by Samuel Leal, Arizona State University
The pursuit of legally taxable income has taken me to some interesting places.
In the summer of 2016, I decided to move out of Yuma, AZ on an afternoon whim that ended with me taking the midnight train going anywhere. Of course, “midnight train” can here be described as a nom de plume for “Greyhound Departing at 3PM” and “anywhere” refers to my brother’s former apartment in the Main St./Alma School region of Mesa, Arizona.
It’d been two weeks since my high-school graduation. I was anxious to be out in the real world and getting to work on proving myself. For some reason, I thought this meant getting a job in the deli of a nearby Safeway and quitting after a month because the free chicken wings no longer made being miserable worth it.
In the years since, I’ve managed to bolster my curriculum vitae through a number of stints – both lengthy and fleeting – undertaken at radically different establishments. Now, I would love to be a reliable employee. But, there’s just one problem: I’m chronically unemployable. Just, indecently distractible. Teachers used to call me a “social butterfly,” but most corporations prefer the term “non-rehireable.”
Summer 2019 was an interesting place.
I’d just wrapped up my Junior year of college. Money was short and financial obligations were high. I’d gotten by for the past couple of months through a combination of political canvassing gigs and paid online transcription projects. But now that school had let out, I found myself with enough free time for a full-time job.
After an evening dedicated to scanning Craigslist, I found myself an interview and a chair with a missing leg. By the next day, I’d gotten myself a job and a spare chair leg. It was by no means a glamorous position; just a dingy call center in one of those strip malls where all the buildings are colored the same shade of despair.
But they gave me 40 hours a week. And the business model was interesting. We were the Customer Service arm for a collection of fledgling newspapers housed in California. As someone studying Journalism, it was nice to phone home and tell my mom I was officially in the industry.
Thus, the summer dragged on in despicable (but profitable) fashion. Days melted into one another punctuated by 9-hour blocks consisting of reassuring octogenarians that their missing papers would soon be replaced.
One such afternoon, I found myself incapable of taking it any longer. Then, the following exchange:
Valued Subscriber: “…always say the same thing and I just can’t believe that this is the third time I’ve had to call in this week!”
Me: “I do apologize for the inconvenience, ma’am. If you could please provide -”
Valued Subscriber: “I am just sick and tired of having to deal with this!”
Then, a thought:
Passive interjection would stand no chance to the wrath of Valued Subscriber. No. The situation called for a more creative measure.
For the next three minutes, I listened as Valued Subscriber’s tirade came to a sputtering standstill as I feigned an impassioned bout of sobbing and weeping right into the mouthpiece. It must have been a riveting performance, because no more than an hour later, I found myself explaining my actions to an absolutely irate supervisor.
The Subscriber had called in under the guise of “making sure [I] was okay.” Prompted by this, my supervisor had gone through recordings of my previous calls and discovered a pandora’s box of protocol violation, improper conduct, “ridiculous” voices, and (1) episode of exaggerated crying.
I was jobless the next day. Then, by next week, I wasn’t. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of working as an Interpreter for the Spanish-speaking masses of the working world. And, honestly, it’s pretty nice to be making money, helping people, and gaining relevant experience.
The newspaper call center rarely crosses my mind. But, when it does, the only thing I can remember is leaving that place with a memorable anecdote. It does great at parties. You might be wondering what any of this has to do with money. Well, here’s what:
If you’re young and inexperienced, most jobs you pick up in the fight for economic survival are going to be miserable. So, go and get yourself a nice little mound of taxable sadness you can hack away at until you can’t. If you’re not going to be living the dream, you might as well be making money.
But when an opportunity to make money and set yourself up for a better future presents itself, you better know how to recognize it. Take it from an Interpreter.
Samuel Leal is a student at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
