. Sure, we are responsible for the property as managers, but we cannot control people's actions or monitor their living conditions at all times. I also need to add here that this manager did strange, illegal things and discriminated a lot. She hated men, didn't like people from other cultures or ethnicities, especially blacks, didn't like "irresponsible" young people who are trying to figure out and manage life on their own, and didn't like young college kids who were given everything from their parents. We learned this when it came to screenings and investigating people she didn't like. When screening new prospective tenants, we did the viewings and took applications, but our manager processed them from the main office. She would always ask what the people looked like and dressed like because she wanted to know their character. Of course she wants as few problematic people living in the communities as possible, but there were several times she practiced illegal discrimination just because she didn't like something about someone, or there was another applicant more "favorable." There were some occasions where she wanted to investigate a tenant's cleanliness, so when she visited our property and knew the tenant was gone, she would use her master key to peak in without consent. We were shocked to see that, but we're not going to report it since we needed that gig. She would refuse to let in single college student men, even if they paid all 6-months or more up front and parents co-signed, but let in girls with the same exact qualifications or less. They wouldn't allow more than 1 person to live in any of the 1-bedroom units unless they were married because couples, friendships, and partners break up too often and break leases. There were a lot of strange thing this lady did and it was annoying to hear her trash-talk all the tenants she had low opinions of and her disagreements with their life choices and circumstances. She only had respect for clean-cut people that make lots of money. We didn't have very many issues working at this community. All the tenants kept to themselves and it was mostly single professionals because the property was only 72-units, mostly studio and one-bedroom apartments. Only four of them were 2-bedroom units and one of those belonged to us, the managers. The biggest problems we had were with old ladies. One lady complained about endless maintenance issues and often needed help with regular things. I was shocked at how many regular things she just didn't know about or never experienced in her 65+ years of life. She complained about a hole smaller than the size of a dime in her window screen because bugs could get in. The company didn't want to spend the money to repair it because it was so small and insignificant. She complained about landscapers blowing leaves up to her door, so I went to investigate and saw, like 3 small leaves in the entryway, not even yard dust. I took a picture and showed my wife and said, "This is the type of crap she complains about! Three leaves!" She wanted to rent a garage on the property, but we never told her one was available because she probably wouldn't be able to open and close it by herself. They were not automatic. She constantly wanted help changing bulbs or batteries, or looking into something. By the way, I was a little surprised at how many people were upset that we didn't replace burned out bulbs or dead batteries for them while they are living there. We aren't a full-service 5-star hotel and we expect tenants to take at least SOME responsibility for maintaining the places they live in. We cover all exterior and shared common areas, but in your own unit you can change your own stuff. One time, this same lady called to complain that the smoke alarms were broken. I could hear all of them going off over the phone. I walk over and there's clearly smoke in her apartment from burning something on the stove. She blamed it on the neighbor grilling on his patio upstairs. Maybe that was a little factor, but I doubt it. She was insistent that the alarms were broken or needed new batteries, even after I fanned the smoke out the door and window to stop the beeping. No Joan, they are working just as they are supposed to. There was smoke in here, so they were sounding the alert. One older lady was ok for her whole tenancy until one accident in the winter. She slipped on some ice getting to her car parked in front of her unit and then sent a notice to our company trying to charge us for her injury treatments and lost wages from missing out on work. That issue was handled by our main office, so I don't know what ever became of that, but I did hear that her work offered her a sitting position because of her injury and she refused it. Snow and ice was a big annoyance for me when working in property management. People complained no matter what we did. The sidewalks and asphalt aren't heated. Ice melt and shoveling can only do so much. It's going to be slippery in winter! What do you expect us to do? Build a stadium-sized umbrella to cover the entire property!? We plow the parking lot, shovel all walkways, and use ice melt generously. There's nothing else anyone can realistically do about snow and ice. There were also two entitled older women that were paranoid about everything. One lady changed her own locks, so management and maintenance no longer had access without her being there. Our boss was annoyed, but let it slide for some reason. I think this older lady was meaner than her. This bothered me because I hated that lady and wanted to see some punishment. Our boss gave her chance after chance to correct issues, but if it was a young man she would've fined them or evicted them without a second thought. When she couldn't evict them immediately, she just wouldn't renew their lease and force them out that way. One woman was certain that someone was sneaking into her unit, messing with stuff, cutting leaves off of her aloe plant, and using red marker on her underwear. Truly bizarre. She even told us she left notes telling intruders how to properly cut the plant and other things to not cause more harm. She also had an 8-year old adopted or foster daughter staying in this cramped little one-bedroom apartment with her, who was suspect number 1 in my mind. They didn't seem to have a very good relationship. Sometimes people insisted that they be present when a maintenance visit was scheduled or something required entering their unit. The problem is that our technicians or other vendors can rarely work with their schedules or times. They come when they come. When a technician/tradesman does need to come work on your property, understand that they are not just sitting around waiting for one job to come in. They have estimated windows of arrival because they don't know when they'll finish one job or how long the next ones will take. We'd get around this issue by serving a 24-hour notice of entry, to legally enter their unit when they're not there. I was baffled by the suspicions people had in thinking we or other people were up to mischief going into their units, but then I read stories and see videos to know that this stuff actually does happen! I guess I understand the worry, but it was still annoying for me as a manager just trying to do an honest work. There have been some tenants I've worked with at both jobs, who put in a maintenance request every time they find a scratch, bend, or any kind of slight defect. Some wanted us to upgrade equipment and remodel parts of their units just because they want better stuff even if they've only lived there for a few months or barely more than a year. Please understand that it is expensive to call in any sort of maintenance technician or tradesman. There are MANY things that you need to be or can be responsible for and buy or fix on your own. Sometimes when tenants start having financial issues and being able to come up with rent money they start complaining about problems and poor conditions in the place they live. You chose to live there and were permitted to check it out before moving in. You submitted a move in inspection. If everything was good enough for you at that time, then it should still be good now unless YOU damaged it; and don't try to withhold rent until the owner fixes things. That doesn't work and you will lose that fight unless something drastic has happened like the roof blew off and you made the proper requests for problems to be addressed. Moving on: I remember one guy gave his 30-day notice to move, but then later asked to extend it by a few more days. Our manager was annoyed, but obliged and rescheduled turnover work. On the day he was supposed to turn in keys, we never got them. Our boss called in the evening to ask if keys were turned in yet and was upset at us that they weren't. What were we supposed to do? Harass this guy and be all up in his business? I guess, but he wasn't answering his phone or door anyway. I finally went over around 11pm at night and used our master key to look in and see what's going on. The unit was empty, so I went back to get my initial inspection stuff to prep for turnover like we are supposed to, assuming he left and just forgot to turn in keys. I was just about done with my paperwork when I hear the door creaking open. Just as I feared, in comes the tenant all annoyed to find me in his unit. We had a little argument about how he was supposed to have turned in his keys by now and he insisted that he still had until midnight to use up the full day. There was no formal notice since he verbally changed the date with our boss, but I think he was technically right. I deescalated the situation because I didn't really care, I just wanted to do my job and go home - it was late; but then he wouldn't stop talking to me about random stuff so after about 40 minutes of talking I'm like, "Look. I'm sorry about coming in here early. I'm glad we could talk, but it's late and I want to get back home. Just finish whatever you need here and drop the key in the drop box." I heard the keys plunk into the box about 15 minutes later. There were a few times when people wouldn't turn in keys until late and it bothered me because our boss would be nagging us about getting the keys; but I didn't want to stay up 'til midnight hoping they'll drop them in. In one instance, a girl was supposed to already be out the night before, but when the blind cleaners came in the morning the door was still locked. After people move out, we unlock the door for vendors to come in and out to do their work. So I walk over there after seeing that keys were not turned in and knock on the door. No answer. I then slowly let myself in while knocking and holler in, "Hello, management!" I finally hear a groggy, "Hello" come from the bedroom. I politely explain that she was supposed to be gone by midnight with keys turned in, so now we have people here coming to take her blinds and clean them off site. We give her a moment to get presentable since she just woke up, then she lets them in to take the blinds and be gone. She finally left about 45 minutes later and we didn't charge her for the extra day, which is what normally happens when holding over after your lease and notice are expired. She got a free night on us instead of a hotel I guess. I didn't care at all besides the embarrassment of trying to get cleaners in when she's still in there and was sleeping. There are some inconveniences to being an on-site manager. People can come to you outside of normal business hours for little inconveniences. One guy locked himself out and called our manager who then told us we needed to go let him in. It didn't matter that we were in middle of grocery shopping. We had to leave immediately to go home and let him in because she didn't want to. This made us especially annoyed because that manager also pretended to be tough and say people were out of luck if she wasn't available, yet we couldn't live by that same standard for after hours non-emergencies. One lady locked her keys in her car, which also had her unit key, so we had to let her in to her unit at 6:30am so she could get her spare car key. She did this on two different occasions. One night, the power went out for the whole neighborhood, so of course we started getting knocks on our also dark manager office door asking why their power is out and when it will be back on and that they expect a credit on their rent because of this. "I'm sorry. We live here too and are also sitting in the dark. The whole neighborhood is out, so it's not an issue with our property. The city is already aware and working on a solution. I don't know anything else and no this temporary outage does not qualify for a rent credit." After this first exposure to property management, I started to see some of the crap that landlords have to deal with. Being a tenant for a few years before, I also knew what was frustrating when things weren't taken care of such as community amenities and cleanliness. I did my best to keep the property clean, including cleaning out the dumpster pens so loose garbage wasn't just laying all over the ground in the pens. I also kept our community laundry room clean and if any machines broke down I got a repair scheduled ASAP. I still don't like that companies insist on maintaining contracts and hate month-to-month. I know they want to guarantee rent for 6-months or a year and turnovers are costly, but people still break leases for any number of life circumstances changing anyway. Plus, if you do it right, turnover work is easy to schedule and shouldn't require a lot of work if you have decent tenants. I really liked how this company started with an initial 6 or 12-month contract, then it just carries over on a month-month basis after that. Every 6 months or so, rates would go up. Sometimes there was a discount if you signed another 6 or 12-month contract instead of staying month-month. The rent increases always bothered me too and they always will. Unless you're doing some serious remodeling, the costs for the property rarely go up as much as the owners like to make it sound. I know this because at my second property management job I saw what the costs were. Owners initially buy the property and make a decent percent return from the start. Raising the rates just makes their profit margins bigger and bigger to make more and more money from their rental property. It's ok to raise it a little for inflation, taxes, and to anticipate repairs, and remodels, but even old properties were charging higher and higher rates just because they could. I get it. If I had the opportunity to make more money for nothing I'd be tempted as well, but it really sucks for the whole community in general to have higher and higher housing costs. I'm going to go on a long tangent now about the economics of rental properties: How the market works: When a property fills up to 100% or very close, they like to see if they can push that price further to make more money. It's a common practice of supply and demand. When there are less units available they make them more and more expensive. The concept of something viewed as rare and hard to come by make it easy to charge more. You see this in many other industries. An increase in costs like property taxes, insurance rates, and maintenance projects are usually only a small factor in rising housing prices. Rental housing companies often do market research to know what similar properties are charging and how full they are. If they see other properties with higher rates and are pretty full with occupancy above 95%, then they can charge similar rates. The prices really start spiking up when a lot of people start moving in and there's a shortage of housing. If most properties are full and waiting lists are growing, you can charge really high and there will still be people desperate enough to pay the high price to get in. Soon all the properties are going to be charging higher prices just because they can. People will pay what they have to to not be homeless or living in a high crime, slum shack. When there's no competition to lower prices because everything's full, prices will continue to go up, forcing more people to work 2 or 3 jobs or cohabitate with roommates just to rent somewhere. It takes a lot for rent rates to go down. Building more apartments is probably the only real solution. If there are