Wiping the sweat from my brow, I check another gray box off of my company-lent iPad. No sale, I write. Thanks for reading words from eliza! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The solar panel gig had been a truly last-ditch effort at employment. Cheese Game Room. The SunPower training lasted a week at their office in Pasadena. I wore my hair in a low bun, trying my best to conceal the pink at my ends โ lest this be an opportunity to be cut loose on my very first day.
Luckily, they seemed to be as eager to find employees as I was to be employed. They took my photo, gave me a badge, and I sat through the routine slog of corporate Kool-Aid funneling, as I had done many times before at differing companies, indistinguishable in their vigor for SALES! The higher-ups took to me immediately. I did well in the mock customer interactions particularly because they were done in front of the other trainees. As a teenager who had spent the better part of her year isolated and farming in the midwest, I was happy to be taken in by an audience again, and took a great joy in perverting my skills of mild interpersonal manipulation for the sake of an entertaining bit and a deal landed.
I was met with another day of less-than-ideal sales numbers. As it happens, when you spend most of the day alone and counting the numbers of doors slammed in your face, entertaining yourself becomes the only tether between you and this mortal Earth โ one of the few things left other than cigarettes!
My leave from SunPower solar was graceless and abrupt. One day I was done, and that was that. I was surprised to learn, recently, that the polo is still with me. I pulled it out of a duffel bag the other day and it smelled of mildew.
Following my hasty exit from SunPower, I leveraged one of my genuine skills, child care, for a considerably better deal. After a brief interview and extensive criminal background check, I became the pseudo-mommy to a Burbank tot whose actual mommy was spending the next few months producing a reality show in Northern California.
