Surprise, surprise, I am one step closer to being unemployed, because I was late for lunch. On July 19, 2006, I took my lunch later than normal, so that I did not have to sit in the lunch room and listen to gossip and perverted jokes for 30 minutes. However, I left my cell phone at home, and missed my five hour time limit by ten minutes. The disciplinary action was a coaching, or Decision Day in my case, which means one more offense and I am without a job.
I had made up my mind to resign from Wal-Mart, back when my eyes opened in the Financial Journal. I realized that my wages does not even support a poverty lifestyle. I receive welfare, Medicaid, utility assistance, rental assistance, and payday loan assistance. Financially, I don’t know how I’m still standing, times were so bad that we went almost 1 year without paying our electricity bill. I have been working two jobs nearly my entire stay at Wal-Mart, and most of my co-workers do too.
No one should hate their job so much that they get headaches and bodily pains over it. When I think about all of the bad management, favoritism, backstabbing, and unorganized work conditions it makes me sick. When I think about how working overnights detracts from the rest of my life, and that I am stuck with a high cost insurance policy with a $1000 deductible on each member of my family, I cringe. Once I realized how much I was losing, to gain a few pennies, I decided it was time to leave.
I have not been fired, but this incident has clearly showed me that I need to focus on making money using my own talents and ideas. Working for others has its benefits, but once you realize the fulfillment of being an entrepreneur, working for others will make you miserable.
If it had not been for Sterling and Jay’s podcast, and them sharing their experience of taking the big leap out of the corporate world (Episode 10), I would have never had such a strong desire to leave my job, and establish my own way of living. I pray that God bless them for that episode.
I have heard Episode 10 plenty of times, mostly because there was a long hiatus between podcast releases. I even blasted it while working at Wal-Mart, since I worked in the automotive department. I am sure management thought I was really on the verge of quitting after hearing me play that Episode every night, three or four times, back to back.
I don’t want my income to be dictated by a company that sees me as a number and not a person. I don’t want my work hours, vacation time, skills, abilities, recognition, or promotions to be dictated by a company. When you work for someone, you are giving a lot of control to that person. That person’s decisions determines your lifestyle. If they don’t like you, they can fire you. If you bend over backkwards, they’ll promote you. If they make bad decisions, they can close the business down, or lay you off. Most of all when things like this happens to people, they are left in the cold looking helpless and stupid.
Working for yourself allows you to use every thing you know. It makes gathering resources exciting. It adds an extra strength into reading a book, because you apply everything you learn to your business. You can’t get this at school, and you can’t get this on the job. For a person that is not afraid to take some bumps, and is willing to work towards his vision until he reaches it, this decision day might be the best thing to happen to me. I probably would have continued to work and make due, and eventually put my visions and desires aside permanently.
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