more units for people to choose from then vacancies will be open for longer and longer periods of time. Landlords want people in there paying rent as soon as possible. The turnover time between a previous tenant leaving and a new tenant moving in needs to be as short as possible to make the most money. When vacancies are open for longer periods of time because there isn't a high demand due to more places available to live, you will then see reduced rates and specials being offered. A move-in bonus or special is essentially lowering the rent rate if you spread out the reduced cost over a 6 or 12-month lease. It's a marketing tactic to lower costs and be appealing without looking like the cheaper alternative. The free markets would conclude that more housing needs to be built to offset the high housing costs. They are correct in that more competition can bring down prices, but if there isn't room or time to build and keep up, then there needs to be other solutions. Building too many luxury apartments doesn't help either. Rental prices are pretty high in the city I live in, so I was happy to see a large complex planned for construction. To my disappointment I found out shortly after that they are going to be more high-end luxury apartments. I feel like that's all they ever build these days. Housing prices are too high? Let's build more luxury units that cost $1,300 or more for just a 1-bedroom! I guess it's better than not building anything though because then the wealthier people that can afford these luxury apartments can compete for those and make room for others to have the "standard" apartments. If wealthy investors and companies can't build or won't build, then the housing crunch goes out of control, resulting in more people trying to cram into units together just to afford it and have somewhere to live, or make an hour and a half commute or longer just to afford housing further out. Rising housing costs is a pretty normal thing in the real estate world because of the supply and demand economics as I explained, but it's a problem for society if we do not build more. It’s good for rental property owners (usually wealthy people – not always, but usually wealthy people), but bad for everyone else. Tenants aren’t making more money, but their housing costs keep increasing. They might get raises, but not as much or as fast as how much property owners raised rates at both places I worked for in property management. Thus, the poor and middle class continue to be squeezed of life. When rent goes from $625 to $650/month that is now $300/year that these individuals will no longer be able to use elsewhere and their standard of living is diminished. $300 may seem small to some, but when this is combined with costs of other things going up as well it becomes a significant problem for many people because their pay isn't going up to match it. Maybe they did get a raise, but now the new people at entry-level jobs and salaries are having a much more difficult time affording the things they need. The $25/month increase in rent isn't really a lot, but the real problem is that I've seen it go from $650 to $1,000 or more in just three years. I believe an economy can be ruined or severely stagnated and limited solely by housing costing too much. When a larger and larger percentage of the population's paycheck gets sucked up in rent, there is less to be circulated to drive business - especially if many property owners are located out of the area and take the money elsewhere instead of spending back into the local community. Even if the property owners did spend it locally, I still think the economy would be stronger if more people had more spending power than only a few spending more and controlling the majority of investment and market actions. More disposable income everywhere would help drive more business growth and investment. I don't advocate for communism trying to make everyone equal, but I do advocate for at least a healthier distribution of wealth. If I were to graph it, the distribution of wealth would be poorest on the left and richest on the right side of the bottom line. Society would be better off with a line representing the distribution of wealth that steadily increases from the poorest to the richest, instead of a nearly-flat line until a giant spike for the top 10% of wealthy people. I believe fixing the housing affordability problems would be the best place to start for maintaining a healthy economy. The cheapest rentals available in a market should not be already sucking up more than 30%-40% of people's income on just housing alone. There are people and politicians out there pushing for rent control policies to fix the maximum amount that can be charged for rent. This is a simple government idea for a solution, but it does nothing to address the real problem of too many people wanting or needing to live in a certain area and there isn't enough housing. Build more housing and they'll have to put pressure on lowering rates or go without getting any rent at all because they're charging higher than other places. A Universal Basic Income is another political idea being discussed, but without some serious changes and enforcement in other areas all it would do is inflate housing and other industries heavily impacted by scarcity. If people started receiving an extra $1,000 a month they might want to use it to move to nicer areas. Just as I described, when the nicer areas fill up they're going to charge higher and higher, thus making the UBI ineffective for many as it'll all just be absorbed by the new, higher housing and other costs. Another point to add to rising housing prices is because Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) locals are not allowing new communities to be built. They want to keep the open land instead of building new housing developments. They don't want to see new high-rise multi-unit housing in their skylines and blocking their views, or increasing traffic in their area. Ever wonder why the progressive, tech-y, and "weird" places are so expensive to live compared to other cities? It's not just the love of the culture or jobs bringing people in and raising the prices, it's the people themselves. One reddit user commented the following on a "City that thinks it's 'weird' starterpack" thread: "Most of the OG eccentrics and hippies that gave the place its 'quirky' identity back in the day are now home-owning NIMBY squares who are terrified of change and mob every city council meeting to lobby against anything new or different despite still self-identifying as progressive and tolerant. Thanks to their efforts and an economic boom or two, there is a housing shortage, rent is stupid high and there's a shitton of homeless people — which includes the rest of the OG eccentrics that didn’t 'make it'. Source: grew up in Quirky Berkeley" This concludes my long tangent about the economics of rental properties. Back to my history and experience: After graduating from college I kept looking for an entry-level job for a real career in finance, but I still needed an income to pay bills in the mean-time. The current gig at the first property management job with free rent and utilities, plus a stipend was nice, but it all added up to the equivalent of about a $9/hr full-time job. It's kind of a small amount of pay, but was nice because it didn't really require much active work. The office was connected to our home. We didn't have many expenses because they were covered by this job, but we also weren't making much money to do anything. I needed an income to provide for our family, so I applied to another property management job that started at $14/hr and got in. I only wanted to stay there until I got a better job in finance or maybe grow into a bigger property management firm that could pay a good salary. I was hired on as the manager of a 112-unit apartment complex and I was excited for the new experience. It expanded on what I was already doing to now having me be the one to schedule maintenance, do billings, and manage applications whereas our manager was the one doing all of that at the previous job. I had a lot more control and I was annoyed at my previous boss because she would be cranky, frustrated at things, and complain about being busy all the time, but now that I pretty much did her same job for another company, I found that it really wasn't hard. I found property management in general to not really be that hard. It can be frustrating and stressful when dealing with problems and angry people, but it's mostly pretty easy just to be organized and make a few phone calls for stuff. When the properties were filled up it was very easy - even boring. I had plenty of time to surf the web, watch videos, whatever. When I started at the new apartment complex in January, the previous manager left with a lot of vacancies, troubled accounts, several move-outs coming up, and she wasn't very organized in general. One of the first things I did was change up the whiteboard in the office. The previous manager would just write notes on lines of items needing attention, open units, whatever. I changed it to try copying what I had at my last job which was basically a map of the property made with thin, black tape and filled in all the info of building and unit numbers, plus the last name of the current tenant that occupied it. This helped me learn the property and easily see who was where and where the open units were. I left a section for other notes but started making everything else digital. I felt like I was being a very good manager. I was solving problems, keeping the place clean, and even lowering rents for people because we had a lot of vacancies, more coming up, and it was mid-winter. The owner of the property was freaking out because of all the empty units and had my blessing to lower rates or run specials to get people in. Some of the rate changes were pretty significant too, like a $900 one-bedroom down to $765. I personally believed the rates were too high to begin with compared to the quality and location of what they're getting. However, a year and a half later as mostly Californians were arriving in droves, those rates all spiked back up. This company did not have a very good cleaning or landscaping crew. They kept trying to keep everything in-house to make more money, but they were just bad at it. The owner didn’t want to spend money on it either, so whenever I had some free time, which was often, I forwarded the office phone to my cell and went out on the grounds. The garbage pens on the property were overflowing all the time, even with them being emptied three times a week. I would pick up and sweep up any trash on the ground and throw it in the bins, then sometimes I would bring soapy water and actually brush the pavement underneath to get rid of stinky, smelly, garbage juice that stained the ground. I did some weeding on the property, often changed burned out light bulbs, and even picked up dog poop on the grounds. I made sure the clubhouse and gym were clean and orderly. A treadmill had a broken part, so when maintenance was taking too long to fix it, I just learned how to do it and fixed it myself. All these things annoyed me as a tenant in the past, so I wanted to make a difference by being a manager that actually took care of things. A part of me enjoyed fixing things, learning how they work, and learning how to do a few handyman maintenance things. The most common problem people reported was a kitchen sink drain disposal not working and these are usually very easy to fix. Every single time it was because something jammed it up like a piece of plastic, small pebble or metal piece, whatever didn’t grind up or flush on down the drain. Most of the models had a slot on the bottom under the sink to manually spin the blade in either direction with an allen wrench. This usually dislodged whatever the blockage was and I could pluck it out of the drain. There is also a little red reset button to push sometimes after clearing it and then it worked just fine. Other models didn’t have those features, so I had to use a stick to carefully dislodge the jam, but same story. Me doing this for people saved them, the renter, a $75+ charge for not having to call in a maintenance service. There’s a lot of things people can safely and easily do in their own rentals that will save a lot of money and hassle, just by looking up how-to videos on youtube. I don’t know why more people don’t do that. Some companies will fix things free, but others do not. You have to be careful to clarify who’s footing the bill for maintenance stuff. This company I was working for loved to charge people for everything they could and I wanted to help people avoid that. Another fairly common problem was clogged vents. People don’t always properly clean the lint out of their dryers, so they clog up the vents. One guy cleaned his dryer regularly, but we found that the hose connecting the dryer to the wall outlet was badly clogged. The heaters also needed a clean vent. In the summer, bugs and birds would build nests in the dormant heater vents. I cleared out a few old nests and fixed heater problems that way too, again saving lots of money on service calls. On two or three occasions we had an issue of an air conditioner not working. I learned from a technician an easy fix is sometimes the unit has frozen over from a combination of excessive use and a blocked air intake. We just had to clear the intake vent if there was a blockage and run the unit on fan mode only for an hour or more to defrost the unit, then it worked fine again. Two more maintenance things I learned was how to adjust the temperature in a water heater and how blocking windows for darkness is bad if done improperly. A tenant complained that the water wasn’t getting hot enough for their liking, so I looked up the model and a video of it to learn to do it myself. All I had to do was unscrew a panel and use a screwdriver to turn the thermometer setting a little hotter. Easy. For the mold issue, a tenant was moving out soon and found mold in their bedroom window sill. They were using blankets to completely seal up the window to darken the room. The problem was that it still gets humid between the blanket and window, so with no ventilation, mold or mildew was growing in the now moist, warm windowsill. Of course they tried throwing it all on us to fix the mold problem, but they caused it directly because of their actions, so they were charged the cost to fix it. A big problem I dealt with early on was that the previous manager signed a contract with an obscure construction company that was hard to find any information on. They housed a bunch of their workers in, I think, 5 units. When I came in I found that they hadn't paid rent in like 3 or 4 months. The first thing I had to do was try contacting them. None of them responded and they all only spoke spanish, or at least pretended to not know english. The next step was to post a 24-hour notice of entry to investigate what was going on. Most were abandoned, but one still had guys in it and another had a young family. One of the workers made a shady deal to illegally sublet the apartment. This new guy paid the previous worker scammer a deposit and some rent and then the scammer bolted, but the new guy had keys and moved into the unit. We had to make a lot of adjustments to get this new guy, his wife, and young child onto a proper lease and convert him to an actual tenant. He's lucky we were able to work with him because sometimes people that fall victim to this type of scam just get the boot. I had to post an eviction on the last one and notice of abandonment on the others. We never received a notice they were vacating or had keys turned in and my investigating of the abandoned units found a few things in the cupboards and fridge and some small, cheap furniture items still there, so technically I couldn't just change the locks and throw it all away without proper notice and time. Eventually, we were able to get all of the units cleared out, cleaned up, and re-rented. The turnovers for all the units and the months of missing rent cost the owners a lot and despite hiring an investigator to find and sue the company owner, I don't think they were successful in doing so to recoup any of it. Too bad. Another early issue I had to deal with was finding that