For someone who believes that the system of economics serves to disenfranchise some people for the benefit of others, employment is a very touchy subject for me. Today, I was invited to an information session about a Summer Internship through a speaker in one of my classes. At first, as they seem to always do, they made it sound great: make lots of money, get experience, blahblahblahblah.
However, it was only a couple minutes into the presentation that my doubts started to build. Firstly, there was a recommendation sheet where we were encouraged to write a few of our friends. This reminded me of my job last summer, working for Cutco, something I will not easily repeat. Second, it was incredibly noisy as the meeting was in a public place. If it was such a high-paying company, why weren’t they able to rent their own room or at least run their own offices? As the presentation went on, I noticed that they never even explained what they sold. Only until we were nearly done with the presentation, past the incentives and traveling and such, did they explain that our job would be to sell schoolbooks. This was an instant no.
First, I hate sales job. One too many days of selling knives, maybe, but more so the fact that I was directly supporting materialism. People didn’t need new knives, much less schoolbooks, but guilt filled up inside of me from selling them that. My job was to encourage them to buy products they didn’t need. I was a direct representative of the materialist culture. It wasn’t only my distaste of sales job that drove my dislike of the job though, it was the product: when I was younger, my Father wouldn’t allow me to watch TV (we didn’t have cable) or go on the computer for more then an hour or own a video gaming system. And yes, I do know kids who have or had to deal with that, but when all my other friends didn’t, it did make it a lot worse. All I could really do was education. Anything related to education. Flash cards for Math, educational computer games, the list went on. And these educational reference textbooks not only served as a representation of my childhood, but, given the opportunity, would be exactly something my Father would buy.
Despite the rather good pay, I just said no and walked away. There was no way in hell I was going to do that job. Communication skills? I’ll go work at a fucking summer camp or a public library. Getting people to buy something they don’t need is not real communication skills, it’s manipulation. There’s a difference.
