Friday, January 21, 2011

A Good Job and a Funny (Sad) Anecdote

About two years ago, right when the recession really hit hard, I applied for a job I found on Craigslist.  It was a data entry position for a machinery warehouse that's been in business for 100 years!  The warehouse is located right down the street from me, but had previously been located in downtown Manhattan.  I have a ton of data entry experience on all different programs, and because the warehouse was located right down the street, I figured I had a pretty good shot at getting a call back.  Well, I did get a call back, I went in for an interview with the assistant to the manager/owner of the place, and he hired me on the spot.  He toured me around the place and showed me the database he had going and showed me what needed to be done.  They had about fifty boxes filled with invoices going back years and years, and they needed me to input all of the hand-written invoices into the database.  I was being hired as an independent contractor to complete this job. Great! The next day I went in to work and the manager was there and we met.  He was a nice guy.  Now here's the funny anecdote: He told me that he received hundreds of applications for the job, and that multiple stockbrokers who had recently been laid off due to the recession had applied to this job(!) and that I had beat them out.  He had picked me not only because of my data entry experience, but mainly because I live right down the street, as I had figured would be in my favor.  "You beat out stock brokers for this job.  That's how crazy everything is.  Stock brokers are applying for a freelance data entry job for $10 an hour," he said.  Indeed.  Crazy.  In this case, fortunately for me, a crazy thing that worked out in my favor.

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