some people paid cash for things that didn't get recorded properly. Their accounts were accumulating late fees because it's an automatic system. Luckily for all of us, they had receipts to prove they were current on everything and always were. It definitely looked like the previous manager was engaging in some crooked theft activity or grossly mismanaging and failing to document things. Of course the tenants were upset when I told them of the situation and I knew what happened was very wrong, so I'm glad it all got sorted out. I was shocked at the lack of controls in the business and that nobody caught these problems until I came in and started sorting through stuff to get organized. From what I heard from a tenant that was close with the previous manager was that she stopped caring and became dissatisfied with the company. The freedom to run the place as free as she wanted must've been nice. I would've loved that, but I would've done a good job. Of course, now that the company was aware of the messes that were made, I wasn't going to have the same freedoms. In fact, the controls clamped down so hard that it actually hindered my work. Any change or authority to do things had to pass through 2 or 3 people first. The fact that policies were constantly changing every few months made it a disaster of organization. Even though they've been in business for 10 years, this company still didn't even have solid lease terms and policies figured out. It wasn’t even minor adjustments either. I can understand things evolving to a certain degree over time, but we were often undergoing big policy and lease changes and often trying to implement new programs, some for ease and efficiency, bust mostly attempts to make more money. Tenants saw right through the schemes too as attempts to money grab. Such a headache! To make things worse, a new person was hired and basically given authority to make changes to documents and processes that would improve company efficiency. The company owner loved what they did and constantly praised them publicly. Of course they’re doing a good job! They were given the power to make changes and had the freedom to settle issues and fix things! They were being praised for doing the job just like the owner wanted because the owner gave them everything they needed to do it. They made the exact changes the owner wanted and got praised for it! My second year at the company was getting worse with controls. I felt like I was fighting with my own company more than just managing properties. It took so much time with discussion meetings and paperwork turnover to make little adjustments like removing fees or something because the system was so automated and management loved to stick it to people hard. I always felt like they were being unfair to tenants in any way they could to make a buck and punish people for not abiding by every word of the 30-page lease. The most common problems were turnover charges and lease renewals. The company had no concept of “normal wear and tear.” Even if the unit was properly cleaned, they’ll still send in a cleaning crew for a two or three hour minimum just to make sure it is indeed clean and the renter pays for it out of their deposit. Many or most maintenance charges were billed to the tenants’ deposit as well, so it was rare to get much of your deposit back, if anything at all. People complained all the time, and even though I agreed with them, I as the property manager had to face their fury. There was nothing I could do to change it because that’s what my boss decided the policy will be. Lease renewals were my favorite glaring example of hypocrisy. If a tenant had an old lease that my boss didn’t like because it had certain lines that worked in the tenants’ favor, he said it was an old lease that had no value anymore and we are signing a completely new lease, even though they’re staying in the same unit, managed by the same company. However, if there were changes that worked in our company’s favor, such as changes that added charges, then it was a standard lease renewal and they need to pay for the changes to their lease even though the new lease is changed a little just like the other scenario. For example, a tenant wants to add a pet or additional people at their lease renewal because they’re signing a new lease for the renewal which originally didn't have extra costs. My boss would charge them the fees for changing the lease because it’s considered a renewal; but if there were lines that served in the tenant’s favor like a line stating rent cannot be raised by more than 5% and my boss wanted to raise it 10%, it was excused that they are signing a whole new lease, so they will have to pay the increase after “renewing.” I guess it makes sense because we can just evict the tenant to get a new one paying the higher rate, but this case actually happened and it bothered me - a lot. Are some of these things my company did illegal? Probably, but no one has the time, knowledge or money to go about pursuing a lawsuit for just a few hundred dollars or less in charges. There were a few people that made legal threats, but we just ignored them. They never followed through except for two occasions. The first was a paranoid woman that stopped paying rent and basically ghosted us. She was evicted and then quickly moved out last second before we changed locks and took possession. She left a mess in the property. There were old, leftover parts of furniture that needed to be removed and she painted sections of the exterior without permission that needed to be fixed. She wanted to pick up her deposit, but when she opened her envelope to see that she owed us quite a bit of money instead (missed rent payments, late fees, eviction fees, cleaning and maintenance fees) she angrily called in and threatened to sue us and hung up. Digital phone slam! Sure enough, a few weeks later we get a court summons. After gathering all of our backup documents in preparation to defend, I attend court on our hearing day and she didn’t even show up! The case was immediately dismissed and that was the end of it. The second case was more interesting. We had a problematic tenant in the apartment complex that was late on rent, or I should say just didn’t pay rent for 2 months and was in middle of the eviction process. Their apartment flooded pretty badly one morning because the guy used the toilet, which clogged, and went to work before anyone else woke about an hour or so later I guess. When I got the call first thing that morning just after 8am, I went to investigate and found that the little chain in the tank connecting the flush lever to the drain flap was a little too long and got stuck under the flap, allowing water to endlessly flow from the tank into the bowl, which was clogged, so it overflowed and flooded the place. It was also a second-floor unit so there was damage below. I don’t remember the total cost of the damage, but of course it was a few thousand dollars. The owner was going to cover half the cost because of the long chain issue, but they were still charged the other half for causing the clog and letting it flood for so long. They disagreed with having to pay at all, so they sued our company to remove the charges and pay for their furniture damages. The court visit wasn’t as interesting as I expected. The judge heard both sides of the arguments and it didn’t look good for the tenants who have caused a minor flood before and had many delinquent account issues. He agreed with the owner in covering it 50/50, so we won the case. The rest of the issues of eviction and collections was a separate issue for another day. To end it all, the woman had an outstanding arrest warrant for something, so the judge had the officer arrest her and taken away right after his decision. It was pretty funny to me to not only end this problem with those tenants, but that she showed up to court, lost her case, and was taken away in cuffs. One of the first angry tenant issues I dealt with within my first two weeks was a truck that got towed. We shared a part of our lot with another business that was very strict about their parking spaces. They even had it painted on the ground but people still parked there and got towed. It happened three times while I was working there. Tenants or their guest would come to me all upset about it, but it was easy for me to defer them to the other business that towed them. In my first case, the guy tried for half an hour or more to prove that he was safe parking on the lot and they had no right to tow his truck. Obviously he was wrong and there was nothing he or I could do to stop it. I never ordered any cars to be towed while I was working there. People rarely parked in places they shouldn't, but even if they were, they were gone within a few hours anyway. I had a personal policy to not tow until after I placed a 24-hour notice on a vehicle unless they were blatantly blocking a red zone like in the way of garbage removal or something important. I didn't want to deal with the headache of more angry people and charging someone hundreds of dollars for a first-time offense. If the same vehicle parked in someone else's spot more than once after being served the first time I would be much more willing to have it towed, but I never had that problem. Everyone's a good tenant until they pay late or have issues. When people would fall on hard times or have requests to fix issues, I would often be reminded about how they've been good tenants and they want some sort of reward because of that. Yes I can be helpful to first time offenders for minor things, but EVERYBODY is a good tenant at first and no, you cannot do random favors that aren’t asked for like cleaning the property in exchange for me to look the other way when you're late on rent or a complaint is filed against you. There were two or three times when tenants missed rent and when I called to check in I was told they’ve been wanting some maintenance things done. We do have an easy system for maintenance requests, but some issues are not as urgent as others. Some owners will agree to fix things up and others won’t unless they HAVE to. Again, withholding rent or other payments due will not work. You will get screwed worse in the end unless you REALLY know the law and know what you're doing. It's always amusing to me when people get upset about problems on their account and make comments that they're going to be looking for other places to live and moving out. That’s great news for me! A problem tenant is letting themselves out the door! Going to leave a bad review? Fine. I’ll just leave my owner remarks about how you screwed up and were a bad tenant. Nobody cares. All those people that withheld rent for whatever reason always lost. They were all evicted and now had a tainted rental record. They never had the money to pay and were just making up excuses to try and stay longer or get a discount. Even if they had the money, the simple act of turning it over to pay the rent proved difficult for some people. Many people waited until the very last day and the very last hour to pay rent. This was a problem sometimes when the software automatically assesses a late fee and then I have to argue with my own company to get it removed because they slipped it under the door or paid it at 11:59pm and it didn’t load until 12:01am. If the first or fifth lands on a weekend or holiday and you're paying with a check or cash, you need to pay ahead of time if this office is closed. If you don’t pay it online and demand to pay in person when the office is open again, you’ll be late if it's not already in the box. If you don't get paid until a few days after the due date, that's your problem to figure out. The landlord doesn't have to accommodate your pay days or job losses or any income changes. You must be responsible for your own budgeting and make sure that rent gets in on time. When I was working in the on-site office as manager of the apartments complex, several people would try to use the excuse that I wasn't in the office for them to pay rent, so it was late, even though there's a rent drop box right by the door. Rent does not need to be paid IN MY HAND! It can be paid online or left in the drop box. You not feeling comfortable leaving it in a drop box or paying a $2 on-line portal fee is not our problem. It is free to pay in my hand if I'm there, or you can pay for free in the drop box. Should the drop box ever be broken into, the thieves wouldn't be able to use the checks written to us anyways and we don't take cash payments. You would get a chance to write a new check without any late penalties. I was also very annoyed at how many times people incorrectly filled out checks or money orders, or paid the wrong amounts. I couldn’t get ahold of them after emailing, calling, and leaving messages, then they complain about all the late fees and problems. It was so frustrating because I’m trying so hard to be on their side to make sure everything’s right and so they don’t get unfair hefty charges, but it sometimes felt like they were purposefully being difficult with their screw ups and lack of communication. Don’t wait until the very last second to pay, pay the right amount, and don’t ignore me trying to reach out to you when there’s a problem. I’m reaching out to avoid problems. Many other managers, including my boss, love to trap people and make them suffer the consequences for not handling things on their own in the proper way and on time. “It’ll teach them,” they say. My future boss at another job also subscribed to that method of training. Let people learn through mistakes and get them in trouble. If it’s a hard learning, they’re more likely to remember. I hate this method! People MIGHT learn better, but it also breaks down the relationship and makes people resent you when you simply could’ve been more proactive in giving advice on how not to fail. Be on their side. I was always on the tenant’s side as much as possible. I wanted to be very fair and give people a good home with things taken care of and no problems, but I also hated conflict so I did everything I could to avoid it and sometimes people just have to own the penalty charges. I can’t completely bend the rules or hide charges in our software because I still have my own boss to report to and, like I said earlier, they really clamped down controls. I tried everything I could reasonably do to help tenants avoid problems and charges, but doing favors for people sometimes backfired. Not only did they often become repeat offenders, but it also gave me a headache trying to cover my tracks for when I was able to help the first time and they were never grateful I helped in the first place. I took a chance on renting to a young couple one time because I knew they were desperate to get a place. The problem was that they BARELY qualified, they were renting an expensive 3-bed/2-bath unit when it’s just the two of them, and I knew they would struggle with the rent if they weren’t careful, but I wasn’t going to stop them if they think they could make it work. Of course it failed after a few months, they broke lease, moved out early, and issued the penalty and cleaning charges. I really hoped they would make it work, but I wasn’t surprised. I felt guilty for allowing them to get in, but they did technically qualify – barely. Of course the parents were mad about all the charges, but they probably should’ve advised the kids to make better choices in picking a place to live. Pets. One subject that angered people in different ways was pets. I can’t believe how many people have pets and how many pets some people have! Pets are scary to landlords because of the damages they can cause and issues with neighbors. Both dogs and cats will sometimes scratch and chew the floors, baseboards, walls and doors, and just stink up the place. There were three or four times we had to completely replace the flooring in rentals because the cleaners could not get the smells out. The renter was charged the pro-rata charge for replacing flooring early. We had a rule to replace old carpets that were worn out every 7 years. If we needed to replace them sooner because the tenant and/or their pets damaged them, they would have to pay the balance of the remaining time. For example, if it cost $2,000 to replace the carpets and they were only 4 years old, the tenant would