New-ish Job
Employment. I’m going to have to say its something I am actually thankful to have right now, especially after hearing and experiencing how terrible the job market is right now. I graduated from UC Riverside about an year ago, finished two quarter earlier than my classmates thinking “hey, it gives me a better chance of landing a job, right?”. Wrong. The job market was as its worst state when I graduated December of 2008, many of our professors actually said “I think its probably better for you who are graduating to stay in school”. But at the time, I’ve had just enough of school. Constant deadlines on projects, night of cramming right before midterms/finals just took a toll on me, and I seriously didn’t want to deal with all that again. In the end, I graduated early and decided to test the water in the job market.
I was being lasy as fuck after I graduated, and that’s probably an understatement. At first I just thought its a “long deserved break” after 3 and 1/3 years in college, but the break turned out to be a long one. I wasn’t being lazy in the sense of not being active though. As shown in my othe posts, I’m pretty into weight lifting, so I actually went to the gym either daily or at least every other day. I was being very lazy in the sense that I wasn’t in any hurry to look for a job. I’m not going to lie, I’m fortunate to be in a decently well off family, so yeah, I was pretty much leeching off my parents. I wasn’t exactly focused on looking for a job, but if one came my way, I definitely took a look at it. So Anyways, after almost half a year, I finally “found” a job thanks to a friend of a friend.
He brought me into a small privately owned clinic and I was doing a full range of tasks, ranging from billing patients to planting trees. I thought the job was okay, but I knew it really has no future since the medical industry is not something I’m interested in. However my lack of interest probably showed, since the management there was questioning my work ethic. After being there for a couple months, we came to the mutual agreement that this sort of job just is not a good fit for me. We shook hands, I thanked them for the opportunity, and we parted ways. The funny thing is, after leaving that job, I became really focused on finding another job – and I did, but I think that’s a story worthy of a completely new post. To make the story short, I experienced my first multi-level marketing scheme. Now onto my current job.
After quitting the multi-level marketing job, I was again feverishly looking for employment. It was pretty unsuccessful and I had several talks with my father regarding my employment status. My dad owns a company in Dong Guan, China, and has always told me if I am interested, he will hand me the company. As great of an opportunity as that sounds, its a really tough decision and definitely not a decision I can make on the fly. The obvious advantage would be being the boss of a pretty profitable company, I would make tons more there than I can ever make holding an entry level position here. The downside (depending one’s view) is moving to China. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against China. I’ve been there plenty of times on vacation, and think its great spot to relax and have some fun, but living there is a completely different story. Anyways, it was something we discussed from time to time but the plan never came into fruitation. In the end, my dad decided to use his network to help me look for a job.
Currently, I’m working in Air Tiger Express, a freight-forwarding company that does land, sea and air transportation of goods. We’ve also got our own customs brokerage department and warehouses. My position right now is customers service, and mostly likely a sales in the future. My father’s friend is the sales director here, so his referral probably contributed a great deal to my hiring here. Right now, they are basically cross-training me in all the departments – air import, ocean import, brokerage and export. Its a pretty typical office job, but since I’m completely new to the industry, it is a lot of information to take in. This post has been the longest I’ve typed, and my hands are getting pretty tired. I think I will continue the description of my current job onto another post.
