Like McCain? on the Peoria.com Forums - Page 5

Dang, I missed it before it was removed by admin. I'm certain it was another thought provoking, enlightened fulmination.

Hipkat, regardless of whether your bad fortune was your fault, someone else's or a combination of both....it's still spilled milk (not literally, lol). Now, you have to work with the cards that you have been dealt. I do honestly want to help you out. I think you are simply in a valley right now. You'll pull through it. No matter what differences in political opinions we have, remember this:

1. You must be positive. I can't stress that enough.

2. Your gonna take blows, shake it off, and get back in the fight.

3. Even if you doubt yourself, don't let it show.

4. Forget about being underqualified for a job. It means nothing. Attitude and determination is everything. (I have no college education and have been the least educationally qualified candidate for the last three jobs I've had. I was not fired from any of them, I left for more money)

5. Don't make excuses for why you can't do something. You can. Don't say I can't, say how can I?

6. Never stop looking for better opportunities. Network. Get to know people. Even if you are comfortable where you are, always have a Plan B.

Live positive......you'll get back there, man.

Yeah, there was a lot of negative Zen, AV8R. And alot of F-words, too, lol.

Dave, great response.
I ado alot of that, although the remaien hamning positive has been hampered, but I think alot of that comes from other places, and I'm working on that.

I know there's something better out there, I'm just, for the first time in my life, having a hard time fiding it.

there's a great book called "The QBQ" that i read as a sales director. QBQ is the "question behind the question." in other words, instead of asking: "why did this happen to me?" you ask: "how the hell can i make this better?" without waiting for someone to give you a hand. it basically says you're in charge of your own destiny, which i truly believe.

dave, you're dead on with your forward thinking. we live in the best country in the world where you can get ahead with free enterprise--but you have to want it bad enough. it's not handed to you.

this is the biggest reason why i disagree with the democrats--because i don't believe we should give EVERYONE a hand just because they say we need to. kids, the elderly and the disabled people in this country are the only ones who deserve our help. everyone who is able-bodied should do what they can to work.

i don't really think people in this country know what it's like to be truly poor. the government buys their food and pays their rent and treats their wounds yet they complain. they get free education and have cars to drive and color TVs to watch and air conditioned homes in the summer and heat in the winter but they still want more while the rest of us "rich" people work our asses off to get to where we want to be without any government help at all--then they complain about US! give me a break!

if you really want to see what poor people live like, go visit a third world country where chuck steak is a real luxury and indoor plumbing is a novelty. go see if you can spend a night lying on a wool blanket spread out on a concrete floor when the temp outside is in the mid-90s and you only have a fan to cool you off. try living on rice and beans and potatoes for a month straight or using an outhouse in the dead of winter with the pages of last week's "novela" as your toilet paper. THAT is truly poor. and yes, this is how i grew up in mexico.

i don't get why some people in this country feel they are entitled to government help simply because they live here.

Or come to my house, where I NEVER miss work, we live in a shack, have no car and are barely getting by, with no real luxuries other than cable TV and the internet.
Oh, and get no help from any government.

Sorry if that sounded a little bitter, but sometimes you can think positive and hope for that break and sometimes, you realize just how far down you are.

Lily, you're right.......I was in Thailand when I was in the Navy. We pulled into Pattaya Beach. I took a bus from Pattaya to Bangkok. In the counrtyside during the bus trip, that is where I saw actual poverty. It was sad. I had no idea that human beings lived that way. USA poverty is wealthy in comparison.

No wonder you didn't make it as a salesman HipKat, I'm not buying it either. You have a house (albeit a shack by your description) you have a job, you have cable TV and the Internet. If you spent the time in Korea you claim to have, you surely saw much worse there. I sure did, and I was only there for the Team Spirit exercise. I also did a medcap in the Philippines, where the natives were literally walking down out of the jungle for medical treatment, wearing nothing but a loincloth. Many of the loincloths were quite obviously made from US Army PT shirts that had been given to them during previous medcap missions. Bet they'd LOVE to have your shack. Maybe they could even use the Cable TV and Internet money to buy food for their children. We won't discuss the money you spent the other night out club hopping with Foxy. That must have set you back a nickel or two. I guess maybe you could have added one more club and maybe a limo if the government had chipped in some money.

