Posted on 06/12/2015 11:42:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
IDK. But I’m going to take my School Marm out to an End-Of-The-School-Year dinner treat at Anthony’s tonight. They have those oysters.
:-)
My first job out of HS was in a dirty, dark, noisy factory.
I didn’t like it and I didn’t like the work.
BUT I knew it was temporary and I liked getting a paycheck.
I liked being able to finance my OWN education to GET OUT OF THERE!
;)
His generalization about “Help Wanted” signs is BS; Americans will do any job for the right price, but employers have suppressed wages (along with ridiculous requirements on your time that preclude a second job or school) that I understand people opting out of them. I’ve looked for part-time work (I have a full-time job), and the 6pm to 9 pm jobs are gone - employers want you available 7 days a week for any shift (but you’ll only get part-time hours).
As I near 50 years old I don’t believe millions of young Americans don’t want to work the jobs that I’ve worked since I was 13; I know much of that generation wasn’t even born, and employers instead are hoping to attract imported replacement for them that were living in the Andes a couple of months ago.
When I see those jobs I suspect 1) the workplace is horrible, and they have high turnover, or 2) someone is making the case for hiring a foreigner, so they’ll pretend they can’t find qualified people.
American workers have lsot so much ground in the last few decades, it has (regrettably) driven them to support outright communism. Isn’t that what first brought about communism’s rise/spread?
I grew up in a mechanic/machine shop around lots of heavy equipment. You haven't lived until you pulled the belly pan of a D8 Cat that's been collecting dirt and everything that's leaked out of the engine for the last 20 years.
I have been on both sides of the street, working like a crazy man for ninety hours in one week and taking it easy like a slug at other times. I think the main thing is that most of us have a hard time finding something we LIKE to do that pays money. I find it laughable when people talk about how someone like Chet Atkins for instance “worked so hard” to get to the top of his field. I tend to think that he never worked a day in his life because he so thoroughly enjoyed what he did that he never thought of it as work. I know what it is to do hard, heavy manual labor all day and I know what it is to have fun doing something that pays more in a good day than I could make at the heavy work in a month or longer. Look at a video of the late, great Johnny Gimble playing the fiddle and tell me he is working. I tell you in advance that I won’t believe you. He was fortunate enough to be paid well for doing something he would have done for the sheer joy of it. Everyone knows someone who pays a fairly high price for a gym membership so he can go in and lift weights even though you could not pay him enough to get him to load coal all day.
It is true though what you say about some people being work shy. After growing up on the farm I was so work shy I went straight to Navy boot camp looking for an easier life. I danged sure found it too.
People who harbor romantic notions about farm life, have never lived on a farm.
You may be confident that a lot of “job openings” are fake. Many are just attempts to con someone into a “business opportunity” designed to take your money and quite a few are placed for reasons I don’t really understand but I have seen local businesses run a continuous ad for help and tell anyone who tries to apply that they don’t really need anyone. I have also seen a local hospital advertise for all kinds of openings that they NEVER fill. As far as “openings” advertised on the internet, my guess is that no more than five percent max represent real job openings for which someone will be hired. The rest are fakes of one kind or another or simply duplications. One columnist wrote a piece in which he said there should be ZERO unemployment, a statement he based on the fact that there were more help wanted ads on the internet than there were people looking for work. I could not believe anyone could be so helplessly naive.
From Lowes to Loans: Meet William Ramos
April 12, 2015
Last modified: April 12, 2015
By: Sean Murray
Non-bank financing changed William Ramos’ life. Not as a borrower, but as a mover and shaker in the competitive world of financial deal-making. As an ambitious 20-year old, Ramos was working at both Lowes and ShopRite to try and put himself through Staten Island Community College. These were stepping stones, he told himself. He was dedicated to bettering himself, or more aptly to be the best at whatever he did.
Already on a path to success, he found himself growing impatient. The life of two jobs and school was a slow grind. Ramos wanted to do something big. He wasn’t sure what it would be, but he was confident that his attitude combined with his strong work ethic would eventually lead him to great success.
And so one day, he made a promise to himself to go out and find that big thing rather than wait for it to find him. It’s a bit of an American Cliché to say that his lucky break coincided with a sudden bout of adversity, but that’s exactly how it played out. Raised in the tough neighborhood of Brownsville in eastern Brooklyn, he didn’t have the connections to step right into the business world. Instead, Ramos had to start his search on the ground floor with millions of others on Craigslist.
His luck began with an interview for a job in telemarketing, a role that meant being connected to an autodialer nine hours a day as an opener. Undeterred by the challenge, Ramos had a feeling that this is where it would all begin. “I’ll do it,” he said.
There was only one problem, they didn’t want to hire him. The firm, which sold mostly financing products to small business owners, was very selective, even with cold callers. His interviewer at the time, who later became his boss, confirmed to me that he didn’t think Ramos was the right fit after they first met. But Ramos was determined to change his mind.