be charged $857 for the three years of use left in the carpets (2000/7 x 3 years left). My wife and I don't like cats. They're cute creatures, but almost every house we go into that has cats stinks! Dog poop all over the grass on the property was always a problem. It was difficult to find out who was leaving it and we tried a few tactics that helped a little, but it was incredibly annoying. So many people are such irresponsible pet owners! There were only about two cases of noise complaints for barking dogs, but that was also a problem that I couldn’t do much about. I’m not going to put listening devices out to prove the neighbors’ dogs bark too much, but I can talk to the tenants about it at least. We also had to make a new community rule requiring all dogs to be on a leash in public for two reasons: 1) Too many people were letting their dogs out to relieve themselves unsupervised and 2) Not everyone feels comfortable with loose dogs approaching them and pestering them, their children, and especially people with dogs that don’t like other dogs up in their space. So people had lots of dog complaints, but new prospects also complained about our pet policies. They were frustrated and cried about how unfair it is to limit the number of pets you can have and what size or breed. I made the policy clear to this one guy when he first came in, but then in middle of the viewing, this “son” that he previously mentioned that would be living with him was actually a pitbull dog, which is prohibited. He then proceeds to explain how good and well behaved his dog is and how it’s like a son to him. He was literally referring to it as his son the entire time up ‘til now. I’m sorry, but no. Did you think I can just let you sneak it in and explain to everyone else that it’s ok because he loves his pitbull so much even though it’s not ok for everyone else? No! Another interesting debate in this area is pets vs children. Some people complain that children can cause more damage and noise problems than pets, yet pets require their own deposits and extra rent. It's an interesting argument and having had young kids myself I know children can cause some damage to properties. However, I still agree with the standard that more often than not, pets cause more problems. Now the worst scenario with pets I’ve dealt with, started with a problem crazy-lady whose husband recently moved out and she started inviting scuzzy-looking people over and missed rent so she’s facing eviction. I was at a meeting in our main office in town when a tenant called in. One of our employees took the call and we hear her say, “Ok then you need to hang up and call the police.” She then comes and tells me that a someone shot a dog on the property. There was police and an animal control truck already there when I arrived. Police were taking statements and the situation was under control, but the people outside were all shaken up about what happened of course. So the scuzzy-looking guy that was illegally staying at the trouble tenant’s place brought in a scary-looking pit bull that got out. The dog ran out and proceeded to bark, snarl, and lunge at people unfortunate enough to be out at the moment. The dog also picked the wrong people to mess with as its final victims. It jumped all over one couple and became more aggressive when they tried kicking it away. The husband had enough and decided he had to shoot the dog with the pistol he carried on him to end the threat. He was actually pretty shaken up and didn’t want to from what I’ve seen and been told by people, but he felt like he had to. The fall-out from this was that we reiterated our pet policy with everyone, evicted the problem tenant, and deal with new complaints about people not feeling safe because of the shooting. One old lady came in and cried about how it’s not right that the other person could shoot the dog, he didn’t look harmed, and it’s against the lease rules and city rules to discharge a firearm. She wanted them evicted too. I was actually surprised by how many people came to the defense of the dog! On a side note, I don’t actually know if it lived or died. It was alive when the owner placed it in the animal control vehicle, but after that I don’t know if it lived or died later. Since the guy acted in self-defense the police issued no ticket or penalties to the shooter, but did take his weapon for a time for evidence or some sort of legal reasons. I agreed with the police and so did my boss that they were right to act in self-defense in that moment against a loose, aggressive dog. People do not have to wait until they’re bitten, mauled, and torn up to prove they need to kill an animal for their safety, but of course there should be witnesses to account for whether or not people are just shooting animals they don’t like. I was not there to witness what really happened, but a few others complained about being attacked and threatened by the dog. Several people in the community were divided about whether it was right or wrong to shoot the dog and both sides were upset. The tenant being evicted was taking her sweet time and not appearing to leave on her own, so I had to have the court deputies served their official 24-hour notice and when that expiration time approached, I had to call them in to let them know we needed them to enforce the order because they still haven’t left on their own. That morning the tenant did finally bring in a small rented truck to move stuff out, but I didn’t trust they’d actually turn over possession or get out on time and this needed to end today. She came over to the office with her two young boys to fake appeal compassion from me to allow more time, but I wasn’t having it. I was so sick of this lady and wanted her gone! I told her I can’t giver her more time, the deputies are taking over and coming to enforce their notice. She scowled and cursed me and pulled her children away as she left as if she was protecting them from me like I was a horrible, dangerous person. I feel bad for those kids. Life is so unfair to all the children that have to grow up in broken homes with parents that can’t manage their lives. This lady wasn’t just a mother down on her luck. I would actually work with people like that to help them. No. She was defiant, breaking several rules, refusing to cooperate, very likely using drugs, inviting people over that made the community feel unsafe, and stirring trouble with neighbors. When the deputies arrived she swore at me some more and told them how horrible I was. I just didn’t respond. There’s no point and all it would do is escalate the situation. They gave her just five more minutes to leave while we changed the locks with a maintenance tech, then they made sure she was off the property before leaving. In the early morning hours of the following day, she and that guy came back and tried breaking into the back door of her unit but were ran off by another tenant that caught them in the act. She was given the opportunity to come back for what little was left of her stuff, but never responded and her stuff just got scrapped during our standard turnover cleaning and repairs. This lady was charged with it all for being such a pain: missed rent plus the late fees until eviction, court charges and legal fees for full eviction with deputies, unauthorized pet charges, unauthorized guest charges, cleaning charges, and all the repair costs, especially for the damaged door from the attempted break-in. Good riddance! I used to watch some shows about people being evicted and they almost always acted surprised like they had no idea it was coming or assumed something was being taken care of. No, it’s never a surprise. There are lots of notices and communications that lead up to that point. Plus, an eviction means you won’t get a good reference, but if you let go all the way to court you’re going to have an actual record of it, not just a bad reference, and you’re going to be forced out anyway. It’s much better to leave on your own and not let it get to that point. Subsidized Housing Since I worked in property management, I learned a little bit about section 8 and section 42 government housing subsidies which are supposed to give aid to people struggling with finding a decent home on low incomes. Like many people, I don't like Section 8 because it's a clunky mess of organization, bureaucracy, and paperwork. I definitely understand why so many landlords refuse to take it. The second property I worked at was accepting it, but we started to phase out the program because of the headache. The tenants were required to pay a set amount of their portion of rent and the section 8 program sent us a check to cover the difference. We didn't have a lot of section 8 users and many of them were decent tenants. However, there is a negative stereotype about section 8 people which is another reason why landlords don't like it and the stereotype exists for a reason. It's often true. Again, many were good, but there were still several section 8 tenants that caused problems on the property. They had struggles with alcohol and/or drug abuse, relationship problems with loud fighting inside and outside their units, cleanliness issues inside and outside their units, and even though their rent is subsidized there were some that still often struggled with paying even their small portion of rent on time and had trouble following other community rules. I started to dislike using section 8 vouchers or company housing contracts because they became more of a burden. They basically had their own lease that we had to accommodate to and restricted our own control. Anytime there were lease changes with renewals, rate changes, or other issues they had to be notified like two months in advance with more paperwork and dealing with the long wait-times between correspondence. The bureaucratic protocols just wasn't worth it. It was much easier to just fill the unit with a new tenant on our own lease and enforce our own changes. We had a contract with a local trade school as well that was frustrating. The school itself paid the rent and was basically considered the "tenant," but they had special lease addendums that allowed them to house their students without us doing any vetting. The only problem I really had was noise complaints and extra vehicles on the property. Why do apartment complexes never seem to supply enough parking spaces? There should always be at least two or one and a half spaces times the number of units. Anyways, besides those complaints it was still just annoying to go through third party people and protocols just to manage our own units and tenants. When I eventually moved away and started looking for my own place to live, I came across some Section 42 properties. I visited them because they looked nice and had great rates, but found out that you can only qualify to live there if you earn below a set income. It was pretty low too, but I don't remember the exact amount. From what I understand, Section 8 just sends the landlord a check to make up the difference in rent so poor people don't have to pay as much, but section 42 sets an income limit that only people with low incomes can live in, but they are responsible for all rent and obligations on their own. The property company agrees to keep their rates far below market rates and abide by this standard of only allowing lower income tenants in exchange for a reduction in taxes which makes up the difference they would've earned otherwise at normal market rates. I am more supportive of section 42 properties because they seem a lot easier to manage and instead of paying out money the government mostly just goes without earning the taxes on the property it would normally get; but I've been wondering - why can't the government OWN some rental properties instead of subsidizing them? Do they already do that at all? Someone please explain if so. Not only could it provide more affordable housing to those that need it most, but it could also maybe be a source of income for the local government. Right? Roommates One more situation I want to address is roommates. There were three times we had units rented with roommate situations where roommates would fight, break up, and move out. The problem is, they signed the lease together so they’re all equally responsible for the full payment. If one leaves, it screws over everyone including the one that left. This is why the first company I worked at didn’t allow it. It’s annoying to deal with and you have to manage their drama if it happens. In one case they made it work by going through the proper channels of having a replacement apply and be approved by us and paid to add them on the lease and properly remove the previous person. In the other two cases they couldn’t find a replacement, so the others had to soak up the cost. For one, she only had the one roommate and paid the full rent herself. I felt bad for her, but she paid two months on her own then her lease was up and she left in good standing. The other was a group of four where one left only 4 months into a 12-month lease. The others paid the extra cost for 3 more months then couldn’t take it anymore and all broke lease by moving out early. I still gave good references to the three, but the fourth person that left was also sent a portion of the bill for leaving early and the late fees for the last month they were late. My final comment on renters is about complaints. In apartment communities, there's only so much a manager can do when it comes to enforcing noise complaints and pet problems. If you live in an apartment, you will hear noises! You share walls and they were not built to be studio soundproof! If you can't live with that and can't resolve problems with your neighbor(s), then you will need to move - preferably to your own home away from neighbors. Many of the people that constantly complain about noise or other issues, will complain no matter what. A cricket can chirp outside their window once at night and they’d be calling it in. A lot of people are shy and timid and don't want to confront their neighbors about issues, but you need to at least try to stick up for yourself first. If anything, it will help your case if the situation needs to be escalated to management. Most people are more reasonable than you think if you just try talking to them in a friendly manner. Know from the manager's perspective that it is fairly difficult to legally evict someone before their lease ends for any other reason besides staying after a lease has expired, or for not paying rent, or for blatant lease violations with evidence. Managers don't have eyes and ears everywhere at all times to prove the violations and people can’t be trusted. Too many fake stories are used for stupid things people don’t like and just want to get rid of their neighbors. Unless there is hard proof of people in violation, there can't be any real action besides maybe choosing to not renew a lease when it comes due in the future. If there's a violation issued and the offender challenges it, there's nothing to stand on besides someone's word. If you live in an apartment you will hear noises! The main, underlying problem to everything I’ve dealt with in property management is that too many people do not take personal responsibility for consequences to their actions and do not make rational judgments. A young woman would complain to me about having a hard life and blame the world and various factors for not being able to keep a job or afford rent and whatnot, but maybe it's because she is 20 years old with two kids from two different, non-existent fathers, a new boyfriend every 6 months, and switching jobs every 6 months. I don’t care what you do with your personal life as long as you fulfill your obligations and stop blaming the world at some point. There are still some things you do have control over despite having a rough past. Just because your work hours were cut, doesn't mean your rent amount can be cut as well. It's unfortunate, but now you make me to be the bad guy as if I’m a horrible, immoral person just because I enforce lease rules. I don't own the property. I can’t help people even if I wanted because of how the system works. I can't go to my boss and the property owner and tell them I let one person cut back on rent just because of a hard time - which hard times seem to keep happening to a lot