Sorry Big Rog, I missed this one:

The answer of course is no. But neither do I labor under the delusion that everything coming out of DC is fabricated.

There are some things that we simply do not need to know. Personally, I think the government gives out way too much info as it is. They could get by with so much more if they just kept their mouth's shut.

hipkat, my husband and i were once in your shoes. we lived paycheck to paycheck for a long while. we even lived in a rented flea-infested trailer and LOATHED the idea of our 3 yo walking around with flea bites while my husband trained for the job that eventually catapulted us into a better place. sometimes you make sacrifices--like when he sold used cars (in spite of his bachelor's degree) to put food on our table or like all the hand-me-down furniture we took on. heck, i used to make end tables out of empty cardboard barrels because there was no way in hell we could afford new stuff. i remember when our rent went up $20 per month and we were in a panic about where we were going to get that kind of money.

so my question is this: if you've got a roof over your head, cable tv, a computer with internet and food on the table...what are you so bitter about?

the problem with most people today is that they want it all RIGHT NOW. when you change that attitude and just become grateful for what you do have and then devise a plan to make things better for the future, your entire perspective changes.

Dave, that night out was the first time we had been out in over a year and a half and it was her birthday.

As far as comparing us to any other country, it's all relative.
Koreans live in cinderblock houses, but they don't, or at least in the 80's, didn't have Cable TV, SUV's, paved roads, etc.
All the things we take for granted. It's comparing apples to oranges.
You know what they did have? 0% inflation, better education system and government health care.Don't tell me I didn't make it in sales.
I worked for another company where I sold home improvements between the one I mentioned and moving here, where I closed at over 40%.
In the H.I. industry, that's almost twice what the average rep does, nationally.
In Buffalo, though, there is a 12 month a year market, here, most companies shut down in the winter.
Plus, I don't have a vehicle to get to leads.
The last month I worked, I closed 96% of my leads.
I worked there for 5 months and made over 50,000.00.
I hated leaving that job to come here, but I had to be with my kid, and this is where their mother brought her.
I actually had a job lined up before I got here; With Illini Siding & Windows.
Yeah, that guy made the news last year for ripping people off.
Instead, I got into advertising sales, doing the one thing I swore I'd never do; Phone sales. But when I left Universal AdCom, who are a total ripoff company, I was averaging over 6000.00 a week in sales, compared to the rest of the room, which averaged about 2000.00 a week.
However, they too are notorious for mysterious cancels, etc, so the most I ever got paid on was about 3000.00 a week, which was I think about 4% commision.
I came to the company I'm at now to do the samething and in the two months I was on the phone, I sold over 20,000.00, but the owner got wind of my graphics skills and moved me into the art dept, where I went to straight 10.00 and hour and recently found out, illegally forfeited all my outstanding commision. A good 4000.00, which iswhy I need to find a real job, where I can get paid on eveything I sell, if I do that, or a good salary if I stay in graphic design, and I'm goingto take some classes on that at ICC in the fall.

Dont sell me short Dave, because youy don't know the whole story.
Truth is, I can make much more doing the same thing back home, where the cost of living is the same, but never see my kids, so now, I need to find my way here.

hk, you're good at making excuses. if you're good at selling XXX in one market, you will be good at selling YYY in another. sales skills are all the same--i spent 4 years in the sales field and moved through it pretty fluidly.

it's not the market stopping you here. it's you stopping yourself.

Oh, yeah, I can walk all over illinois with a few window samples on my back....

And I just said I was doing GREAT at sales, except that AdCom is notorious for stealing your sales.
The Owner once said to his managers, never let them get over 3000 in sales. Less than that, they're not making enough money, more than that, they're costing me money.

Where did you see that I failed in sales??My only stipulation isthat I'm not going back to phone sales.
It's shady and I have more of a conscious than to blatently rip people off.

Know a good inside sales job?
I'm there.

what i was trying to say is this: if you're so good in sales, why did you get sucked into a graphics position where you most likely knew ahead of time you wouldn't be making very much money? graphics artists generally don't make much money without a degree in any town (i'm one of them). why not stick to something you claim you're good at? there are plenty of sales positions in this town. i see very legit ones announced every week in the paper. and, for the record, i never said you failed in sales.

my bad for getting sucked into this conversation. but i'll let you have the last word since you're very intent on it.