After calling the firm repeatedly over the next week to convince them that he was up to the task, they finally acquiesced. It didn’t mean he was in. It just meant it was time to put up or shut up. “They gave me a three-day trial period,” Ramos said.
His former boss confirmed this relentless persistence.
39 working hours, 3,000 calls, and 3 days later, Ramos brought in two deals, one for $100,000 and another for $35,000. They both went through.
It was more than good enough to survive the trial and he was offered a job to work full time.
With a starting compensation of only $250 a week + commission, he still had a long way to go. “I would be the first one in and last one out,” Ramos shared with me. “I kept my head down and I wouldn’t leave my seat unless I needed to use the bathroom or eat. All I would do is make my calls.”
Within the first three months he managed to save $700 and he used it to buy a Mercedes-Benz C240 from a co-worker. After a life of taking the bus to work, Ramos had reached his first milestone of success.
While it was obvious that he still harbors pride in that first car, it sadly became all that stood in the way of homelessness. He had sacrificed everything for this job including college. Unfortunately there would be just one more thing to lose.
Adversity struck when a series of unfortunate events suddenly left him without a place to live. Ramos’ car was now both his ride and his home, though with the long hours he was putting in at the office, he might as well of lived at his desk. His boss took a special interest in his life and soon discovered just how much his young protégé was struggling.
“He was literally sleeping in his car,” his former boss told me. “I offered to let him sleep on my couch or at the very least let him stay in the office,” he added. Ramos took him up on the latter and began sleeping at the office. At the same time his commission percentage was bumped up, which sweetened the potential and only encouraged him to keep going.
Soon he was regularly closing more than $500,000 a month in deal flow and his financial situation and lifestyle began to improve significantly. A little more than a year later, Ramos had risen up to become a sales manager and was overseeing a team of five members.
Now some people in his shoes might’ve decided not to press their luck. He had taken a major gamble and it had paid off, so why do anything to jeopardize it?
But Ramos didn’t leave everything behind to settle for pretty good and a middle class lifestyle. After two years, he gave his boss and mentor some bad news.
“I’m going off on my own,” he explained. They parted on amicable terms and to this day still do business with each other. Ramos’ last commission check there was for $15,000, an amount he had never imagined back in his Lowes’ days.
In 2013 he founded Supreme Capital Group
After working incredibly hard for several years, Ramos has at least found the time to play hard too. In the summer of 2014, he had made enough money to buy a white Maserati GranTurismo MC Sport Line, of which he shared several photos with me. He’s since upgraded to a 2013 Ferrari California in a color he described as Pepsi blue. And while that might be the kind of car some people would dream of sleeping in, Ramos has said those days are long over.
He just bought a house in Mesa, Arizona where his fiancée grew up and he plans to relocate his office there. “It’s already in the process of being built,” he said.
Ramos is now just 25 years old. He said he regrets not finishing school and he plans to go back. But he wouldn’t change everything that happened to him. He stressed more than once that asking questions is something he considers to be very important to success, especially in the business he’s in. “For all the newcomers in the industry, my advice would be to work hard and ask a lot of questions,” he said.
He was certain he had found the right opportunity almost from the beginning. “I knew that if I made those commissions the first week that I could make more,” he said.
It wasn’t easy.
http://debanked.com/2015/04/from-lowes-to-loans-meet-william-ramos/
Oh, there were some wonderful things about growing up on the farm but when you are a fifth grader spending your entire “summer vacation” walking behind a plow or other such work and that continues right on until high school graduation it tends to overshadow the fun parts. I did more real manual labor before entering high school than most people now will ever do in a lifetime.
I don’t believe anyone is that naïve; they are pushing an agenda. Did Americans stop buying things/eating out/making mortgage payments because they were too busy at their jobs?
I think you are right about an agenda, I just don’t understand how it works.
The media running interference for our Token President is determined not to expose him as the mediocre disaster he is; 100 years from now he will be remembered as the president who presided over our greatest prosperity.
Part of the story is good. Not so much when I think he is one of those people who keep calling my cell phone...
Let us hope and pray that there just is a hundred years from now.
I think maybe you blew that one. First, he is not a “mediocre disaster”, as disasters go he is anything BUT mediocre, he is on a par with the volcano that buried Pompeii or hurricane Katrina at a minimum and he may yet exceed our wildest imaginings in the disaster department. If you mean he is a mediocre president I would say you are wildly overrating him. He is so far below mediocre as a president that he can’t see the underside of mediocre with a telescope, he would need a ride on a moon rocket to reach the level of Jimmy Carter. Secondly, there is no guarantee that anyone will be here in a hundred years to remember anything.
Those stinkin' employers!
I understand employers are dealing with high unemployment and masses of Asians ready to work; the reaction of employers has played a large role in Obama’s TWO election victories. Maybe they can’t stay in business by paying 1980s wages (though that wouldn’t explain their stock prices and dividends rising); in any case, communism wasn’t born in a vacuum. It’s holiday (May Day) is in fact a commemoration of labor-related terrorism in our own United States!
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