// July 22nd, 2008 // 13 Comments » // QOTW, Work/Volunteer
It’s easy to sum up my summer these past few weeks in Vancouver: working two jobs, sleeping as much as I can, splurging on end-of-summer shopping sprees, hanging out with friends, and having angsty momenets when the thought of university creeps on.
Technically, the first job I had this summer was working as an assistant in a travel agency, booking tours to Whistler, Banff, and wonderful filled-with-the-glories-of-mother-nature places in British Columbia. It was a parttime job that paid $10 an hour (ha! stil higher than what most of of my classmates are getting) with a short-tempered boss. Even though the job was as relaxing as it comes (and in the process allowing me to learn loads about the international tourism industry), I didn’t feel like it explored my full potentials.
So after three days of melancholy and lots of Facebooking while the boss was away, I quit that job and took up a fulltime job offer as a business receptionist in a furniture manufacturer. The pay is a bit higher here but more importantly, I actually had a really nice girl train me and show me the ropes of the business. While the employment title sounds easy, it actually entails all the duties and responsibilities of the office manager. I’m in charge of ordering supplies, emailing pricing quotes to customers, overseeing the process of the furniture production from cutting to assembly. I have a chance to walk around and examine all the cool pieces in the warehouse (reminds me of IKEA). So for once, I found a job I actually enjoy doing!
On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, I have a five hour shift at an inbound call centre which coincidentally is a few metres away from the furniture place. That job was mind-boggling at first because the centre uses an elite computer dialing system with way too many bloody keyboard shortcuts. The companies’ clients include doctors, real estate agents, and government branches, who reroute their phones to our call centre after business hours (we run 24/7). So everytime someone calls, say a closed doctor’s office, we get the call and a screen pops up with prompts and message boxes and such. It’s AWESOME when there are no calls and the five or six people in the office are just sitting there reading. Maybe I’ll bring my laptop next time and watch a movie or something. Getting $50 bucks every night for that, pretty sweet!
Just for the hell of it, I want to work at Starbucks on my free evenings (can you say no life at all?! I don’t even know how I managed in that tight schedule of mine to lavishly spend on meals and shopping sprees - where is the time?!). I calculated that I should be making $5000 - $6000 bucks this summer. Ahh… financial independence is on the horizon!
QOTW: Do you have a summer job? What is it like? What do you plan to spend your hard-earned wages on?
Popularity: 5% [?]
… kidding!