of the same people. Dealing with Owners Now back to my job timeline. I worked at this other apartment complex for a year and then was moved to the main office to manage mostly single-family homes and a trailer park. I was used to only dealing with one owner of the mid-size apartment complex, so it was a little frustrating dealing with multiple owners now, managing the properties of all the people renting out their houses. Many people have stories of bad tenants and unusual events, but you rarely hear about dealing with owners. I've met some rental property owners who had expectations that just aren't compatible with reality or were even prohibited by law. Many owners I've worked with want to push the rental rates as high as they can go and want very strict qualifications to get the "perfect tenant." They want the perfect tenant that will pay the most, but they also aren't willing to wait and let their property sit vacant until they get that match. These are conflicting problems. If you want to charge really high rents, then your chances of units sitting vacant longer and evictions/early terminations go up with it. Even good tenants sometimes lose jobs and have life emergencies causing them to break lease under the pressure of high rents. Owners want to have strict standards and get the best tenants, but if you're going to turn away all the other applicants then you have to be willing to wait and have your property sit vacant until you can get that ideal renter. Owners often say they want all collections to happen promptly and enforced strictly. All rent needs to be collected on the 1st through the 5th and late notices and fees go out on the 6th. "No working deals and payment plans with tenants." However, once they are made to understand that being very firm and strict with this often means having to deal with evictions in the courts, they'll back off a bit. Evictions frighten owners just as much as tenants because then they are afraid of court costs, legal battles, and possible damages to the property from angry tenants on their way out. I tried to work with tenants as much as possible being firm, but fair; but it’s a careful balance and as I reflect back on my experiences I think it probably would be easier to just stick to the firm rules. The cost of evictions are higher than working with a tenant, but it can be more of a headache trying to manage payment plans with a tenant when you can probably just put a new one in instead. When a tenant is sent to collections for leaving or being evicted with an outstanding balance owing, I was told that chances are pretty slim that owners will actually get much of that, if anything back. If so, you only get a little bit here and there for a long time. Collections are very regulated and don't produce results nearly as well or quickly as you'd hope. This leads me to believe that people actually can get away without having to pay the full price, as long as they're ok with their credit taking a hit. I was surprised by how upset property owners would get over maintenance issues. Yes, of course you would like to never have to pay for the upkeep of your property and be a slumlord, but if you want to charge these high rates and stay within legal limits and whatnot, you have to pay to upkeep your property. I thought it was understood that owning and managing property would include maintenance costs, but I was surprised at how many times property owners were devastated and upset at even minor repairs. They didn't budget for it and were relying too heavily on their one rental house for income. There were other times that property owners wanted to fix things themselves to save money, but they weren't very good at doing things properly or in a timely manner. I've seen owners try to bill and charge tenants for the upgrades and remodeling of their property. No. They're already paying your mortgage and taxes for that sweet, ever-growing equity. They are not obligated in any way to pay for your elective property improvements on top of that. Poor Landlords Some people own rental properties and probably shouldn't because they can't financially support the investment. The last place I rented before buying my first home was owned by a family that were presented an opportunity to buy the rental house from a relative. The problem was that they didn't have the finances to maintain it and pay for it when no tenant was there. They worked really hard to do maintenance upkeep themselves and they were good at that at least, but they struggled managing the financial side of it. Should any costly repairs be needed or long turnover time between tenants, they'd have to get a loan to cover the costs. When I was managing rental houses, one older woman used the rental income from her property as her retire income to live on. The long-term tenant she had moved out and we couldn't place a new tenant because the house was in such bad shape, needing a lot of repairs she couldn't afford. She was very upset and eventually had a friend come to do repairs and I was laid off before finding out whatever became of that situation. Trailer Park The last interesting experience I want to comment on is my involvement in managing an old trailer park. It wasn't a park with an office or amenities, but tracts of land with plots for home hookups. The owner was a big company that wanted to develop the land, but didn't want the bad publicity of evicting all the residents. The homes on this lot were old and not up to code for transporting on the streets - not that any of the residents could afford to anyway. My job was to manage the property like any other and make sure rent is collected and all lease rules are followed, but also to encourage people to leave. We made deals with people such as free rent for 3 months if they sign over the title to their home and leave. We needed the title to own the home and approve of its demolition and removal. A few people took it and left, but many others wanted to stay. They put a lot of money into their homes and were now being forced to leave it because they can't afford to move it anywhere if it even could be moved. I felt bad for everyone in that sad situation. The worst part about managing this park was that it was onboarded from another company and it was not managed well, or at all, for many months. Most places didn't even have a lease on file, account balances were all over the place, and there were several problem tenants that were always paying late, or not at all, and a few people we could never get ahold of and questioned whether they were even living there. Some homes were abandoned, but we didn't have a title or contact for the actual owner, so that was a mess to figure out too. I watched this John Oliver video about parks screwing people over and I found it very sad and frustrating. I can relate to knowing what it's like for people to be trapped and screwed over. I worked at this second property management job for a year and a half until I was let go due to the business shrinking. Unfortunately, I didn't secure a new job in time and it wasn't for a lack of trying. I wanted to get out of there much sooner and even went to a few interviews, but I didn't get hired anywhere so I got to experience being laid off and unemployed for the first time in my life. Two other people were laid off at the same time as I, then two years later everyone else until they were left with just the owner and his wife, plus a receptionist. I don't feel that bad for their business failing because there were a lot of things going wrong in that company with bad business decisions, certain things they did with mistreating employees, and their terrible policies that hurt tenants and sometimes owners. The company owner made some bad business deals by growing too fast and hiring too many employees and buying a whole batch of management contracts from another shady company that severely mismanaged their properties, and then left all those problems for employees to deal with on their own. It was a small company and employee turnover was pretty high. Most employees there had no prior property management experience at all either. The management contracts purchased were never properly onboarded, so their lease information was missing or incorrect, many had delinquent accounts and missing deposits, and many properties haven't had an inspection for a long time. A year later, as problems started flowing in and untrained employees left dealing with it, plus the ever-changing company policies, the problems grew and property owners became upset. Most of it was the previous management company's fault, but my company's owner didn't do enough to fix it. Since the housing market was very hot, almost every single contract he purchased just the previous year ended up being closed by owners choosing to sell instead of dealing with more rental management problems. The company was small to begin with, already had a bad reputation, no marketing to attract new properties to manage, and hired too many employees. We had monthly meetings to go over how things were going as a company, so that's how I saw the writing on the wall. I was disappointed in being let go, but not surprised. I was more troubled by the fact that I was never able to get into a real job that led to an actual career in the mean time. I actually enjoyed property management and learned a lot from it. Property management as a service doesn't make very much money because it's usually less than 10% of the rent amount charged to the owners. Property management companies for the most part only make good money by charging expensive fees to tenants, managing a lot of units, or just owning their own properties themselves. I wanted to own my own rental properties some day, but I learned that it doesn’t make a lot of money unless the mortgage is paid off and you picked up the property for cheap and can charge a high rent rate. I've found several REIT investments that give you a better return for your money than actually owning property yourself and there's no management hassle with maintenance or tenant issues. The only problem is that you don't have control over your own investment. UPDATES: I am very against raising rent on current tenants that are renewing their lease unless costs absolutely require it, not just because the market allows me to. Housing is skyrocketing, but wages are definitely not. Sure the market rate is going up 20% (or whatever high number) each year, but the tenants' income is certainly not - or at least not nearly as much as housing costs are. When I worked in property management I would raise rent rates between tenants but still keep them a little lower to be competitive and fill empty units faster. If the previous tenant moves out, then at least the new tenants would choose to move in under the new rate since they are already in the market and planning for it instead of raising rates too much on current tenants, causing them to be forced out or screwed trying to make it work to stay there and souring the relationship. If they were longer-term tenants, I'd raise it by maybe half of what the current market increase is every 2 years with plenty of advance notice. I tried my best to not raise rates on the first renewal. Turnovers are expensive. It's easier to have a good relationship with tenants and keep them longer this way. You can bring up rates slowly with the long-term people, but still grow your income when there are turnovers. During an off-track from college, I had about five months to work and save up as much money as possible. I didn't start working while in college at the same time until I transferred to a bigger city that actually had jobs available for me to be able to work and take classes at the same time. Until then I just tried to make as much money as possible during my off-track breaks and other random gigs throughout the year. I was honest for my first two interviews at places when they asked something along the lines of, "What are your future plans?" Since I was just going back to school in less than half a year, of course they didn't hire me. They wanted to invest in someone they can keep. I wised up to avoid being honest from then on if I wanted work. Sorry employers. I needed work to make money and I didn't have time to waste finding it.
I was surfing through online job postings like Craigslist and Indeed for basic jobs and was willing to take whatever paid the most. I answered a posting for warehouse labor, which ended up being through a Temp agency. I never knew these places existed before then. If anyone else is still ignorant like I was, companies hire staffing agencies to get extra workers for temporary positions when they need it. The advantage is that the Temp agency provides the screening, on-boarding, and payroll. I did the initial safety training at the Temp office and was told where and when to report for my warehouse job and generally what to wear and expect for work. The job was at a tire warehouse where I met the manager with another temp worker. An interesting piece of info on this is that I interviewed for a full-time position at this same warehouse 2 weeks prior. They didn't take me because at the time of this interview I was still be honest, when asked, that I was planning on going back to finish school. The same manager I interviewed with before informed me and the other temp worker of the work we were going to be doing. He showed us how to operate the machines to do it, and where to get supplies to continue our work. You know those studded snow tires? Apparently those studs are put in by hand with the help of certain tools! It was a gun that had a tube on the back for the stud feed and in the handle for the air hose. It was attached to a little rack where you can pour the little metal studs into the top spinner, which feeds the studs down a tube single-file into the back of the gun. You're supposed to stick the nose of the gun into each of the small holes in the tires and pulling the trigger activates the air compression and gun mechanics to push the little stud into the hole. A lube is required to make sure it gets inserted easier and properly. We were mostly unsupervised the entire time, but had to keep track of how many tires we completed each day. It was frustrating because the managers kept saying we should easily do 80-100+ tires a day, but we could only get about 30-40 done. You can't just quickly punch each stud in rapidly because the equipment wasn't functioning correctly. The guns were constantly breaking down and some would work far better than the others. More often than not, the studs would be inserted crooked and not all the way in like it should be. To correct a stud, you have to pop it out first with a little ice pick tool and try again. Some holes probably weren't made as well as others in the rubber, so after multiple tries we'd just give up and either leave it crooked or maybe empty. There was a lot of crooked studs and studs sticking out slightly because we just couldn't get these things in like the managers expected, no matter how hard we tried or what technique. Like I said, the guns were always malfunctioning and had to be repaired, some worked better than others, so I think they just had bad guns/tools. I would've loved to see the managers go as fast as they think we should be. Please, by all means, show us how you get so many done in a day! This work was so dull and actually hurt my wrists and forearms pretty bad from the tedious and repetitive work, pushing hard on those guns into each stud slot to get it in right. I did this for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, for $9 an hour. It was the best I could find for a job at the time in Boise, Idaho in 2013. At the end of every week we got our time cards signed by a warehouse manager or supervisor and turned them in to the Temp agency. I think our checks were available to be picked up on the following Tuesday. There was another guy there with me working away in the back of the warehouse. I thought he looked like a guy much older than me in his 30s or even early 40s. We didn't talk the first day until the end and I was shocked to find out he was actually in his 20s, like me. A few days later a 3rd guy was brought in with us. We all mostly kept to ourselves and after one week, the third guy never came back. A new kid was brought in to