Workin' Hard for the Money

Well one prayer has finally been answered! I have been looking for a job since March (although I have only been seriously looking since early July) and I was just starting to think there must be a reason for my unemployment when the door opened. I had gotten an interview with a construction company (as an office assistant) that is building a huge shopping center across I-15 from Lagoon in Farmington but in the end they decided to hire someone with more experience in the field. This was annoying because I felt I had done really well on the interview and they even told my temp agency that they had "nothing negative" to say about me. I guess that was supposed to make me feel better about not being hired. The following week I filled out an application to be a receptionist for an assisted living home my friend, Chelsea, works at. They told me the position had been filled but would take my application and resume for future reference. A few days later I interviewed for a title clerk position in a North Salt Lake car dealership. The day after that interview my temp agency called me and told me they had a position for me that I didn't even have to interview for. My friends happened to be there when I got the call so they drove me over to meet my boss (he asked if I could stop in and luckily I had that ride available). I met John and who I would assume is his fiancée (temp agency told me his fiancée wanted to meet me), Lee. They seemed impressed with my resume and I started the following day. Of course, now that I was hired, the car dealership called to offer me a job and even the assisted living home called to set up an interview. Go figure.

So here I am, I am an administrative assistant for Great Dane Cranes, Inc. I have my own office, with my own computer (including my own login), my own phone, my own set of keys, my own code to the alarm system....I feel so grown up! HAHA. Actually this is my first "real" job since in college I was just a student worker and at Griffin I was only temp so I never got keys or a login or anything cool like that. I work a lot with Janeen, who is the office manager. The company owns thousands of cranes, which are those claw machines you see in the grocery store, the sticker machines, candy machines, toy dispensers, and stacker machines (more common in the west; if you do well you win big prizes like a Nintendo Wii, Rockband, PSP, Digital Camera, GPS, Gameboy Advance, Computer flatscreen monitor, Ipod Classic or Touch, Zune, Iphone, Xbox 360, or $225 Visa gift card). We also own a bunch of jukeboxes. Aside from John (the president/owner), Janeen, and I, there are four drivers (Keisha, Andrea, Matty, and Jayson) who collect all the money from the machines, and Kevin, who does a lot of our repairs. There are a lot of family members within the group. Janeen's husband, Jeff, is a silent partner, Keisha and Kevin are married, and Janeen's brother, Neil, is our IT guy. The lady I replaced, Julie, is Janeen's best friend. As much as I love this job, how I got it is very sad. Julie's sister was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer (she smoked for ten years about ten years ago). I found out today it is in stage four and the prognosis is very bleak. Julie is the primary care giver so that is why she left the company. However, I am learning a lot and I love coming to work every day, except for the lack of air conditioning. I do a lot of computer work, entering info into and creating new spreadsheets. I manage all the large stacker prizes and keep track of who gets what and when. I also count all the money that comes in. This process takes a few hours, even with counting machines, but I don't mind it. I spent so much time looking at one dollar bills last week that I memorized all the mints that they are printed in and their corresponding letter of the alphabet. The more intelligent people reading this probably already know, but if you arrange the mints by their "code" letter, they go from east to west geographically. Very cool.

Well I just thought I send in the update on the job situation. Feel free to post questions if I left out any details. :)