with all the gaining, gain wisdom

I heard once that everyone should hold the following jobs at least once in his/her life:

• Telemarketer (or some kind of job that requires you to call people unsolicited)
• Grocery store clerk
• Waiter/waitress

I feel successful because, ta da! I have done all those things.

I think this all started since the primaries were last week. I had a good friend call last Sunday, and I answered the phone all suspicious-like, since I doubted it was actually a real person. I thought for sure it was someone from the state Democratic committee or someone telling me to approve the levy or someone telling me not to forget to vote (how could I forget? You call me every 6 seconds!) My friend was a bit offended that I was wary of her call, and I reassured her, "oh, because I didn't think you'd be someone I actually wanted to talk to. But you are!"

PLUS, for some reason, some company keeps calling asking Shanester to do a phone survey. He says no every time, and they seriously are still calling every day.

I love phone surveys, I do. The only problem is that when you complete one survey, your name is put on this whitelist of "easy suckers" and sold to every other phone survey company, and they call relentlessly. Shane has a tendency to be a little mean-spirited to the survey people, and he says, "stop calling me at home and get a real job!" I take offense to that, since it's nothing personal when they call you, they are merely doing their jobs, but he says otherwise. When we were in college, Shane had a job at a phone-survey-caller, and he says he is thankful for people who were rude to him on the phone, since it caused him to hate his job, quit, do well in his education, and get a real job. He says if everyone was nice to him, he would still be doing phone surveys. I say he's full of baloney.

I had to do phone surveys for a couple of my classes at BYU, and it was just awful. We had to use this "table of random digits" or something, which meant I had a page full of numbers. Column 1 was the page of the phone book I'd turn to, Column 2 was the number I'd count down from the top, and then I'd call that person. It was a "truly random" survey. And people would ask me over and over, "how did you get this number?" Since I was doing the survey for school, people were mostly nice to me, but I hated it. Although, it encouraged me to be nice to phone survey people, didn't it?

As for the other jobs, I also was a grocery store checker. It was awesome. Even today, I wish I could bag my own stuff at the grocery stores since the guys there seldom do a good job. When I see someone doing a good job, I really compliment them. Tetris people, tetris. If you've played tetris on your Nintendo, you know how to bag groceries. Be smart about it! Doing that job gave me insight into the world of grocery stores, which every single one of us frequents. To this day, I try to pre-sort my groceries on the belt so the cold stuff gets bagged together, the boxes get bagged together, etc., since that is what I'd do as a checker.

I also was a waitress. It was a freaking awesome job. Waiting tables teaches you to multi-task, remember details, put on a happy face when you really don't want to, deal with all kinds of people, and work hard on your feet for long hours. I loved it. I'm totally a social person, so I had a blast. I even had a friend who was a super amazing server (that's the PC term), and he told me once he always had low self esteem and decided to become a server to get out of his shell. He was amazing, and was really good with people. Waiting tables was good for him! I'd probably still be doing it, but the 8-to-5, M-F desk job -- not having to request weekends off -- is so so appealing. (There will always be a special place in my heart for the Olive Garden. As its menu changes and the dishes I knew and loved and memorized are phased out, a part of me is quite sad.)

Making phone calls, you learn how it feels to be on the other end of the survey. Bagging groceries, you learn how it feels to be the person sweating up a storm scanning 55 items per minute while the customer in line stares at you. Waiting tables, you learn how it feels to get a 10% tip when you worked really really hard and brought them extra napkins and cleaned up their kid's spaghetti embedded in the carpet.

I hope you can look at your life and say your jobs provided you valuable insight. I'm glad I had the experience doing the tough jobs as a teenager and working my way through college. I think I'm a better person because of it, really.

Although that doesn't necessary mean I'll keep my cool when November comes around and I get more of those election calls... urgh. But I do tip 20%, if the server keeps my drink filled.