I’ve found a new thing in the blog-universe. I know I’m waaaaaay late to the party. Cut me some slack, I’ve been busy.

It’s called a weblog ring or a web-ring. Anyway, it’s a moderated (usually) collection of similar weblogs. Some are just collected for convenience, others for the purpose of driving traffic to your blog (I guess because some people are smart enough to figure out how to make those Google ad things pay off.)

One that I’m going to try is Crazy Hip Blog Mamas. Because, well, I’m crazy. And a mom. And I have a blog. And one day about 6 years ago, somebody called me hip. Of course if you’d seen me Saturday night in that hot outfit, I think I definitely qualified as hip. (Maybe I qualified as hip just because I got my sorry butt out on a date…who knows.)

ANYWAY.

One thing many of these blog coops do is have writing “assignments” where they throw out a topic and everybody writes about it.

This week the CHBM blog carnival is “What was your first job?”

Uff da.
(side note: I am so completely delighted that wikipedia has an entry for “uff da” I can’t begin to express it!)
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Not counting babysitting, lawn raking and playing my accordion for New Year’s Eve parties at the nursing home (all of which I did before I was 16 years old) my first job was as a receptionist at an H&R Block office. My mom was a tax preparer and got me an interview with the district manager.

I was responsible for welcoming clients, handing out finished returns, ushering clients back to the preparers, keeping the office tidy and making coffee.

Now, H&R Block coffee is (or at least was) an interesting concoction. I’m a good Norwegian girl, so by 16, I knew personally what coffee was supposed to taste like, and sister, this wasn’t it, so in best do-bee fashion I was trying to “do it right.” Yeah. I made a HUGE error the first week by washing the coffee pot. How was I to know that the build up of coffee crude that made it impossible to see through the glass carafe was what gave this brew it’s “special sumpin“?

Lesson #1 from corporate America: we don’t care so much about “doing it right” as “doing it the way we’ve always done it.”

The other little tricky part was that I was the “router” for the walk in clients. Way back then, (I have no idea if this is still how the business works) preparers got paid additional money for each return they finished. So if a preparer was fast (and presumably good) they could make some serious $ during the 16 week tax season…if the walk-in clients appeared. So everyone was competing for these walk-ins.

I didn’t exactly get this concept right away, and being a good Libra, I was trying to be “fair.” As in “OK, Mr & Mrs Johnson, I know Preparer X is just sitting there, but he has an appointment coming in 15 minutes and Preparer Y is just finishing up with those people and he hasn’t had a walk-in yet tonight, so just hang tight for another 5 minutes and Preparer Y will be with you shortly.” About 2 hours into the first night, Preparer X took me into the back room and explained to me, between clenched teeth, I think, that if he’s “open” he gets the next return, even if he has an appointment coming in because he’ll start the return and finish it later.

Lesson #2 from corporate America: It’s not really about the clients’ needs, or even quality, it’s about volume.

It was also this same spring (of my sophomore year of high school) that I decided that I was tired of always arguing with the religion teacher at my Wisconsin Synod high school and that I would be transferring back to public school in the fall. I don’t know exactly how the two things are related, except that I remember a conversation with the religion teacher where he told me “I don’t know why you are working so hard with school and a job. You don’t need to get a job. All you need to do is finish school and then you will get married and have a family.”

Um. Yeah.

— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Another year older and deeper in debt 2008
comment airy 2007
And on another note…crap 2006
Per AbbaGirl’s request: The Engineer 2006

— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Another year older and deeper in debt 2008
comment airy 2007
And on another note…crap 2006
Per AbbaGirl’s request: The Engineer 2006

— — —
A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

Another year older and deeper in debt 2008
comment airy 2007
And on another note…crap 2006
Per AbbaGirl’s request: The Engineer 2006

Posted on October 8th, 2006 under blogging, geekiness, work. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.