replace him and this guy was such a goof. He was very social and goofed off a lot. Sometimes he was annoying, but I actually appreciated him getting us to talk and be friends at work. One conversation that I'll always remember is that he was in a car accident in the recent past and was supposed to be getting a big settlement for his pain and stuff. He was happily planning on what to do with the money and what he wants to buy. The other guy said, "With that much money, you won't have to work for a whole year!" They were excited to talk about that opportunity and freedom and I was lost here. Yeah I guess you could enjoy a year off burning up your money, but you'll be right back here next year with no improvement in your life. What I couldn't relate to with these guys was their outlook for life. They had no ambition to improve. They wanted to work as little as possible just to get by and no intention of ever getting better jobs through education or training programs. I've heard from them and others before that they just don't see it as a possibility in their lives at all. It's hard coming from poor, broken families. There's no role models of decently successful people in your life, so a brighter future might seem difficult. Trailblazing a path in life where no one you know personally has gone before is tough to comprehend, but it's possible. I just don't think these guys were motivated. At all. After about three weeks, the goofy guy was gone. He just stopped showing up and we didn't know what happened. Maybe he finally got his settlement. A new guy was brought in who was pretty quiet and easy to talk to, but he only lasted one day - and he wasn't very good. They just stopped bringing in new people after that, so it was back to me and the other original guy. We worked together for about another two weeks I think and then we were given notice that the job was done. We had rows and rows of stacked, studded tires all along the back of the warehouse and even up on the racks. It was kind of nice to see everything we worked on for the last month completed. However, they probably got a LOT of returns that year because the stud quality was pretty bad. I take pride in my work and completed the most tires each day with the best quality, but even mine still had some bad ones. The other guy was let go as the temp. job was complete. I didn't let him know that I was actually asked to stay to help out with some other things longer. The manager must've liked me, probably because I had the best performance and was more willing to help with other things when they needed. The next two or three weeks I spent working there as the only temp now was weird. They kept me around to be an extra helping hand, but there really wasn't much to do. I helped move tires around, stack and organize them, and clean the warehouse; but there wasn't really that much to do. I probably only actually worked about 3 hours a day. The rest of the time I would just wander around, pretend to be cleaning even though it was already clean, hide in some tire stacks or the bathroom to play on my phone, and take hour and a half to two hour lunches. I actually wanted to be useful and help, but there was absolutely nothing for my extra labor to do. One of my least favorite things to do was helping stack the large tractor-trailer tires. Those things are HEAVY! There's a special technique to lift and toss the tires without hurting yourself, but it still took a good amount of strength and energy. I was surprised to see a shorter guy stacking these heavy tires onto columns well over his head. I started there in mid-August and around mid-late October I was finally notified that their busy season was ending and my help was no longer needed. The first few weeks were rough at that job, then the last few were extremely boring, but at least it was paying $9/hr instead of the common $7.25 everywhere else. I was supposed to check in with the Temp agency to find new jobs but they were pretty dried up for work, so I started applying like crazy again to get a new, stable job. I ended up settling for a car wash that you can read about in the end of my car wash post. I love the smell of new rubber like tires and shoes and still do, but this was probably the worst job experience I had because the nature of the job was tedious and actually hurt my hands forearms for pay that wasn't good, then it got really boring. It was a weird temp job experience, but it helped me pay some bills for a time. Getting your first job is a milestone in life. It's something we all do, but the experience can be completely different for everyone. I worked part-time in high school and full-time during the summer breaks. What bothered me most was when I wanted to still have a fun, social life as a teenager, but had to work around my work schedule and hope my requests for time off were granted the few times I needed it. Why does this often seem to be a problem for low wage jobs that people struggle to get time off? It's one thing to not be paid for your time off, I get that from the low wage employment stance with no benefits, but why does that seem to be a common struggle to be able to take time off at all? In all my professional jobs since, getting time off has been easy, especially if you have people that can cover your work. Anyways, In high school it always bothered me when the kids who didn't work or just worked for mom or dad's business just assumed I could take off whenever, no problem. No, I actually have to put in a request for time off ahead of time, maybe hope I can get someone else to cover for me, and hope it's approved. I can't just say I'll be gone and everything's fine. Some kids just never understood that!
I got my first job in the summer of 2007. I was 16 years old and just got my driver's license a few months prior. My older brother worked at a full-service car wash about a mile from where we lived and I often saw him come home with wads and wads of cash he'd earn at work. That looked pretty cool to make some money and be outside and active too - not cooped up in some retail outlet or fast food place. This place was a car wash, gas station, and detail shop combo. I went into the convenience store (c-store) and picked up an application to fill out at home. I can't remember what I put on it since I had no previous official work history. Must've been a lot of blank areas. Somebody please remind me how to fill out a job application for a first time employee. Also, if you've ever been a hiring person, how do you know if you can trust a first-time employee. What things do you look for? The next morning I returned with my application and asked to see the manager. This took a lot of courage for me because I'm a very shy person and was venturing into this new experience on my own, with not a lot of confidence as I've never applied to a job before and didn't know what to expect. I asked the c-store cashier lady if I could speak with the manager about my application and she told me she saw him walking out on the property, so I went out to find him then introduced myself, "Hi are you Mike the manager?" I don't remember his exact name, but I'll use Mike. While handing him my application I told him who my brother was and that I would like to work here too. My brother moved on and was no longer working there, but Mike must've liked my brother or was already in a good mood for the day because we hit it off well. He took me into the small office and after some small talk he was already offering me the job! I couldn't believe it was that fast and easy! I felt so lucky because at a later date I saw in the office there was literally a small stack of a few other applications on the desk. Some people get lucky and the rest are just left in a pile. That's job hunting for ya. For orientation I had to go to two or three days of training at the corporate office, which was just an hour or two each day consisting of filling out paperwork, beginner training stuff, safety, and learning some company background. Then, on a warm, summer morning, dressed in uniform, I showed up on time for my first shift at my first job. I met with Manager Mike again and after a brief tour of the property he left me at the vacuuming area with the supervisor in charge. Vacuuming is the starting spot for all new hires - and it sucks. You're hunched over the seats scrubbing away with those crappy car wash vacuum hoses trying to get every last grain out, but the particles keep bouncing around in the velcro-like carpet of vehicles. Then you have to try and cram the vacuum nose into every crevice between seats and consoles and get as much as you can so customers won't complain. Some cars barely need vacuuming, some are horrendously disgusting, but the average car coming through only took about a full minute and a half or so with each two-man team. We started in the back, pushing the seats all the way forward for better working room, then moved to the front and pushed the front seats back, then returned the seats to original position the best we could and do the trunk if accessible. When new vehicles pulled up, they were greeted by a ticket writer who speaks with the customers to write service orders and try to up-sell services. The ticket writer checks some boxes on the carbon copy tickets and makes any notes for customer requests. The customer gets the original to go pay and match the finished job at the end and the carbon copy is left on the dash for employees to know what type of service to do on that vehicle. Customers leave their vehicles to us and waited in designated waiting areas inside or outside the c-store. There was a lane on the side of the vacuum terminals designated as exterior only for the cheapest wash. Sometimes the exterior only people took it through the wash themselves and sometimes they would also get out and let us do it all. Living in sunny Las Vegas, this car wash kept pretty busy year-round. After working there for a little while and gaining trust with supervisors, I was allowed to be a designated driver who could move the vehicles from the vacuuming area to the car wash entrance. Sometimes we had a guy working the entrance that would do a quick spray over the vehicle, especially to help get bug splats off, and punch the wash order into the machine to send it through. If not, whoever drove it up had to get out and punch the code in to send it through and then return to the vacuuming area. Working the vacuums sucked, but getting my first pay check was awesome. I laugh at how little it was now, but earning around $200/week as a 16 year-old with no expenses was great! I was a money saver and squirreled it away to buy big things later, but it was also nice to have good spending money whenever I wanted to indulge. I also had an advantage here that was my key to getting out of the vacuuming. I could drive manual (stick shift) cars. Because of this, and lucky timing for when I was hired, I was promoted from vacuuming to driver in only two or three weeks. I loved the driver position. The drivers are responsible for driving the cars from the exit of the wash, to the drying lanes, keeping them in order to make sure everything is done as fast as possible, meaning one lane doesn't have 3 cars while the other only has one. The drivers also have to maintain the supply of towels for the wipers by collecting all the used towels from the baskets in drying lanes, sort, wash and dry them, then place them in a basket outside ready to reuse. Each car coming out of the wash would get 4 or 5 towels usually rolled up and placed in that spot between the hood and the windshield wiper blades that served as the perfect crevice to hold them, or just on top of the wiper blades which usually held them just fine. The roll had two towels for the glass and interior and two for the exterior/body. Sometimes a fifth towel would be included for rims or just extra use on whatever else. I loved this position because it was fairly simple to do, but also kept you busy; and one of the best perks was being able to stay in the wash tunnel where it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Standing in the blowers after a vehicle exits or when they stay on between cars that are spaced far enough apart was a fun experience and nice to cool off. Drivers received a "tip-out" which was a little extra cash tip at the end of each day that was gleaned off of the tips from all the wipers, so I think it was like an extra $2-$4/hr raise that isn't taxed on a paycheck; and of course the job itself was much better than vacuuming. If it was really slow and you've already refilled all the cleaning supplies and towels outside it was nice to hang out in the little side room of the wash tunnel to wash any remaining towels and pretend like you're busy. The extractor machine for washing towels had three sections. A spinning extractor in the middle and a sink on each side. The right side was used for the towels and the left held all the greasier sponges and towels that were used in the detailing garage in the back. The left sink was usually only run once or twice a day as the demand for those materials was a lot less and you could fit a lot more in than the regular use towels on the right. The sinks did have hookups for soap to be dispensed, but we stopped using it because the soaped towels would sometimes leave streaks and - business costs - you know. We would let the used towels just soak in water and agitate it occasionally with our hands. If we were really rushed there were many times that we'd quickly dump them in the water and immediately put them in the extractor. No time to wait for soaking. I remember a few times being the only driver on duty and we got SLAMMED. Vehicles were coming out of the wash almost bumper to bumper, so as soon as the vehicle driver door cleared the wash walls I was jumping in, driving them over to lanes, and literally sprinting back to catch the next one rolling off the track. If I had time to catch even a very short break I would grab as many towels as I could from the baskets, throw them in the wash water and almost immediately into the extractor. If I was too busy even for that then a supervisor or one of the wipers would have to quickly wash some towels. If you're wondering what happens if no one gets to the car coming out in time, usually it just sits at the end of the tracks and hopefully another vehicle doesn't come pushing into the back of it. It's also possible, and I've seen it happen, for the tracks to push it just hard enough that it will slowly keep rolling down the lot. I haven't seen any vehicles get damaged, but I did witness some occasions when someone left the vehicle in drive at the entrance of the tunnel, so it went bouncing over the track rollers and sped through the wash. Some guys made a futile and probably dangerous attempt to slow it down by bracing the front of it themselves, but once it cleared the walls of the wash tunnel someone jumped in and stepped on the brake. It was a good thing there weren't any other cars in the tunnel ahead of it. Kind of exciting to see crazy stuff happen, but it's never been a really big deal in the end. I think I was in that driver position for 2 or 3 months until finally making it to the big money - a wiper up front. Wipers dry the vehicles and do a little extra cleaning on the rims and interiors, depending on the service customers purchased. Wipers make the big money because they get all the tips from customers. Getting stiffed was rare and the average was $2-$3 per vehicle. I'm pretty sure I averaged around $16-$18/hr with hourly wages plus tips. That's what I remember calculating back then when I crunched the numbers. All tips are cash and none of it is ever reported for taxes. It was nice to come home with wads of cash every night. Wipers always worked in pairs. One person does the front driver-side corner to the back passenger-side corner and the other person does the drivers side and back, plus the inside console if required by the service. In that case the other person does all the wheels while the inside is getting cleaned. We worked fast, but good enough to not leave streaks or anything to get a complaint. The faster you go, the more vehicles you do, the more you collect in tips. I liked working with some of the immigrants who came from Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru because those guys were fast. They usually had me interact with the customer because my english was better and they probably thought customers would tip me more; or maybe they knew they were just faster at pushing through vehicles. Sometimes a nice sports car or expensive vehicle would come through and wipers would fight over who gets it and try to convince the drivers to bring it to them. A person that drives an expensive vehicle is more likely to pay a good tip, but never guaranteed. I remember there also being a few regulars that the wipers knew and they would either want that vehicle for the good tip, or avoid it because they always stiff. On two or three occasions there was a regular that actually requested a specific employee to work on their car. At the end of a shift or before a break, a wiper team would split all of their tips in the break room. If it was an odd number, there's a coin toss or someone decides to just give it to the other person. Nobody really wanted to break a dollar into quarters or deal with splitting coins. Now here are some things we hated: tanks, late nights, chances of rain, and, as expected, annoying customers. Tanks are what we called large SUVs, vans, and trucks. They were annoying to do because they took more time and often held more water around their bodies, so the towels would get soaked and make it harder to dry. You want to process as many vehicles as possible to get more tips, so when you get stacked with a few tanks to slow you down it can effect your pay. In the winter we were closed at 7pm and 9pm in the summer. We hated late nights after it got dark because we couldn't see very well to do a proper clean, it was very slow with no customers, but mostly because we wanted to start closing up and going home. Just as many other businesses, employees don't like the people coming in last minute. The same principle goes for when it's cloudy out and there's a chance of rain. Most people wanted to just close and go home because there was so little business and the pathetic hourly pay just wasn't worth it. However, the wash would only close if it was a strong, steady downpour that lasted more than 20 minutes and was forecast to continue that way. Being in Vegas, it didn't rain very often or hard enough to close, but those cloudy days with a chance of rain were usually pretty slow for business. Do people still get their cars washed when it's raining? Yes! For some reason, people do! It's weird, but yes we still had people coming through with their cars even while there's a light drizzle coming down. For some I understand they want the interior cleaned anyway, but for others - I just don't get it. Maybe one of you listeners can enlighten me. There was one day I remember that had a light, steady rain for a while in the early afternoon. Business was very slow, so they started sending several people home; but then, right before our rush hour, the storm clouds moved on and cars started trickling in again. Then more came. Then even more. Then we all of the sudden had the busiest rush hour I've ever had we were very short staffed from sending people home earlier. The few of us left there were SLAMMED with work! It was insane! Parking lot full of cars in lines going into the vacuum area and pumping out bumper to bumper out of the tunnel. All 4 lanes filled with vehicles. All hands on deck, everyone working vigorously to move as quickly as possible while maintaining quality work. Thankfully, most customers were pretty nice and patient through the rush madness and at the end of the night we congratulated each other on a job well done and celebrated the fact that we made so much money that day. During normal business times, there's the occasional annoying customers that were very picky about their vehicle. They would try to get a personal detail on their vehicle by a wiper out front instead of paying for the actual detailing service which is done in the garage in the back. These people were so annoying. I don't mind doing a few extra touch-ups for you or wiping streaks if there were any to make sure it's done right, but please don't waste our time trying to cheat your way into an upgraded service you didn't pay for. Two instances come to mind when I had to deal with annoying customers. One was a silent lady that just pointed at areas I assumed she wanted touched up more. No words, just pointed. It was insulting to me and I found it rude to not even respect me as a person to communicate with nothing other than pointing. There was a spot where water made its way out of a crack that trickled down even after blowing it out and a rim that she wanted a little extra attention on, but then it started getting ridiculous where you can only see the smallest smudges if the light hits it just right. The last one she finally used her voice because she walked to the other side of the car while I was squatting down cleaning a rim. "There's another over here," she said. I finished what I was working on and walked over to see what she was pointing at and I didn't get it. There was nothing there. "You don't see that?" She rudely commented. "No I'm sorry I don't" I answered while moving around trying to get a different angle on what she was seeing. She did have sunglasses that might've inhibited her vision, but then I found it. "Oh this?" I leaned in really close for a better look. It was a blemish on the vehicle paint that I pretended to scrub a little until she just walked away to the other side again for a final look-over. That saved me from having an even worse conversation that her perfect car had imperfections and they probably weren't caused by the car wash. The other instance was when we had to park a large SUV because the customer wasn't outside waiting for it yet. There was a little area we moved cars out of the way if the customer wasn't there to pick it up after washing. When the owner came and checked it out he asked if I could follow him to it. That's never a good sign. He opened up the back doors and asked me to get the jambs again and also asks if he can have a rag. He started working on his vehicle too and commented about how he used to work here and that he can see how the quality has been going downhill - passive aggressive rudeness towards me. He kept me there for a very long time and my partner had to keep moving on by himself and we were pretty busy at that moment and now getting backed up. This guy wanted me to keep wiping and cleaning and detailing, taking far longer than the average service is supposed to take. It wasn't fixing mistakes we made, it was cleaning well beyond our standard clean. I finally had enough and told him I can't keep cleaning more than the standard for the service he paid for. "I'm sorry but I have to get back to our lines and there's nothing more I can do here without charging for extra service." He made another rude comment about him just finishing it himself then and that was that. Managers and supervisors at any job can be a hit or miss. Sometimes you get to work with good ones that are good at their job. Sometimes they're good people, but bad at managing. Some might be real jerks that have good manager numbers and some are just bad and don't last long - or at least they shouldn't. I experienced a few managers and supervisors turnover throughout my two years at the car wash. Towards the end of my employment there we had the worst. We had this new woman managing the place that was very strict with rules and she wanted everyone constantly working. Usually we were all pretty good at pretending to be busy when it was really slow, or doing a few errands to keep things clean and organized for our work; but this manager was extreme and annoying. She would invent odd chores to do around the property that everyone hated and it usually involved extensive cleaning. Everything else was just straightening up our appearances, the tables and chairs in the waiting area, and reorganizing and cleaning our work area over and over. She wanted to save money by using the most out of product and never wasting or going over. It was stressful because we needed our bottles filled, but she'd be checking on how many times we filled them and how much we were using. One of the extensive cleaning jobs we did was cleaning the trash cans on the property and even using some of the product to make the black, plastic cans shiny like new. Yeah. Save pennies by reducing product use on the important stuff just to spend dollars cleaning the trash cans, gutters, and whatever other odd items and places. Sometimes when it was really slow she'd have us start cleaning the tunnel, just to have our cleaning work erased when the next car came through. Her excuse was that it was prep work and will be easier to clean at closing - which it really wasn't. This manager was very strict and kind of rude, but then she would sometimes try talking to you casually and be a friend but it was so awkward. You can't be our friend and be rude and demanding at the same time. It was also just awkward conversations when she wanted to be friendly with some employees and it felt forced. This manager also had a sidekick though. A new supervisor I think his name was Juan. Juan would give the same strict rules and stupid orders, but he wasn't confident in his position and people were a lot more prone to giving him attitude about the extra work. I was getting near the end of my stay at this job because I was going away to college soon. It was late July one evening and Juan asked me to go clean the employee bathroom in the tunnel because it was slow. We weren't dead, just slow. I was annoyed because I've been doing random jobs for he and the manager all week and if I left my post to clean the bathroom I will miss out on the next vehicles coming through which is lost tip money. Plus, that bathroom is really gross. I declined his request saying, "No. There are still cars about to come through and cleaning bathrooms is not my job." I acknowledge now that "not my job" is never a good phrase to use at any job throughout your life unless it really is warranted for inappropriate assignments. I should've said something else that explained why I believed that to be an unfair request, but he didn't press the issue to ask again and didn't even ask in a stern command in the first place. He just - left. Had he been real serious I guess I would've just done it, but I was sick of this guy and the other manager. I was tired at the end of a long day. I had a day off and then the following day I was brought into the manager's office and calmly reprimanded by the manager for disobeying Juan's order to clean the bathroom. Juan was sitting in there too just leaning his face on his hand quietly. I was suspended for a week and I calmly apologized, gave my reason for declining, and left. I didn't mind having a free summer week off, but I was very annoyed at the fact this happened, especially at Juan. When I returned the following week some of the guys made jokes and some were shocked that I was suspended. I was generally just the quiet kid that just did his work and went home. I worked just a few more days then put in my two-weeks notice. I was tired of this new manager and supervisor and I wanted to enjoy some vacation time for my last month of summer before moving away anyway. This job served me well throughout high school and I made great money. I was able to pay for my own used car in cash. I had that car for over a decade and it rarely had any problems. Later on I found out from people that worked there longer that it was discovered that the manager and Juan were "romantically" connected and were replaced. Looking back I don't know how I survived it all in high school. The early mornings with school starting at 7am, physically demanding sports after school, then straight to work right after exhausting practices and more work on Saturdays in the hot sun. Plus homework, school projects, and keeping up a social life. I can't believe I did all that. How much did I even sleep!? Now I feel like it's a struggle to get through a day at an easy desk job unless I get like 9 hours of sleep (which is never). Maybe when you're in better shape involved in these activities, it's easier to get up and stay on top of things. I've gotten lazy, so doing more is exhausting. Believe it or not, I ended up working at another car wash during an off-track in college 4 years later. I was so embarrassed to go back to working in a car wash because I've already done a couple years in college and thought I was worth more. To me this just proved that what you learn in college for most degrees isn't really important. Society only cares about finishing to get that certification even though the work you actually end up doing can be done by most people with training. I was also embarrassed and disappointed because I had tried for months to get a decent internship and never did. Decent internships are still competitive and tough to get just as any ordinary job. I only had a few months before going back to school full-time, so I wanted a job as soon as possible that paid as much as possible. When I couldn't get anything I got desperate and just needed an income asap. I went to a car wash because I already had experience and knew there was tipping potential. I was so stupid and didn't think it through though because I was now in Idaho with a much different climate and culture. Las Vegas is typically sunny year-round and people generally tip more. The place I worked at was much more well-known, in a better location, and busy. This new place in Idaho - sucked. I would've made more working at a fast-food place or retail for minimum wage because they probably would've given me more hours. This new car wash place I was at was never busy and their usual traffic wasn't even steady, plus the location was not in a very affluent area. No, it was more lower-middle class. Silly me also forgot that it was getting into late fall and early winter in Idaho which meant even less car wash business due to frequent cloudy weather and more snow/rain. So there I was working part-time starting out at vacuuming again cold and bored. After about a month I was finally moved into the wiping area which was inside the tunnel, but at the end. The tunnel was extended and wider than the place in Vegas, but I didn't like this new setup of wiping down the vehicles while they're rolling along at the end of the track. If they were busy they pulled a few cars off to the side, but there wasn't that much space and there wasn't a designated area for them. It was weird, not very efficient, and not as aesthetically pleasing for the business process. When I applied to this place, the original job posting boasted, "competitive wages" which turned out to be $7.55 instead of the $7.25 minimum wage. "ooh wee, a whole 30 cents more than minimum wage is 'competitive.'" The manager complained during the hiring process that they had a lot of turnover, especially within the first three months for new hires and he wanted to avoid that. Gee, I wonder why so many people left this boring, part-time job with "competitive wages," especially when your normal 6-hour shift is sometimes shortened to 3 hours whenever the weather is bad. I did feel a little bad since I already knew I would only be staying for about 3-months before quitting to go back to school, but if I told employers my intention of leaving after a few months I would never be hired anywhere. I did work for a Temp agency, but even that place wasn't very reliable once my first and only job there finished. My excuse for leaving this car wash after just a few months was that I was recently engaged and we decided to move for her job. It was true that I did recently get engaged, but I didn't want him to figure out I originally wasn't planning to stay there long anyway. My advice for anyone looking to get their first job, is to work at a place with tipping potential like good car washes in busy locations like warm, sunny cities, or working in restaurants or maybe delivery places. You'll probably make way more than your average retail or fast food place if you get into a good place that earns tips. However, if you are very into a certain store or product and want some kind of employee discount or reputation, work at those places if it serves you a better advantage. Likewise, if you already know what kind of career path you want later in life, work at relative places to have a start on your resume. It might be worth working at certain places for less pay if it provides a better outlook on your resume later. When I graduated from college I was embarrassed to only have lousy work experience from a car wash, warehouse, and other irrelevant jobs. They made more money, generally, but led to nowhere. I wasn't able to get an internship either, so it was very difficult selling myself to future employers. Do you have an interesting first or early job experience? Have any recommendations for others? Why did you get it and what did you like or hate about it? Article Reference: https://fee.org/articles/college-student-my-generation-is-blind-to-the-prosperity-around-us
I came across this short article titled, "College Student: My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us" and felt like it serves as another example of the disconnect between the ideas and experiences of those that struggle and want to make a more fair and thriving society vs those that have generally had things turn out well for them personally and/or are scared of change and rhetoric coming from the former group. I'm not sure how else to phrase these two mind sets, but politically it's generally left vs right and socialism vs capitalism. In this short article, Alyssa, the author and a college student, writes about her disagreement with her peers and how they oppose capitalism in favor of socialism, and especially about how she disagrees with this comment from New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talking about Millenials when she said: "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity." Alyssa writes: "Never saw American prosperity. Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBooks, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it. Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? Why? The answer is this, my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn’t live in the Great Depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague...We take our high standard of living for granted...We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average." No. I disagree with Alyssa and do not think that people are blind to prosperity simply because they are ignorant and don't know any different. I disagree with how she assumes everyone is living a prosperous life of luxury just because we have 21st century technology and services. Having a few nice things in a wealthy country doesn't mean you abound in prosperity. I've heard this argument a few times, comparing the standard of living of poor Americans in the 21st century to people from very poor countries in other parts of the world or even comparing to the poor living conditions of past human history. This a false equivalence. Apples and pears are both pome fruit, but they are not the same. A poor person in America is not a fair comparison to a poor person in Burundi. Poor Americans will obviously still have a better standard of living than a poor person in Burundi simply because of the different laws, government, social safety net, regulations, and proximity to services and technology when comparing the two nations. They are both poor people, but it's not an equivalent comparison. Sure, we can and should still be grateful for what we have in a developed nation, but that still doesn't mean everyone's quality of life is abounding in prosperity. When we compare the standard of living of poor people in America to the rest of the American population and know the capabilities and resources the country has to offer, I agree with the sentiment and say with confidence that they are not prospering. There are a lot of people that think a poor person in America having anything nice is a sign that they're not really poor and they should be grateful for the good life they have. This Fox video segment highlights this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al5E3KbIfeo. It's nonsense. Having a few basic amenities that are common place in a developed nation doesn't negate the fact that millions of people are just four paychecks away or less from losing it all and being homeless. I guess that line of thinking would still say they are privileged homeless because they are on paved sidewalks instead of dirt roads. I've seen these same kind of comments and arguments appear when people argue about differences in generational prosperity opportunity with how boomers had it so much easier too. Some will deny it by saying things like this: "As a member of the older generation (almost 50), ever generation thinks the previous generation had it easier and screwed it up for the next. Every generation has different challenges, some easier, some harder. Stop focusing on everything you see as wrong and start working on achieving your happiness. You're complaining about having 1st world problems, I've spent a lot of time in 3rd world countries and unless you have, you truly don't appreciate how good you have it. Your life is so much better than you realize, stop whining and make it even better." And this comment: "I find this utterly ridiculous. I am in my late 60's and still working, I never felt that I was entitled to anything, worked my ass off to get what I needed to feed and house my family. How can you feel that life owes you anything? You have to have the drive to solve your own problems, not sit and whine that life is so unfair and that you are owed an easy life because you are the SPECIAL person that you are. Grow up, if you don't make enough money, get a second job, reduce your expenses or get another job that pays you what you think that you are worth." Then there was this response: "We will never be able to own houses. I could work two jobs and still struggle. You've had privilege, recognize that. Yes, we still need to work hard and don't deserve everything handed to us, but we still deserve an actual fucking chance." I'm not going to get further into the generational fight with this post, but the degree of prosperity argument has a heavy presence there as well. The point of this post is to talk about how life for poor people in America is still difficult and stressful. Upward economic mobility for many people is getting more difficult for people that don't have connections or support, mainly because of the high costs of housing and education and jobs not paying enough. I find it rude to tell them they're not really struggling just because they are still better off than people in other countries or other timelines. So what!? Instead of silver lining the problem and dismissing it, let's talk about it. Poor people in America are still faced with any number of struggles such as having to work two or more jobs just to make ends meet with meager wages, high housing costs and other bills that both keep going up while their wages remain stagnant or fail to keep up with the increases. They forego medical treatments because of the costs, even if they have insurance they still need to meet deductibles and copays. They may struggle with not being able to get a better job while being abused at current jobs. College costs are exorbitant and getting a degree, even a "good" one, doesn't always mean you'll be offered lucrative career prospects. Poor Americans struggle in many ways and knowing the amount of money and resources out there shows that it CAN indeed be better. Alyssa also referenced in her article ways that capitalism leads to prosperity and how it built America, gave it its strong economy and power, and cites these capitalism facts as "universal truths." She continued to write, "However, these universal truths don’t matter [to the people favoring socialism]. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity; some of the poorest countries in the world have low income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering)." I agree with Alyssa that capitalism has been good for propelling humanity's advancements in recent history, but maybe it can still be better with the right policies. OSHA, the FDA, the EPA, and various labor laws and other agencies have been created because pure capitalism was failing people by not providing proper safety precautions for society. Maybe it's time to make new adjustments where faults are found. That's not always a bad thing. Just because the foundation of this fairly new system in human history called capitalism is cracking, doesn't mean we ignore it because it was originally great and should never be touched, but it also doesn't mean we should scrap it entirely either. How is it cracking? Look at the people struggling to do everything right economically and still struggle to improve their quality of life. Alyssa just dismisses inequality by again comparing to poor countries where everyone has nothing. Hard to oppress people when you lack the tools to oppress (money and the control of it). Yet, growing inequality is what's causing the growing distress and creating more political extremes. I also agree with Alyssa in being against full socialism and centralizing federal power, but I don't think that's actually what most of these people want. Most people want to actually live the old American dream of being able to work your way to success in the way that job wages could actually afford a decent lifestyle. The fight over income inequality isn't about making everyone actually be equal - it's about full-time employees not requiring government welfare while the corporate bosses pocket record profits with pay discrepancies 1,000:1. Yes, capitalism helped build this great nation and economy, but the "prosperity" Alyssa cites her peers as enjoying is fake and comes with a heavy cost. Many people can barely afford housing, healthcare, and many other things that can be considered basic comforts, but hey, some people drive SUVs, some people order from or work for the likes of doordash and uber, and most people have cell phones and laptops so we ALL must be thriving in abundant prosperity, right? Never mind the fact that having a phone and laptop is practically a requirement in our society for school and work in a 21st century developed nation. Again, never mind the fact that millions are just a few paychecks away from losing it all and spending a decade or more recovering what was lost, if they recover at all. I want people to live their best life and wish I could do more to help them get there. I want people to be at peace with their finances and overall well being. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to be rich, but as long as you are debt free, have basic comforts to ward off stress, and time to do what you love. That is true prosperity. My best friend grew up in a wealthy family. His father owned a successful business. Since his dad owned the business, my friend was able to start getting work experience and good money since age 14 or younger. Sometimes he worked hard, but mostly I found out it was a job paying $12/hour to sweep the floors, organize some things, and whatever odd jobs needed to be done. As a 14 year old in the early 2000s, this was a lot of money for trivial work.
I got my first job at 16 and was happy to finally be making money. My friend always made more and never had to worry about getting time off work for vacations and whatever. Actually, he never had to worry about anything for employment. He always had a job to go to and could take time off whenever and get paid above average of everyone else our age. All because he worked for Dad's business. I never cared about this difference though, but it did bother me when he wouldn't understand why I couldn't just take work off whenever I wanted, otherwise I never cared about these differences. By the time our college years came around, we were talking about what some plans were for the summer and what we were going to do for employment and stuff. Really I was only thinking about what I was going to do since he always just works for the family business. He mentioned he sees his time as worth $20 an hour since that's what he was getting paid recently. To his credit, his job at dad's business did involve more actual work, but he still didn't have a clue of what it's like having to actually look for and apply to jobs and see that real world sees our time as worth $8-$12 an hour at that time. The higher pay is lucky, anything paying better than that was unusual or found through connections. In our late college years it seemed like everything just always seemed to go his way or everything was handed to him as he's never had to really apply for anything. It was all through family relations or other connections. Life is like that for some people. I didn't think it mattered because I'd be doing well myself someday since I doing the right things by going to school and getting good grades, but when time came to start applying for internships, I then realized some fatal flaws in myself. My friend had a very strong resume with all the connections and experience of operating business stuff from working with his father all those years. He got a fantastic internship in a different industry than his dad's business, but got it because of his father's association with them anyway. My resume, however, was weak - consisting of regular low, or no skill jobs and a few little awards and volunteer stuff that now seemed meaningless as I couldn't get anything more than what a new high school graduate could do. Even with help making myself look better on paper for a resume I had a low self-esteem because I knew most of it was lies just to make me look better, but mostly because of my most serious fault of not having direction in life. I still had no idea what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life in it was killing me. I paid for and worked through 3 years at a university and still had barely anything to show for it. I still couldn't get any better jobs, felt like I wasn't getting anywhere in life, and felt alone trying to figure out a better future with no connections to help me. I felt very lost and like I was never going to have a good future, despite working hard and being a great student throughout my childhood and college. I wondered how many others were like me that have no direction, don't know what they want to do or how to get there. When it came to choosing a career path, I hated when people trying to help would ask what I liked because the things I like don't pay what I want or I'm not good enough to be a professional. I like hiking, swimming, playing sports, games, and other things, but those interests don't necessarily have jobs people would pay you for, or it's low paying jobs barely associated with those activities, or you have to be a professional player. When I was looking for an internship, people did want to help me, but my problem was that I still didn't know what I wanted. At the time I was leaning towards finance, so I just wanted anything related to finance jobs and see if I liked it to know where to go from there. People couldn't help direct me in the right way because my desires were too general. I at least needed to narrow my search to about three fields. This took a good amount of researching best careers in certain industries, best careers for my major, and thinking about what school subjects I like the most and do the best in. Once I narrowed my search I felt more confident moving forward, but I wish I had a better resume to get the better jobs and build up. If I knew then what I know now I would've applied for more specific jobs and internships instead of taking whatever I could find that pays the most at the time. So the question I want to ask all you readers/listeners, is how did you end up where you are? Was it planned? How did you figure out what you wanted to do for a career? I'm going to share a few first job experiences in future posts/episodes and hope people can learn from them as well as sharing some of your experiences. I hope we can come together through Invested Alternative to be able to help those that have struggled or are struggling finding their direction and I hope all of you find it. I eventually got mine miraculously and I feel like that's how it works for many of us. By luck and chance things start working out. We just have to do the rest of the work on our own to build a better future. |
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